Blackboard

To help us with the devising process we were given a section of wall in the Black Box to use to present our ideas and this meant we were able to refer back to he wall if we needed any ideas.

We found using a notebook more effective in getting ideas down but the wall allowed us to lay things out and was a useful way of keeping track of what needed to be done and how we wanted ideas to link together.

The Big Bad Who? - Evaluation

Evaluation of my character and role development:

One element we wished to incorporate into our piece was multirolling and so everyone had one main character and then we also undertook some multirolling. My main character was Goldy and I found developing this role easy and fun. Having started by looking at Fiona from “Shrek” I then went and begun to choreograph the ways in which I imagined Goldy would move. Once I had developed the quick paced movement that portrayed Goldy’s personality I worked to ensure that in every scene the movement I used was larger-than-life and that I was never static. The best way I would describe Goldy was hyperactive and manic and so the movement had to match that. This was the same for voice work. I knew from the offset that Goldy would be quickly spoken and so I rehearsed my scenes often to ensure that my diction was clear. I found Goldy’s first scene with Scarlett the most fun to create and perform as the fast pace of the scene meant that Shiquerra and I were able to bounce off one another and so we always performed with high energy. 

My other role was Gretel who visited Mr Pig after his run in with the wolf and he needs someone to talk to. Initially this role was played by Sam but after she had taken on the role of one of the Pig sisters I took on the role of Gretel. This was one of the scenes when we made a subtle reference to a fairytale character, much like how Scarlett’s mother was Sleeping Beauty and this was shown through her tiredness. Gretel first started as a therapist but it was felt that we needed to place less emphasis on the therapist role and instead she was a friend. During our last rehearsals more dialogue was created between Mr Pig and Gretel to further clarify that she was Gretel of the famous “Hansel and Gretel” and she conversationally mentions how she used to live in a gingerbread house when Mr Pig talks about the Wendy House. Just this simple reference was a clear clue for the children to guess who she was. As Gretel was a friend to Mr Pig she had to sound friendly and approachable but I had to be careful not to slip into Goldy and so I made Gretel more reserved and less energetic to ensure that she could not be mistaken with Goldy.

Evaluation of the process and working as a company:

As a company we worked really well together and were one of the only groups that avoided any major disagreements. At the beginning I felt as if some people were putting more into the devising process than others but after we had a few group discussions we were able to competently clear up any fears or worries. The majority of our group took on a directing role at some point, whereas others were more comfortable when being directed. This was not a major issue though as everyone was willing to put in the time and effort for our piece. I felt particularly comfortable taking a directing role as I previously devised pieces in both GCSE and A Level Drama. I felt as we got further into the development and rehearsal process we became more comfortable with one another and so were able to be more critical with one another so that we could all excel our performance skills, this was important in the scenes such as Farmer McDonald because the pace of that scene needed to be picked up and so it meant a lot of running through lines to achieve the fast pace needed for the scene.

One of the difficulties we faced as a group was maintaining the energy in our characters and our piece, I think this was more difficult for some as their roles weren’t as physically demanding as others (for example Goldy). However we worked to rectify this by going over scenes repeatedly to try and lift the energy of certain scenes. As a group we were really cooperative in terms of helping one another if one person was uncertain in something, we always ensured that we worked as a company rather than letting any individuals struggle on their own.

I feel our weakest point as a group was our work ethic in rehearsals. We spent a lot of time doing extra rehearsals from early February and so we were creating and developing at a steady rate. However there were often moments where as a group we would get distracted and then it would take a while to get back to work. This wasn’t such an issue in the earlier weeks but when we only had two weeks before the tour I would become stressed at how easily people would get distracted. I found myself often having to direct large portions of rehearsals to ensure that we weren’t losing valuable time. Our work ethic didn’t prevent us from rehearsing all the time though but at moments when we were meant to be tightening up scenes it would generally result in a quick run-through or two and this lack of preparation at times was where I weakness lay. We also had to deal with the possibility of not making it out on tour and I think this worry made us work harder as a group and this determination was what ultimately helped us improve the energy and pace of our piece.

For the most part we were quite organised and our piece was mapped out very early on so we always had an indication of the direction we were heading in. Our lack of organisation was in our set. Having seen “Grandpa’s Railway” we wished to replicate their set of using a washing line, but we left it very late in the rehearsal process and then had to run around and solve our issue with set. Eventually we found a board that we were able to use as a backdrop and it was found to be effective but the lack of preparation meant that we were still adjusting to our set in our final rehearsals and this could have led to possible disastrous results when on tour.

Despite our weaknesses I found that our group was really successful in creating a strong piece of Children’s Theatre and as a company we really threw ourselves into the devising process to create a funny story that we hoped the children would really like.

Evaluation of the performance and the potential of the work in professional terms:

Our school tour was treated much the same as any professional touring show would be treated. As we were going into schools we had to ensure we didn’t mess around and gave ourselves and the college a good reputation.

As we wished to work in professional terms we had to behave correctly on stage and off stage as we would have behaved when doing our pantomime.

As our set was a fold-out notice board we had limited space when offstage and in some schools the audience was large enough that the front rows were able to see around our set. To effectively deal with this issue we remained quiet and neutral when offstage so as not to attract any attention to us. Due to our small set we also had to remain in character until we were fully hidden behind the set and the same for going into character before you made your entrance so as not to break the illusion of the story.

