Childrens theatre final performance year 1's 25/11/16

Performance and feedback


Today was our last performance with a class of year 1's. They arrived at 9:40 ready for the 10 o'clock performance. The same as the other shows, Lois and Naomi entertained the children and explained the performance to them. The way they spoke to the children, and stayed in character got the children excited and got them in the right mood, ready to see a performance and get involved.
After this performance, we sat and got feedback from the children. They said they really enjoyed the whole thing, and there was a range of favourite characters and stories however, the majority preferred the story stealer story. In this group, they picked a variety of characters when we asked them who their favourite was. This was the first time Gaz was chosen as a favourite character but the story stealer was picked the most. I think the children throughout each performance liked the story stealer because they helped change her to good.
This final performance was better than the first performance as throughout the week we made small changes, editing things to make them look better and make more sense. For example, in the first performance, Maddy and Nathan read the story from a script. However, when we took away the script they seemed to engage the children more as they weren't always looking down at what to say. These two entertained the children because they had a good back and forth; were reacting off each other well and created different characters in accents.
As it was the last performance, we had to strike the stage. This involved taking all the wrapping paper off all the boxes (in order to save the cardboard), taking down the lights and everything hanging from the ceiling. We then had to hang up all the costumes, and I sorted other peoples costumes when they didn't put them away properly. I also hovered the stage afterwards.
In my opinion, I believe this was one of the best performances we done because we had practiced and rehearsed and knew what we were doing. Everyone worked really well during this performance as we had experience with the children by this point so the characters who weren't in the story knew how to handle and control the children but also get them more involved if they were cautious to get stuck in. They did this by talking to them more and giving them suggestions to say when they're asked their ideas. I didn't help with the children, I stayed behind the curtain and helped people with their cues. It wasn't extremely difficult to the curtain however, I pulled the curtain to early in one piece and a couple children got caught behind the curtain.