Grandpa's Railway
"Grandpa's Railway" was a productin by the M6 Theatre Company and the advised age for this performance was 5+.
The piece incorporated the use of music on both a backing track and live music performed on a clarinet and ukelele. The live music was used as a way of helping to show the change in time as Grandpa and Grandma counted down the days before their moving day.
The backdrop was made up of colourful sheets resembling a washing line and entrances were made by appearing through a small gap in the sheets.
The moments that grabbed the children’s attention most was the
revealing of the train set and exclamations could be heard in the audience and
there was lots of pointing and comments being made to one another. I found that
movement and set changes were what had the children’s most focus and my
theatre company commented on this idea of using movement as a way of
storytelling.
About forty-five minutes into the performance some children
started to yawn and look around suggesting that they began to lose interest and
this may have been because the action on scene was heavily focused on the
dialogue, contrasting to earlier movement orientated scenes. This was something
that heavily influenced our devising process as we did not want to bore the
children with too much dialogue.
Below are the notes that I made during the performance of
“Grandpa’s Railway”.
The Pardoner’s Tale
“The Pardoner’s Tale” was aimed at slightly older children
and from the moment the stage lit up it was clear that the lightness of
“Grandpa’s Railway” would contrast heavily with “The Pardoner’s Tale”.
The set was much simpler than “Grandpa’s Railway” with a
black backdrop and two worktops which held the equipment and instruments used
within the piece. The music was performed live with instruments incorporated
effectively allowing them to be mobile meaning the musicians were not forced to
remain stationary throughout the performance. Other sounds were created using
everyday objects, such as fruit and knives. The sounds were cleverly created
allowing atmospheres and events to be made audible when it would have been
difficult to act it out.
The children were very reactive in this piece from the jokes
made about modern technology to the accents, impersonations and toilet humour
used. These humorous moments broke up the more solemn and darker moments and
kept the audience enthralled at all times.
I found that “The Pardoner’s Tale” was a much more effective
piece of theatre as it combined both light hearted and dark moments and the use
of sudden changes and quickly paced work. The audience in this performance were
much more engaged as there were “Suddenlys” used to grab their attention and
keep them curious and interested.
(Suddenlys: A sudden change whether it be a new character
introduced or a change in pace)
Pardoner’s Tale notes:
From watching these two Theatre for Children pieces the most
important piece of information I took away was the use of pace and how it is
crucial to keeping the children focused. I also found that it is not necessary
to choose a “light and airy” subject just because the audience is made up of
children as “The Pardoner’s Tale” was a dark tale but yet the children
thoroughly enjoyed the more “gory” story.
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