As with any show we had to professionally and efficiently work through any issues we may have been faced with. One issue occurred during our performance at the Valley School on Friday 21^st when our set nearly fell down and we had to quickly rectify the issue without drawing attention to ourselves. It was a humorous moment as Tenda had fallen into Luke who had then fallen into the set but as we were doing a show we had to remain professional and fix the issue without bursting out in laughter and ultimately ruining our performance. The other group with us at the Valley School noticed that the set moved but said that it didn’t detract from the actors on stage, which was what we had hoped to achieve.

Another small issue we had to deal with was performing in small spaces as in rehearsals we had an awful habit of using more space than would be available to us at the schools. We were able to deal with the spacing issue effectively and so in some schools we would move out more rather than moving forward to avoiding coming into contact with any of the children.

The strong elements in our piece were the “slapstick moments”. Our audiences reacted really well to the “Chariots of Fire” chase and the “Star Wars” fight as well as Goldy’s fighting. We spent a lot of time choreographing the chase so that it worked effectively and didn’t look like an unorganised mess. Luke and Matt also spent vast amounts of time choreographing their fight so that it would be entertaining and funny. The children seemed to react really well to Goldy’s fighting moves and there were often children copying them after our performance. I think because the moves were so ridiculously big the children found it really funny and the moves would come after dialogue and so would change the pace of a scene, and David Wood has stated how changing the pace of a scene helps keep the children’s attention. The bears weren’t initially meant to have such a big role in our piece but that changed and we found that they were one of the most talked about characters in our piece, showing that something as simple as hand puppets making stupid sounds can be as funny, if not more so than a joke.  

The weakness in our performances as the energy delivered when on stage. However we found that this was the result of having a quieter audience, but as we were doing a tour of professional quality our energy should not have slumped because one audience was less reactive than another. We found that on our first show on Friday we had become slightly complacent as so we had to bounce back and put in lots of energy for our final show of the tour. Our last show performed at a school and our performance at the college were two of our better shows as we went out with so much energy that we were still buzzing afterwards. I think as we had been working consistently on our piece for a while we slumped in the middle of the week due to exhaustion and we really had to pick up the energy as each audience deserves the same level of performance.

Another issue we had was diction as we developed a habit of speeding through dialogue and so this meant that the audience was unable to hear what we were saying, and dialogue that was funny was getting lost. I had to work particularly hard on my diction as Goldy spoke uncharacteristically fast and so it was important that I had good diction otherwise none of my dialogue could be understood. I felt that our diction as a group improved throughout the week and by Friday evening we had vastly improved from the beginning of the week, and I’d even say we’d made an improvement from Friday morning’s performance.

On the whole I think our piece and the schools tour was a success. As with all shows we were re-working scenes in the morning before shows to ensure that we were giving the schools the best performances we could deliver. The feedback we received was that our piece was on par with professionals that have visited the schools. This was nice to hear as it made all the long rehearsals that much more worth it. Having spoken to parents after our performance on Friday evening a lot of them felt that our piece was really funny and they felt we’d done a good job of providing something for everyone. If I were to do Theatre for Children again I would want to look at more stimulus as you can never have too much knowledge on this style of theatre. I would also want to film more rehearsals as our group were often struggling with the pace of scenes and levels of energy so if we’d had more footage to look at it would have made it easier to re-work scenes. Despite the stress of having to devise something from scratch I thoroughly enjoyed the project and found it very rewarding to get to go out on tour and perform “The Big Bad Who?”. 

The Suitability of Material for Performance - The Big Bad Who?

In Theatre for Children is it critical that the piece that you devise uses suitable material that can be shown to your intended audience. In Theatre for Children this would include the lack of strong language and more sensitive subjects.

I felt that our piece explored many aspects that were suitable for a piece of Children’s Theatre. By using fairytale stories as our stimulus we had already selected an idea that we know would be well received by the children and it has been found that children thoroughly enjoy when a story is twisted in a way that changes the story completely.

We know that children react well to slapstick comedy and our performances showed that some of the children’s favourite moments were the movement parts, (Goldy’s stealth, slow motion chase and the Wolf and Pig’s fight). Another effective element in our piece was the bear hand puppets. They initially were put into the piece as a bit of fun in rehearsals but as we got further into the development process they became an integral part of the story and by the time we went on tour they became an instant favourite with the children. 

 

There were moments however when we had to be careful that we weren’t moving into unsafe waters with some moments. Both Mr Pig and the Wolf had slightly “scary” moments and we had to ensure that they didn’t go too far and so we made sure that the characters remained “reeled in” at moments so that our piece didn’t become something other than Children’s Theatre.

Overall I felt our piece was very well suited to our intended audience as it was enjoyable for all ages and we didn’t go about over-complicating the story or characters. Both children and teachers alike told us how much they enjoyed it and we were lucky in the fact we devised a piece that had something for everyone to enjoy.

Energy and Pace!

As with any piece of theatre energy and pace are vital in making a good performance. When we did our pantomime we were constantly being reminded that the energy and the pace needed to be picked up to prevent the performances from dragging and this was the same with our Children’s Theatre piece.

