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.”

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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.