Unit 7 - Theatre in education

Thursday 11^th January

In todays session, Sophie from Pentabus theatre company was coming in to watch our performance and give us some feedback. However, this was not till later on in the session so we therefore had some time to work on some other bits and bobs before she arrived.

To start the session, we had a full run of the show. Lorren was able to come to the very start and the very end of this rehearsal today so we decided to make full use of the time that she was here by running the performance through. Unfortunately, Molly and Robert did not attend the lesson today so we were 2 cast members down. However, we were joined by Heather who is a volunteer at the college. She will be helping us backstage during the performance with some of the costume changes and making sure that no one misses their cue. She is going to be attending the rehearsals from now on so that she can familiarise herself with the script so that she is ready in time for the performance. Today in the rehearsal, Heather stood in for Nancy and Cara stood in for the part of the Sweetie Monster.

After the run through and once Lorren had left and we had had a short break, we had some time to practice through some of the things that we needed to work on. I got some time to run through my ‘Fruity Kingdom’ song as well as the other group songs that I am part of. We then got the costumes ready for the next performance which Sophie would be watching.

Just after 4pm when Lorren had come back to the rehearsal, we were ready to perform the show to Sophie. Once we had finished the show, she gave us some feedback as to how she thought it went. Overall, she really liked it. She thought that it has a really clear message and has lots of points where the audience are able to engage and participate. The main piece of feedback that she gave us was that we have to be prepared for when the children come in. There may be some children in the audience who are very vocal and might shout out at any given opportunity. Her way to tackle this and the advice that she gave to us was to create a few rescue phrases which we can use during the show which will listen to what the audience is saying but then snap back into the performance quickly. There were a few little comments as well like Annie Apple’s groan needs to be bigger and louder and when we get the children to stand up, it needs to be slightly clear but apart from that, she thought it was really good and we were almost there.

I think this session was really useful as we managed to get 2 run throughs done and we also got to practice a few other things. We will take on board the feedback that Sophie has given us and we will apply it to the performance to help improve it.