Tuesday 18th

Our performance on Tuesday was at Clifton All Saints Academy in Shefford and like our performance on Monday the hall we performed in meant we had a restricted performance pace and had to be cautious of how close we got to our audience. 


Once again we had to ensure that our backdrop was placed well to prevent the children from seeing behind our set because this audience stretched out across the space more compared to the children in St. Thomas More and so we had to remain well hidden behind the set throughout the performance.


Yet again our audience we very receptive to Mr Pig and were laughing at the movements of Goldy, which I ensured were always larger-than-life and over exaggerated. The use of the bears were once again proven to be successful as the children laughed every time they made an appearance. Tuesday's audience was made up of younger children compared to the range of different ages on Monday and this was visible through the excitement of the bears' appearance. When Mr Pig reveals his plans to the Bears the Bears roar in reply to him and the children laughed each time they made a sound and so it meant that the scene went on for longer than normal as Matt had to wait for the children to get quiet before he could continue with his dialogue.


Having seen "The Pardoner's Tale" in January we saw first hand how effective music is in a performance and just how much it adds to the overall performance for the children. The children reacted especially well to the music and were in hysterics in both the "Chariots of fire" slow motion chase and the "Star Wars" fight. The "Chariot of fire" music works well because the humour of slowing down a chase, which are generally fast-paced amused the children because of the large movements and facial expressions used. What surprised us slightly about the "Star Wars" music was that the children easily recognised the music as we learnt during our Q&A when a boy asked why we had chosen that piece of music. The dramatics of the music contrasted well to the comedic fight between the Wolf and Pig.


Once again we had a rather successful performance and some teachers had commented how it was one of the better shows they've seen over the years, which was really nice to hear. However, there were still improvements to be made. We needed to slow down when speaking as our dialogue was getting lost and this could be improved by better diction. I spent much rehearsal time working on my diction because Goldy is quite a high energy character who speaks fast and so I had to find the balance between fast-paced and good diction so that my dialogue was not getting lost.


In our piece we also had a slight issue with the energy as there were moments when the energy would dip down and go flat. So we went and reworked scenes that would fall flat. We looked over the "McDonald" scene again and looked at keeping the pace up when the dialogue would move down the line of people in a canon, for example "Lunch". It was important that the lines were delivered quickly so as not to drag out the scene and lose the children's focus.


We then discussed other possible scenes that needed reworking: the "Wendy House" scene, I was told I needed to establish the character of Gretel more because the reference was so small that it was getting lost within the piece, and the "Pig's Museum" which we then spent time on Wednesday morning before we went on tour in the afternoon.