Unit 7 - Theatre in education

Thursday 25^th January

Final performance

Today was the day that we were performing the show that we have been working on since September.

This morning, I had a session with my lecturer Cara where I was able to talk to her about how I thought the dress rehearsal went yesterday. I said to her that I felt overwhelmed by all of the positive feedback that we had received from many of the staff and students in the college. We didn’t really receive any negative feedback from anyone or any suggestions of last minute amendments to make to the show before we performed it today so we decided to keep everything the same except this time we were going to try to not have any glitches during the show. There were only a few things that went wrong during the dress/tech rehearsal yesterday but they were unnoticeable to the audience because they didn’t know the script. All these slight glitches have been addressed to the member of cast or crew which they involved. Therefore, we were going to work extra hard today to top the performance yesterday and try to not have any glitches or at least reduce this amount. Also during the morning session, I changed my wings which I was wearing because the ones that I was wearing yesterday for the dress/tech rehearsal became floppy. I think this made it hard for the audience to interpret that I was a fairy so I thought it would be best to try and fix the wings and if not, use a different pair. We managed to find some bigger and better wings in props room which have just recently appeared. When I tried these on, they were much better than my original ones and therefore I decided to use these instead of the other ones for the performance this afternoon. These new wings were pink and purple and a lot glitterier than the original ones. Although this was a last-minute wardrobe change, I don’t think that this will affect my character. I did try moving in these when first trying them on just to check that they weren’t going to restrict my movement. Once tightening the straps, they were ready for this afternoon. Also during the morning session, Cara received an email from Heather (the volunteer) who said that she would be able to make it to the performance this afternoon. This was great news as this will minimize the chance of the same glitches happening today as they did yesterday.

In between my morning session with Cara and arriving to get ready for the performance in the afternoon, I printed off 100 evaluation forms for the children to fill in after they have watched the show. I will be giving these to the teachers (as stated at the end of the performance by Fiona) which we will then collect next week as a follow up of the performance. I understand that the children are quite young and may not be able to fill in these evaluation forms with words but they may be able to draw small pictures to answer the questions.

In the afternoon, we were asked to arrive at the performance studio for 1pm promptly as this would give us time to get ready for the show. I had done most of my makeup before I went into my lessons this morning because I figured that I wouldn’t have as much time as I did yesterday to get ready. I then made the last finishing touches to my makeup when I got to the dressing room by putting lots of glitter over the eyeshadow which I was already wearing. I also got into my costume and did my hair. Another slight amendment to my costume was my hair. Yesterday I had my hair in loose bunches but I felt like this didn’t work very well with my character so I decided to have my hair down today but the front 2 parts gripped back off my face so that the whole of my face was able to be seen. There was a great sense of feeling in the dressing room as everyone was getting ready. Robert was getting his face painted white and also had his moustache drawn on because yesterday during the dress rehearsal, it fell off. Having this drawn on would mean that it was less likely to come off which could ruin the effect of his character. The last finishing touch to all of the female characters was the glitter spray. All the girls had glitter sprayed into their hair and I had extra glitter all over my body because this fitted the personality of my character. To finish off the preparation process, we carried out a vocal warmup to make sure that all of our voices were warm because we all had one solo each to sing and also some group songs. This warmup consisted of the intercostal diaphragmatic breathing exercise, scales, arpeggios and the technical exercise.

At about 1:40, the children from Lord Scudamore Academy started arriving. The children came in 2 coaches which came within a few minutes of each other. We anticipated to start the performance at 1:45 but due to getting the children settled, we started a short while after this original time. Just before the health and safety announcement, we moved from the dressing room to backstage as Cara was playing the medley of the songs which were in the performance. At this point, I started to get really nervous and my adrenaline started to kick in. Just before going onstage, I thought about all the hard work that I have put into this performance and now it was time to perform it for the final time. I wished the whole cast good luck and then it was time to perform. Here is a video of the performance:

Before the performance I was really nervous as I was hoping that all the cast and crew were going to be able to remember everything that has been discussed and scripted. I was also nervous about how the children were going to react as my lecturer told me ‘nothing can prepare you for a theatre in education performance’.

Overall, I was extremely happy with how the performance went. Everything ran very smoothly and the children were very interactive all the way through the performance. To start off with, the children were a bit shy and didn’t know to respond to the characters, but Cara was able to assist them at first and after this, they were very interactive the whole way through. There were actually parts of the performance where the children reacted but we didn’t expect them to. For example, when the Sweetie Monster was eating the vegetables at Healthy Eating Club, the children were shouting out for the Sweetie Monster to ‘just eat it’. This came as a shock to the cast but it didn’t throw us off at all.

After watching the performance back, I have picked out many strengths and aspects which are very good. But I have also picked out some bits where if we were to do it again, I would have liked to have seen improved.

From entering stage for the first time, I really felt like I became my character and stepped away from being myself. This is something which I haven’t quite experienced to this level before. I think this happened because I was so ‘in the moment’ and I have spent so much time working on my characterisation and lines that all the hard work for this finally paid off. The children all took to my character very well. This was noticeable before I entered stage and Nancy notified the children that I was coming because there was a gasp of excitement from the children. I think this helped me because it gave me a massive boost of confidence before I stepped out onto stage. Something else which I thought I did well was I managed to learn new scripted text in the week before the show. During the show I did mess these lines up slightly but I then improvised this because although I couldn’t remember the line exactly, I could remember where the line was trying to get to so I therefore improvised.

