Today we did our first two performances to the year 1's. The first group arrived at 9:45am ready for the performance and the second group arrived at 11:20. Lois and Naomi took them into the dance studio to talk and explain what was going to happen. While they did this we finished setting the stage and sorting the bags for the children to use during the performance. Everyone then got into position and we closed the curtains. The children were then led in and sat along the blocks. Lois and Naomi started to introduce the play and tell them about 'Storybox land'. Harry then burst through the curtain to take the children to the first story. The first story is in Storybox land and involves the children finding three magic keys to turn the evil story stealer (Fran) back to her original good self. The children are led back to the blocks to sit down where the magical box opens, turing the story stealer back to the good story teller and opening a magic portal to two other stories. Throughout the piece, the curtains work as a 'portal' to each land/story.
The next story is the Citrus story. They take the children through the 'portal' to their land. The children then collect and gather the oranges used to refuel the creatures. They play games, sing songs and do dances to help wake them up. After they've been re-fueled and they wake up, they're taken back to the blocks to do a healthy eating/food groups game. While they played that my group began to preset. We hid our riddle answers, spoon, bowl and cereal ready for when the children came in.
Before we brought the children through, Nathan and Maddy went through to tell the kids the princess and the frog. During this, the kids got their puppets out their bags to use along to the story. When the story finished, Victoria went through to tell the kids about our similar situation and how the evil wizard Gaz (Maddy), had turned prince Daniel into a dragon. She then brought the children through to our world. I sat up stage - as the dragon - while Victoria explained the riddle challenge to the children. They then looked for the riddle answers, the spoon, the bowl and the cereal. They then answered the riddles. Victoria then led the kids around the pathway, stepping only on the spots, to feed the dragon. The children gathered round ready to feed me cereal so i can change back. The princess (Nathan) then comes on and teaches them the dragon feeding song they have to sing while they feed me the cereal. I then drop behind the curtain, take off my head and dragon costume and come out as a prince. I'm reunited with he princess. I then lead the children to the front to watch and dance to the end song from Shrek.
After this we sat down to take and questions and get feed back from the audience. they asked a few questions about the characters, asking for more detail on some characters back story's and their costumes. For example, some children asked why I played the prince and Nathan played the princess. They also told us what they enjoyed and liked about the performance. They said their favourite parts were when they had to look and search for objects around the space. They also said they liked all the characters (especially the dragon, the story stealer and Nathans character Juan) and enjoyed all the stories. Their favourite stories were the story stealer one and the dragon story. When the children were ready to leave, I made sure they left the bags with the props in so we can use them again.
However, during the first performance, the kids were harder to handle and were a bit more energetic. Some children were hitting each other with the bags and a group of them cornered the story stealer and attacked her. We prevented this in the second one by making sure they left the bags by their seats and not bringing them on stage. They were also hitting the dragon head in both performance, which meant we couldn't use the smoke machine properly because they were too close. When we perform this again tomorrow we will make a small barrier of boxes around he dragon.
When we finished both performances we had a small feedback session and talked about what we needed to do to make it better and what went well. We went through each story, giving peer feedback, self reviews and feedback from Rachel and Kim.
First we went through the story stealer piece;
- The instructions needed to be more specific and clearer for them to understand what to do properly.
- As the children liked searching for the keys, they could introduce lots of keys, all different colours, for them to find. However, they would still have three main golden keys.
- In both performances, the children couldn't find the key in the mystery box so they need to put less shredding inside it so it's easier for them to find the key.
- The keys need to be hidden properly so it takes longer for them to find because they're spotting them too quickly.
- During the Story Stealer flashback, harry needs to say more but also incorporate Fran so she can say more because she doesn't have many lines through the performance.
- When they get the key off the Story Stealer, it worked better during the second performance because they played grandmothers foot steps instead of all the children attacking her for the key like the first group did.
- In the both groups, the kids were really involved however, the first group were more aggressive.
Then we went through the citrus story;
- When the kids sit down for story time, Raven doesn't really tell a story. They go straight into Inky and Minky competing against each other.
- The characters are all introduced however, they don't introduce the world they live in. Both these point can be linked together as Raven could start by telling a story about their land - giving some background information about the world - and then talk about Inky and Minky arguing about who's better.
- When the kids get into the teams to pull faces at each other, they should do more e.g. best dance moves, best pose.
Finally, we went through my groups piece;
- The story at the begging is really good the kids enjoyed it and found it funny and entertaining.
- During the story, Andrew should come in front of the curtain with Nathan and play the guitar instead of hiding behind. This allows him to have more interaction with Nathan and have more to say.
- Me and Andrew need to say more in the piece. So when I turn into a prince, we need to create some dialogue to happen and give some background to my character and his.
- Instead of the children jumping from spot to spot over 'lava', they are going to get into one line and follow Victoria, stepping one every spot to 'charge the magic.'
- The kids being to close to the dragon means we cant use the smoke machine so we will create a barrier out of boxes so they can't hit me or affect the use of he smoke machine.
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