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.