An improvement for myself would be to not stumble on my lines. There are a few places throughout the show where I stumble on my lines. Ones of these was in the place of the last minute changed pieces of text. If I had had more time, I would have gone over this a bit more to make sure that I was secure on it but because I had such little time to learn these new lines, this wasn’t really possible.

During the performance, Molly kept a great presence. During the rehearsals, she would become disengaged with the performance by losing her posture and not reacting to the action. However, she kept great posture throughout the whole performance and was engaged at all times even when she didn’t have a line.

I think something she could have done better was to leave gaps for the audience to respond. At the end of ‘Sweetie Day’, Molly came straight in with her line. However, if she hadn’t have done this, we may have got a clap from the audience.

I believe that Kellyann has improved a lot since the very beginning of this performance. When we were in the devising stage, she was very inhibited and didn’t really give any ideas for the script. However, as time has progressed, she has become less inhibited. She didn’t use to be able to sing in front of the cast but then during the final performance, she was able to sing in front of a whole audience.

I still think that there is still room for improvement with Kellyann’s projection. In some places she was quite quiet and her lines could have been a bit louder.

Robert took to his character very well from the very beginning of this process. He has maintained the characterisation throughout the rehearsals and continued that in the show. This is evident as his character was loved by both audiences. Even when Robert didn’t have any lines, he was still reacting to the other characters and what they were saying.

Something that I think Robert could have improved on was his lines. There were places during the performance where he missed out a few words and in one place he skipped quite a few lines. As a cast, we were prepared for this because it did happen quite a lot during rehearsals.

Lorren came late into the rehearsal process as she wasn’t expecting to be the show. After Danielle realising that she wasn’t able to do the performance, Lorren stepped in for the role of Tanzie. She was able to learn her lines very quickly and I was really pleased of how she took on the part. She was a bit weary to start with but once she got into it, she was great.

During the second ‘Tanzie’s Tropical Fruit Song’, Lorren goes slightly out of time with Cara on the piano. An improvement would therefore be for her to listen to the music a bit more to ensure that she keeps in time throughout the whole time.

There’s so much I could write about this performance because I was so happy with how it went and I definitely feel like all the work that has gone into this performance has paid off. The commitment from each of the cast members has been great. Everyone has contributed their own thoughts into the performance and we have worked together to create an amazing performance which was very much enjoyed by both the college and the children.

Back in September, I was really reluctant to start this unit because of the amount of work that I knew that was coming my way. I knew that I would have to write, direct, rehearse and perform this show and the thought of this was very daunting back in September. Throughout the course of this, I have had a lot of work to do from devising the script and making sure that it was going to be suitable for 5-year-old children, to transcribing the script and making sure that everyone had a copy in the working medium which they could access. Being a part of this show and working on this unit has made me realise that Theatre in Education is mixing something that I love and something that I am passionate about together. I am therefore now considering possibly going into the Theatre in Education industry as I have thoroughly enjoyed this unit of work.

In conclusion, I am really happy with how the final performance went. Although there have many things that have gone slightly wrong throughout the rehearsal process and even on the day of the performance, we managed to pull through and find a way around it. I am looking forward to receiving the feedback from the children to see what they thought of the show. I am very pleased that I have had the opportunity to perform a performance which I wrote, devised and rehearsed. It will be a performance which I remember for a really long time. 

Reflecting on the entire creative process

Once I had carried out some research at the start of this unit and had a better understanding of what theatre in education is, I was able to start putting together some ideas for our own theatre in education performance. I thought that the best way to go around this was to improvise with some characters and scenarios for a list of potential topics for the performance. I think that this was the best way to form the basis of the script because it gave us more chance to develop our characters before we started writing scripted material. To develop our characters even further, we carry out a hot seating activity so we could think more in depth about our characters. Once we had started to develop our characters further, we started to write and develop the script using the improvisation material. I think that if we had gone straight into writing the script without the improvisation, I feel like we wouldn’t have developed our characters as much which would not have had a big impact on the final performance as the children may not have engaged with the story and the characters. 

At the beginning of this unit, I felt like I wasn’t able to produce a show which was going to be performed to a live audience of children. This is because I didn’t see myself as a creative person and I wasn’t able to create material because I had never done anything to this extent before. However, throughout the process of writing and devising this performance, I came to the realisation that I was able to create a play. This then became evident when we performed the show to the children and they absolutely loved it. I felt proud of how far I have come since starting this unit and what I have achieved. 

There are a few things that I believe have helped me to overcome the thought of not being able to devise a play for children. 

I think something that really helped me during the devising process was being methodical. Making sure that everything was done in order and not just sporadic made the process much more organised and it made the process a lot easier. 

Another factor which made the process a bit easier was being able to build scenes using a variety of stimuli. Throughout the developing process, we used a range of different stimuli including props, stage furniture and costumes to create some of the scenes. This made the performance more dynamic and interesting for the children. 

Lastly, making ‘to do’ lists throughout the creative and rehearsal process made the process less stressful. This is because I was able to tick off the tasks that I had already completed and it therefore made the process seem less daunting. 

Here are some photos the final performance: