Unit 7 - Theatre in education

Reviewing and reworking scripted material

In my role as director, I have been mindful of the material appealing to the age of the children. There are several different areas which we have worked on during the rehearsal process including:

·     Storyline – simple and direct with no ambiguity so that the children can follow it easily.

·     Song lyrics and melody – simple with nursery rhyme type melodies.

·     Language – simple with age appropriate vocabulary.

·     Humour – tempering this to keep it age appropriate. An example of this is when Annie Apple says ‘You said bottom!’

·     Costume – obvious difference between the goody and baddy. Bright colours and lots of glitter used.

·     Exercise routine – easy so that it easy for the children to copy.

·     Set design – bright colours and boldness.

Prior to this performance, all of the cast members had had some experience of working with small children. We therefore applied the knowledge that we already had to this performance to make it the best that it could be.

Throughout the rehearsal process, there were a few points at which we had to rework some ideas due to several reasons. These included:

·     Children not being able to make the Fruit Shaped Shakers – a week before the show we were informed that the children had not made their shakers and would not be able to make them in time for the performance. We therefore had to go through the script and change any of the lines which referred to the shakers.

·     Casting of Tanzie Tangerine – just before Christmas, Danielle realised that she was not able to participate in the show. We then had to find someone else to play the part of Tanzie.

·     Hula hooping idea – the original idea was that Tanzie was going to carry out some hula hooping but I then thought that this may not be appropriate for the show because it might cause a lot of noise. We then changed this to hula dancing instead.

·     Backstage assistance – Heather who is one of the volunteers from college who has been attending the rehearsals as she will be mostly helping Robert backstage during the performance. She was not able to attend the tech/dress rehearsal due to illness so we had to take it upon ourselves to help Robert out backstage when we could.