I found that as a group we struggled more so to keep the energy and pace up throughout our piece compared to when we were doing pantomime because we weren’t following a script and instead were always devising new scenes, and I think this meant that we were less aware of when a scene was lacking in pace or the energy of a scene had dropped.

As our piece was designed to be fast-paced and comical it was crucial that our performances were high energy throughout. I personally found it rather easy to perform with high energy because Goldy was such a physically demanding character and the character would not have worked if I had played her any less than “all-out”.  

Some scenes were much easier to perform with high energy than others because of the characters in the scene. Mr Pig, Goldy and Scarlett were often responsible for setting the pace of scenes and so that would help pick up the pace if it ever faltered. However there were other characters, such as Grandma/Grandpa that were continuously being re-worked because we hadn’t quite found the most effective way to portray them.

In our final rehearsals we spent a great deal of time working on the scenes that would drag in pace. The McDonald scene was an example where we spent several hours prior to shows working on in continuously. As I was not in the scene I would take a directing role when this scene was rehearsed. The scene heavily relied on dialogue and as we observed when we saw “Grandpa’s Railway” large portions of dialogue can result in the children becoming bored and distracted. To overcome this we spent time going over the delivery of the lines and picking up the pace. There are several lines in this scene which are repeated and so it was vital that these lines were delivered quickly so that the pace didn’t drag. We didn’t want the dialogue to be lost but it wasn’t important that the lines were delivered a beat after one another rather than pausing between each line.

Another way we looked at improving the pace of scenes was shortening scenes that were unnecessarily long. An example of this was Scarlett’s opening scene when her mother sends her to visit her Grandpa. Initially we the scene beginning with Scarlett yelling at her mum about her headphones and her mum making comments about being a stupid girl and dressing Scarlett. We were told that this was unnecessary dialogue that was doing nothing but dragging out the scene. We then looked at how else to approach the scene and to fasten up the pace. When we first devised the scene there would be dead air in the moments that Scarlett’s mum was handing her coat, bandana and basket and so we altered it so that when mum would mention one of these items it would be pushed out from behind the set for her to take instantly. This picked up the pace of the scene and helped Shiquerra portray an impatient teenager who wants to go out as quickly as possible and doesn’t want to me mollycoddled by her mother. (See 0:00-0:25 on video) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QzzFojfUWac&feature=youtu.be

 

 

This styling was then used in the Mr Pig Museum scene. Where we initially had Ola and Sam coming on to take on the appearance of shelves it was suggested that once again the props would appear from behind the set and Mr Pig then had the ability to move about the space more freely. This helped to combat the slow pace of the scene.

Before each show I always noted to the rest of the group that we needed to be as big as possible with our action and dialogue and this would vastly improve our energy levels and pace. I found that it was much easier to give lots of energy when we had a particularly interactive audience, however as a group I think that was one of our faults: if we had a quieter, more reserved audience we allowed their silence to affect our energy and this meant that the audience were getting less of a performance than other audiences.

Although we had moments of difficulty with our energy and pace I think we did achieve to perform with high energy and I found that the more shows we performed the easier it was to go out and put absolutely everything into the performance.

From Grandma...to...Grandpa

As we were retelling the story of “Little Red Riding Hood” a character we could not forget was Grandma. As with most grandmas when portrayed on stage or in film we looked at the possibility of having our grandma as being a doddering, little old lady who is as blind as a bat.
 

The creation process began by looking at how we first wanted to introduce her and we settled on the idea of having Grandma come across the Wolf after Scarlett runs away from. Sam took on the role of the Grandma and as a group we threw about possible ideas of how Grandma would act. In the first improvisation that we devised Grandma would:

·         Shuffle her feet

·         Hunched shoulders, crouched posture

·         Blind as a bat (squinting)

·         High, croaky voice

Initially we decided against Grandma interacting with the Wolf and instead we wanted her to move about the space as if she didn’t know he was there and then mistake him for tree, which would show how “blind” Grandma is, playing on the stereotype of elderly people having poor eyesight.

When we showed this scene we found that people didn’t think the scene worked and that it didn’t make sense. So we went back to the drawing board and looked at new ideas for Grandma.

We began by making Grandma much bigger in her character and included interaction between her and the wolf. The intention of this scene was to show the kindness of the Wolf and that when given the chance he is good. We decided to use Grandma in this scene because as she is elderly she would not clearly see or recognise the Wolf and so wouldn’t judge him immediately as the “Big Bad Wolf” and wouldn’t run away screaming like Scarlett. We tried the scene so that the Wolf offers to help Grandma with her bags but she refuses is help and sends him on his way and then speaks to herself about how it couldn’t have possibly been the “Big Bad Wolf” because he was too nice. However when we showed this scene again it was found again to be not working and that this scene was bringing down the energy of the earlier scenes.

We tried a new approach after one of the other groups split up and we were given the opportunity to take on a new member. After discussion we decided as a group to invite Tenda to join our group as we felt he may be able to bring something new to the role of Grandma which may improve the scene.

We started with writing out a script of the new scene. A note we had received was that there was a lack of dialogue that was highlighting the misunderstanding of the Wolf and so we looked at using this scene to show a language barrier between Grandma and the Wolf. Some lines we included were:

·         Wolf: “I was just going to carry your shopping”

·         Grandma: “I ain’t right for no choppin’”

·         Wolf: “Haven’t you already been?”

·         Grandma: “What do you mean, I’d look good with a plate of greens?”

Once we had created some dialogue we experimented with the movement of Grandma and settled on the idea of having her in a hunched posture and taking small but quick steps to travel. This allowed her to move quickly from one side of the stage to another and would walk circles around the Wolf as he gets irritated at her constantly mishearing her.

We felt much better with this approach to Grandma and so looked at devising the scene where Mr Pig comes to her house and dresses up in her clothing. As we wanted our Grandma to be slightly “frazzled” we devised a moment where Grandma comes across Mr Pig dressed in Grandma clothing and mistakes him for her mirror reflection and then proceeds to do the Macarena and is impressed at her moves. She talks to herself saying how she’s still “got the moves” and Mr Pig, forgetting where he is says “Piggy’s still got it!” When we performed this scene this moment was found to be received really well and people commented that Grandma was much more effective since Tenda had taken on the role.  

 

 

However it was pointed out that our Grandma resembled the character of Mammy Two Shoes in the “Tom and Jerry” show and it was felt that the character of Grandma needed to be more relatable to our audience. It was suggested that Grandma was Jamaican or stereotypically English rather than the African American we had originally settled for.

 

 

Tenda then experimented with Grandma having a Jamaican accent and although the accent was funny we found that Tenda’s diction got worse and we were losing dialogue as a result of the accent. We took  some time to speak to our peers to get their opinions and found that they thought the original African American worked better and that it was just the energy of Grandma that needed changing.

 

On the Thursday before we went out on tour we were told that Grandma needed to be seriously looked at because her scenes were not working. We began by cutting her scene with the Wolf as it wasn’t adding anything to the story and was more of a filler that was draining energy from the piece. We then spent time racking our brains at how we were going to make Grandma work because she was a vital character to the story and that is when Tenda suggested what if instead of Grandma it was Grandpa!

Tenda and Matt then went away and reworked the scene when Mr Pig dresses up as a Grandma. The plot of the scene changed so that Mr Pig dresses up as “Peppa Pig” and is from a dating agency and has come to take Grandpa on a date and instead locks him away. After performing we found that Grandpa was much more effective than Grandma and it highlighted to me that despite spending four weeks trying to make Grandma work sometimes it can take only a couple of hours to rework something to make it work effectively.

Our notes for Grandpa were just that he needed to be bigger on stage and Tenda had to embody a typical, grumpy Grandpa that is always in a “bad” mood. I suggested to Tenda to research the animated film “Father Christmas” which portrays Father Christmas as the kind of “typically moody” elderly man we wanted to achieve with Grandpa. 

 

Friday 21st

On Thursday Krooked Theatre had the day off allowing us a day to rest up for our final tour day on the Friday where we had three shows, two schools and then a performance in the evening where we were able to how our parents what we’d been up to for the last weeks.

Mary Exton primary school in Hitchin was our first show of the day. As it was our last day of shows and the first of three we spent half an hour before the show doing a warm up, something we had not had time for on previous days. We did vocal exercises such as tongue twisters and singing “Swing Low” and “Robin Hood” and we did the chewing exercise to warm up our facial muscles. When we were warmed up and raring to go we played “Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf” and waited for the children to arrive. This audience was particularly small compared to previous performances as we only had one class of no more than twenty children from year one. I think because of the small number of children and their age this explained why they were much quieter than previous audiences. However the further into the piece we went the more comfortable the children became and gradually their laughter became louder. As the children were between five and six they enjoyed elements such as the bear hand puppets and the Peppa Pig joke compared to some of the “older” jokes. As a group we felt that our energy and performance was not as good as previous shows and this may have been a result to having a quieter audience. This meant that the energy and pace started to slump at moments and the piece then began to drag. This was a note we needed to take on board before our next show. We were given the opportunity to do a Q&A with the children and got them to name any fairytale characters they recognised and they were able to name a good four or five which meant that we had effectively slipped them into our piece. One question we were asked was whether the Wolf was actually bad and this was partly my fault as I missed out a line in the piece when Goldy says that she knows the Wolf isn’t bad and by forgetting this line it showed me the vital importance of the dialogue and I had to ensure that I didn’t forget it in our later performances.

Our next show was at the Valley School in Stevenage which is a secondary school made up of 11 to 16 year olds with special needs, making this our oldest audience of the tour. However I think they were probably our most interactive audience. Having a brother with autism meant that I was already aware of how this audience would react to our piece and knew that they would thoroughly enjoy it. Unlike our other performances we performed on a stage, meaning we were able to perform “out” to our audience more. Our audience also filled up the hall and so we had to ensure that we spoke with clear diction and projected. I think this show was one of our most successful and contrasted largely to our show at Mary Exton. We did have a near technical problem during the Grandpa scene when Mr Pig pushes Grandpa off stage Tenda moved with such more that he managed to knock into Luke, who then knocked into our set. Luckily our set didn't fall down but it was a moment when everyone backstage had to be careful not to make any noise to distract from Matt on stage. From the start this audience were must more interactive and because they weren’t shy to laugh and call out it gave us an energy boost and so the pace of our piece didn’t slow. In this show Shiquerra decided against calling people up to help her as we weren’t sure if she’d be able to get them to focus again so instead she asked them to all help her from their seats and they were all interacting with her. The audience particularly liked the “Chariots of Fire” chase and the “Star Wars” fight and Mr. Pig was unsurprisingly a massive hit.

Having technically finished our Children’s Theatre tour after performing at five different schools we had one final performance at the college where we performed to family and friends. As a group we felt that this final performance was our best performatively as we hit all our marks and we gave it as much energy as we could physically muster. This audience was much different to the others as the age of this audience were much older than our intended audience but that didn’t stop them from enjoying the piece. Having spoken to my family as well as other people’s parents the feedback I received from our piece was how much they loved Mr Pig and the bears and they found the piece very funny. I was pleased to know that I made a lasting impression with Goldy and have spent the last two days having my family re-enacting “stealth” in the living room. My family commented on how clever the story was and found that it was easier to follow compared to others and loved the pace and energy of the piece.

Having spent ten weeks doing Theatre for Children and six weeks of that creating our pieces I was sad for it to be over but felt a great sense of achievement in my group at having successfully and effectively being able to devise a 20 minute piece of Children’s Theatre which was positively received by all our audiences.

The Opening

The opening of a piece is responsible for setting the tone of the story as well as setting up the story, and openings in fairytales are no exception so we wanted to create an opening that would immediately grab the attention of our audience.

We started with Sam creeping up on Ola as she cuts wood and then scaring her and then Sam tells the story of the “Big Bad Wolf” and the three little pigs before the Wolf appears from the audience saying “Well, that’s not entirely true!” This results in Ola fainting and Sam has to struggle to get her away from the Wolf while he offers to help by taking her off Sam’s hands but she misinterprets it as the Wolf wanting to eat her. We wanted the opening to show how easily the Wolf gets misunderstood.

Once we had then showed it we were told that it needed something bigger to open it and with it being a fairytale it needed something that would immediately capture our audience’s attention.

At first we weren’t sure how we wanted to approach the opening but then we began to look at nursery rhymes such as “Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf” and “The Teddy Bear’s Picnic” and this sparked off the idea of writing an opening based on the lyrics of “The Teddy Bear’s Picnic”:

“If you go down in the woods today you're sure of a big surprise

If you go down in the woods today you'd better go in disguise

For every bear that ever there was will gather there for certain

Because today's the day the Teddy Bears have their picnic.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Our take on the song was designed to tell the story of the “Big Bad Wolf”:

“If you do down to the woods today,

Be warned that you cannot hide,

For the wolf will smell you, find you and kill you,

And this is surely no lie.

For his teeth are sharp, eyes piercing red,

One scream is all and you will be dead.

He’ll huff and puff,

And today, you will be his picnic!”

A diagram of the opening scene

Once our opening had been written we looked at how we wished to set it. We began with having Sam, Ola and I stood in a line and walking towards the audience at the beginning of each line and once the rhyme had ended the Wolf would appear and Ola would run off leaving Sam to catch me and struggle to drag me off. However we found that the walking forwards was proving to be flat rather than creating an eerie atmosphere as hoped. We were told that the opening needed to be larger and that it couldn’t be static and was suggested we choreographed some movement to help and fill the dead space.

We decided to use Ola as the narrator as she a “gothic fairytale” look about her and her Eastern European accent is a nod to the traditional fairytales, so we felt she would be suitable in the role of narrator. Sam and I looked at creating movement to go alongside the words that were being spoken so that we would physically narrate what Ola was saying. We looked at using large, fluid movements that would help paint a picture for the children. Again we showed our opening and again it was found that it wasn’t working because Ola was shrinking next to the movements and it was still lacking the power needed to make it a great opening.

When another group broke up we took on Tenda as it proved beneficial to our piece, this was especially useful for our opening as we thought perhaps having another person on stage would make the choreography easier. This time we looked at incorporating Ola into the movement so that she moves between us while telling the story almost as if she is weaving between trees while in the woods and we tried to make her appearance on stage stand out more. We altered the choreography so that when the line “He’ll huff and puff” was delivered Tenda, Sam and I would make “huff and puff” motions with our arms and then join our arms together to create the appearance of the roof of a house. This movement was created as a reference to the three pigs. We also altered the Wolf’s entrance as it was noted that we’ve stated we want the Wolf to be misunderstood and mistaken but we’ve not made it clear enough, this led to Luke going away and thinking up possible lines that he could say that could be mistaken to be something “wolf-like”. Now that Tenda was the one fainting Sam and I had the task of dragging him off and the Wolf would say “Would you like me to take him off you, perhaps he just needs a snack” and then this is misinterpreted as he wants to Tenda as a snack to eat. 

 

When we showed our re-worked opening we were told that if it was to work the person delivering the lines needed to have a larger stage presence and needed to be clear and loud otherwise the dialogue would get lost. We spent time in the dance studio reworking the chorography so that we could watch ourselves and then we spent time with Tiffany to get an outside opinion of how it looked and what was working. We spent more time on looking at how to involve Ola into the choreography and looked at ways in which she could interact with each person. On the lines "For the wolf will smell you, find you and kill you” Ola would move along the line making an action to fit the words, for example on “smell you” Ola would hold my shoulders and create the action of smelling me as if she was the Wolf. Another moment that we looked at was when we do the huffing and puffing. We directed Ola to curl up into a ball and move up and down with the actions of our arms and shout as if scared for her life and speaking over the sounds of the huffing and puffing. We made the decision to remove the Wolf’s first entrance and so instead on the line “And today, you will be his picnic!” we would all deliver the line and then a wolf howl would be heard before we ran off leaving Ola on stage for her next scene.

We felt much better about this opening than our previous versions but unfortunately it wasn’t received too well. The feedback that we received was that the opening was contrasting to the rest of the story and so our opening was not setting up the story that we would tell. Looking back at what we created this made perfect sense as we were telling the story of the Big Bad Wolf when really our story is about how he really isn’t bad, meaning that our opening made no sense.

So we started from scratch and settled with something simpler and much more upbeat. We decided that as our piece is upbeat and fast paced we needed something to match that. Having performed to our peers various times we were very much aware of how loved Matt’s Mr Pig character was loved and so decided to start the piece with him speaking directly to the audience explaining the twisted nature of our piece and how our story is one that has not been told before. As it’s a piece for children we decided to make the opening humorous and this meant it was a better fit for the tone of the rest of our piece. We had all the characters making a quick appearance to the audience to give them a sneak peek of what is to come. We found that this opening fit much better and as a group we felt it was more effective and with Mr Pig opening our piece the audience were already giggling before the first scene started. Our peers agreed that this new opening was more effective but felt that it needed some music playing in the background. After some research we chose to use the instrumental of “Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf?”, the song used in the Disney retelling of the story.

 

It is a recognisable piece of music and when we went on tour it helped lift the atmosphere up which in turn set us up for the high energy needed for our piece.

GOLDY!

As we wanted our piece to include a variety of fairytale characters we went through them to see where they could fit into the story. As we already had covered “The Three Little Pigs” and “Little Red Riding Hood” we thought that “Goldilocks and the Three Bears” needed to make an appearance somewhere. I imagined Goldilocks being some kind of “animal catcher” and she would be responsible for telling the story of the three pigs to Scarlett and blaming the Wolf.

I took on the role of Goldy and felt that she would be similar to Princess Fiona (from Shrek) in her personality. Princess Fiona is a complete contrast to the “normal” fairytale princess, she is physically strong and has similar characteristics of a man (for example, burping). Fiona is a strong and skilled fighter and I wanted to channel these skills into Goldy and this led to her being like a secret agent/ninja/ fighting machine that has the energy of a five-year-old.

 

 

 

This point in our development process was when we confirmed that Mr Pig was responsible for the houses being blown down and framing the Wolf for it. We then thought of having the three bears as his henchmen, but they were actually secret agents working undercover for Goldy, who spends the piece trying to learn the truth.

 

I wanted Goldy’s first entrance to be unforgettable and Shiquerra (Scarlett) and I thought it would be funny if Goldy was to jump onto the stage screaming at the top of her lungs with her hands out in a karate style position (see above photos) scaring Scarlett in the process. Goldy’s entrance would result in Scarlett screaming too and there would be a back and forth head movement between each other and the audience before Goldy would stand up straight and greet Scarlett cheerfully.

Goldy's entrance

Showing her flair for the big and dramatic

We then played about with greetings and decided that Goldy’s birth name was actually Gladys but she changed it when she started to patrol the woods as a secret agent of sorts. I explored the way in which Goldy moved about the stage and I wanted her to be quick and agile and constantly moving. I also wanted her to have a sense for the dramatic in the way in which she spoke about things, for example when Goldy says “I go by Goldy now” I would deliver my line staring out into the distance as if she was in some sort of daze. Another example was Goldy’s description of the Wolf which involved a lot of pulling Scarlett side to side as Goldy moved around her giving descriptions (“Did he have piercing red eyes? And razor, sharp teeth”) (2:40-2:50 in video).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QzzFojfUWac&feature=youtu.be

Before we had even started devising the scene we had made the decision that Goldy would speak quite quickly to match her movement and further emphasise her enormous amounts of energy, which were probably the result of a sugar rush. The speed at which Goldy speaks out was no difficulty at all for me as I naturally speak quickly and so it meant that I had no struggles with performing Goldy with full energy. However because Goldy’s speech was fast paced it meant I had to pay careful attention to my diction because words would get lost due to the pace I was speaking out. I questioned whether I needed to speak slower but everyone I enquired said that they loved the way I was performing Goldy and felt  the fast-paced dialogue was essential to her overall personality, but commented on the importance of diction to ensure that I spoke clearly otherwise funny dialogue would get lost between Scarlett and Goldy.

I think the most important thing for me as an actor when getting into the role of Goldy was the movement as it helped me capture the energy of her. Goldy’s movement varies from quick and staccato to slow and sweeping but all movement remained large as if I am extending my body to its limit. I really enjoyed getting to be Goldy as I found that the children really liked her from the minute she jumped onto the stage screaming. In our first sessions when looking at Theatre for Children we looked at the ways in which to interact with the children whether it be bringing children to join us on stage or asking them questions or just speaking directly at them rather than to them. In our piece we found the perfect opportunity to include some audience interaction after Goldy has taught Scarlett ways in which to defend herself (Stealth and Power). Once Goldy has exited using “Stealth” (4:36-4:40 in video) she calls to the children asking for their help as she has got confused with the moves. During the tour Shiquerra called up teachers and students as well as getting them all to do it from their seats. In all three approaches the children were laughing and confident to call out to help Scarlett and were not shy to join Scarlett on stage.

STEALTH!

POWER!

STEALTH EXIT!

Nothing about Goldy was subtle and that is especially true for my entrances and exits, which involved jumps, Goldy’s “stealth” move and hiding behind a newspaper. As Goldy is some sort of secret agent I spent time choreographing movement that helped portray this. This involved a lot of quick head movements as if I was checking that no one was following me and footwork that resembled tiptoeing and sneaking around. When Goldy meets the Wolf the movement I used was much more dramatic and emphasised that she was sneaking around. I would keep my arms out to the sides as if trying to keep balance and my legs remained bent as I walked as if I could duck down at a moment’s notice.

In my first scenes as Goldy she is quite manic and explosive on the stage as she speaks quickly and moves with precision and agility but there is then a slight contrast in our final scene when she comes to the Brick House to take Mr Pig away. When she walks in she is now “Officer Goldy” rather than “Secret Agent Goldy” and has developed an air of authority about her. I felt that this slight change in character would help show that despite her “craziness” Goldy is the “authority figure” in our piece. To create this authority I changed my body movement so it was much more straight-laced and placed my hands on my hips to show the clout and influence Goldy has over the other characters.

Goldy was an incredibly fun role to play and one I was able to immerse myself in to the point that I would find myself out of breath once I was offstage. High energy was essential to our piece working effectively and it was often commented that Goldy was one of the high energy points. Looking back over the development and performances of our piece the role of Goldy would have been less successful if performed in any other way other than large and loud and manic!

 

"Little pig, little pig let me in"

"Not by the hairs on my chinny, chin, chin!"

The Pig Siblings

Now that we had developed a back story as to why Mr Pig was the way he was we decided to devise another scene that explored Mr Pig’s relationship with his two older sisters Peggy and Penny. We started by reworking the Wendy House scene so that the Wolf and Peter’s two sisters are responsible for teasing him and it ends with Peter calling out saying that he is going to tell mummy. This line shows the vulnerability of little Peter when upset by his two big sisters and shows the development of his character and how he grows up to be some sort of “evil mastermind”.

We then improvised a scene that focused on the relationship of the three pigs and how Peter is the “runt of the litter”. We went with the idea of a singing lesson as we thought we could try and incorporate some humorous singing moments as well as possibly creating our own music through our voices and bodies. We wanted the scene to show that Peter’s sisters are the favourites of their singing teacher and Peter is always the one getting into trouble. We wanted the scene to end with the teacher saying how the sisters are always perfect and how she’ll be telling their mother of Peter’s terrible behaviour. We then developed a back and forth between the two sisters telling Peter how he has no talent and is letting their mother down.

However we faced several difficulties with this scene. Firstly we couldn’t decide on how we wanted to perform the music and initially settled on singing a cappella to a song that could be recognised by our audience. However when we tried various songs they all felt rather flat and the scene felt as if it was dragging. We then tried adding claps and stomps in but neither of these elements did much to improve the performance of the song. 

Another issue we had was the moment when Peggy and Penny start teasing Peter. We started with having them circling him as they insulted him but it felt too static. We then looked at them pushing and shoving Peter showing their power over him but again this didn’t work effectively. On top of this we struggled to get the lines to flow and so there were awkward pauses between the remarks when it should have been a constant rally of teasing.

We then came to the decision as a group that the scene didn’t feel as if it was going to add anything of importance to the piece, and we felt the quality of it was much lower than our other scenes. This led to usdeciding to push it aside for the moment and possibly return to it if we found a better way to approach it or felt it was an integral part of the story.

 

The Pig Siblings at the Wendy House

 

The Wendy House

By devising an opening for our piece it meant that we now had a starting point to go from in terms of devising more scenes. The exercise of randomly generating ideas for our opening pushed our initial idea in a different direction to what we had originally thought and so at first we found devising a second scene completely from scratch slightly difficult. However after discussion we decided that rather than try to devise a scene that followed immediately after our opening we would create a scene that showed why the Pig is the way he is. By creating this it gave us a look at the bigger picture of our story and all the possible things that could occur.

In our opening we set it up so that the Pig (soon to be known as Mr Peter Pig) would be our antagonist and the Wolf would be our mistaken hero, so we wanted to explore the reasons behind why one of the three little pigs was less innocent as portrayed in the original fairytale. This gave us the perfect opportunity to include the “Big Bad Wolf”.

We set up the scene with Mr Pig speaking to his therapist about the nightmare of the Wolf blowing down the houses and this leads him to remember where it all began, in the Wendy House at school. We then transitioned from the therapy into a flashback of Mr Pig at school, and we experimented with using physical theatre by Sam and I taking shape of the Wendy House and creating the sounds of the door creaking opening. While choreographing this movement we consulted a second year to get their opinion as we didn’t want the miming of the door opening to look silly. The main point we had to focus on was that the door must be opened and closed at the same height and you have to approach the miming action as if you are opening a real door. This meant that Matt had to ensure that when he was closing the door he was reaching for where the “handle” would have been. This delivery of the movement was important to learn because when the Wolf goes to open the door to tease Mr Pig we had to ensure that Luke was reaching for the door at the same position that Matt had.

As our idea had now shaped to be that Mr Pig was responsible for the Wolf being perceived to be big and bad we wanted this scene to show what had happened in his past to result in his hatred of the Wolf. By setting this scene in school we hoped that our audience would be able to relate to the playground teasing that occurs and that it would be an understandable way to show why the Pig disliked the Wolf as we didn’t want to overcomplicate things. We decided to have the Wolf and two friends tease Mr Pig and this allowed us to use the quotation “Little pig. Little pig. Let me in!” as well as referencing the Pig’s “hairy, chinny chin chin”. Both of which would be recognisable to our child audience and so they would be able to establish who the characters are. One of the first things about Theatre for Children that we learnt was that children are not stupid and that you don’t need to spoon feed them, they are observant enough to get the references we give them.

The intention of this scene was to show why Mr Pig disliked the Wolf and how this has affected him into adulthood and shrouded his opinion.

Having devised a two minute scene we then met up with the rest of the groups and performed to one another:

 



After our performance we received some feedback both from Ella and our peers. People commented on how they liked the Pig character that Matt had developed and liked the transition he made between Mr Pig and child Pig. Ella said that we needed less emphasis on the role of the therapist as the humour that we went about creating with lines such as “And how does that make you feel?” which are often said when poking fun at therapists would go over the heads of the children. We were told that it would work better if the person that Mr Pig was talking to was a friend rather than someone from a professional background. Another piece of feedback we were given was that rather than having the Wolf bring along two friends it should be the Pig’s two siblings and so this would give him more of a motive to frame the Wolf for the misdeeds within the woods.

With this feedback it meant we were able to go away and work on this scene and further develop the storyline but incorporating the two pig siblings bullying their brother.  

The  Wendy House on tour!

The Development Starts - Devising

Now that we have an idea the next step was to develop the idea and begin to devise some work. Our first session when we were given the opportunity to start devising began with looking at some websites that we could use during the devising process as a resource that could help give us ideas. One particular website was http://shortstoryideas.herb.me.uk/characters.htm which had a range of tools to help create character names, as well as story titles, opening lines and plot twists.

The above image shows an example of a character created on shortstoryideas and as well as a name a small profile has been created to give a starting point if we were having a trouble coming up with ideas.

Once we had experimented with the websites we did an exercise where as a class we had to create names, titles, opening lines, themes and locations on pieces of paper and then each group had to pick one of each of the five options. This exercise was like a Do-It-Yourself way of creating story ideas and we had to use at least two of our pieces of paper to create a two minute opening for our piece.

Our group decided to use the name Shirley Wirley and the name of the house given in the title "Bumblefluff Mansion". We began by seeing how we could incorporate our selected story elements into our existing idea.

As we were already looking at retelling the story of “The Three Little Pigs” we thought of the possibility of incorporating another fairytale into our story to create a fractured fairytale. We decided that Shirley Wirley would be “Little Red Riding Hood” who is off to see her Grandma. As Shiquerra happened to be wearing a red bandana that day we were able to use that as a representation of her “Red Hood”. As we wished to put a twist on the traditional fairytales we made Shirley more like a stroppy teenager rather than a sweet girl and so she opens the scene by yelling for her mum like a stereotypical teenager would.

We then looked at having Shirley (Red Riding Hood) meeting another fairytale character  allowing us to cross over stories and so we brought in one of the Three Little Pigs as well as the “Big Bad Wolf”. We quite liked the idea of “everything is not as it seems” and so we experimented with the Pig being slightly strange when he meets Shirley and warns her of the Wolf and his final line is “There are far more scary things in this wood”, which we hoped to use as a way of foreshadowing the twist in our tale. We then introduced the Wolf and wanted him to appear “scary” but mistaken at the same time. When our opening had been performed Ella suggested that there could be something in Scarlett’s basket that has captured the Wolf’s attention and that is what he is after rather than Scarlett. This would then be the first of many moments when the Wolf is mistaken for bring big and bad when really he is nice.

As our opening only featured four characters (Scarlett, her mum, a pig, and the wolf) Sam and I took directing roles so that everyone got involved in the devising of this scene. I suggested that the Pig (Matt) would circle Scarlett when he meets her much like a predator would circle their prey to show that the Pig is not quite as innocent as they are in the original fairytale. We also wanted the conversation between Scarlett and the Pig to build up an image of the “Big Bad Wolf” in the audience’s minds so that when we reveal later in the story that this is a misconception it should hopefully come as a surprise. The Pig goes about describing the Wolf as having “piercing red eyes” and “razor, sharp eyes” and this was a reference to Little Red Riding Hood describing the size of her Grandma’s eyes, ears, and teeth when the Wolf has dressed up.

Our opening was received well and people liked the idea of us twisting around a well known fairytale. Having created an opening we decided we wanted to stick with it as we liked the idea of using more than one fairytale and wished to see what other references we could fit into our piece.