Reasearch: Theatre

Theatre 1: The polka Theatre

Polka Theatre is a children’s theatre in Wimbledon, London Borough of Merton, for children aged 0– 13. The theatre contains two performance spaces - a 300 seat main auditorium and a 70 seat studio dedicated to early years performances. Polka Theatre is a producing theatre which also tours shows nationally and internationally. The theatre houses part of the teddy bear collection of the former Teddy Bear Museum in Stratford-on-Avon. The building also features a creative learning studio, a garden, an outdoor playground, indoor play area, exhibition spaces and a cafe. Polka Theatre is a registered charity number 256979 and an Arts Council England National Portfolio Organisation. It is also funded by the London Borough of Merton and a number of private charitable trusts and foundations, individuals and commercial companies.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a4GBp9m2uwk
This is trailer for a piece by Polka theatre called "Three colours" which appears to captivate the skills of puppetry, movement, silhouette and music. the piece shows successful uses of these for skills but mainly in the movement as all there movements are big and animated like ours will need to be for our production if we will want to get a bigger reaction from the children. They also use projection very effectively as they have this part where a girl eats a strawberry projection and it loses a chunk. This is what we hope will be able to achieve with the beanstalk when we create the beanstalk projection for jack to climb. Overall Polka Theatre appear to be successful in children's theater in the term of movements as they are able to perform big and animated movements that would draw the eye of the children as well as being able to use bright colours in a creative way for the children.

 

Theatre 2: Unicorn Theatre

The Unicorn Theatre is the UK's leading theatre for audiences aged 2–12. The theatre has its home in a custom-built building on Tooley Street, in the London Borough of Southwark, which opened in 2005. The theatre was designed by Keith Williams, built by Arup and comprises two theatre spaces (the Weston and Core Theatres), an education studio, rehearsal space, café and the John Lyon meeting room. The theatre was founded in 1947, by Caryl Jenner; in 1961, Jenner began presenting children's productions at the Arts Theatre in the West End, and in 1967 the company took over the lease of the theatre which then became Unicorn's permanent performing base until 1999. The Unicorn is a registered charity and is an Arts Council England National Portfolio organisation.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UCg2qzE8USE
This is a trailer for a unicorn Theatre production of Cinderella for ages 6+, this look like a inspirational performance for our own story telling unit as we can see how all the character s are bursting with colour like the pink ladies and who the characters are over the top like the prince and step mother showing there full of energy. I also noticed that it appears the Step mother is played by a man which is clearly used for comic relief like in our jack and the beanstalk the mother is played by me for a similar reason of humor. I also noticed that there was some big and flamboyant dances which we sort of have but our could use more of the energy and flamboyancy shown in this production. Overall I like the unicorn theatre as it can clear show that it understands how to put on children shows as well as being an inspiration for me into further developing our own production.

Goldilocks part 2

Today we continued working on our silhouette performance of Goldilocks.

We went over our creations from last lessons which were the creation of the woods, the bears, chairs and the beds in silhouette as well as our transition between them which would be done by us rolling. After we had covered the silhouettes we had created we moved on to our new silhouettes we needed to create for the story. We first worked on a  opening where we see baby bear about to eat the porridge but mama bear telling baby bear not to. We created a table made of Tom and Dan M with a prop that is going to be made with a stick and paper cut outs that will look like a silhouettes of bowls. We then skipped ahead as we had already staged the next couple of silhouettes and re-created the bowls but with each bear saying their food had been eaten. We then did chairs with the bear saying their chairs have been sat on. Baby bear then says "My chair is broken", we created this by laying on the floor below the shadow and using our hands to create rubble over the floor. Finally we did the beds but with bears reacting that someone has been in their beds. After we get back to the beds and baby bears wakes up Goldilocks who was still in the bed, we make the parents into a big clump shouting at Goldilocks made of Tom, Dan S, Carl and Dan M. We then show Goldilocks running back through the woods but the woods isn't as nice at the start as the bird attacks her this time and the flower is venous fly-trap. We then went back to the start and created the house made of all of us but Freya. We then decided we end the piece with the three bears but then holding hands in the silhouette so that it seemed more of a happy ending instead of a girl being scared by bears. We went back near the start to add in the silhouette of the 3 bears house which we needed to create still, Tom came up with the idea of 2 people laying down with their legs up as the walls, tom was in the center holding the legs up, 3 of us then filled the gaps between then so the it was a whole shape then finally the last 2 made roof by using their bodies as an archway.

 

I believe today we managed to show great imagination especially with the creation of the 3 bears house as we we're all unique in our creations and ideas for the silhouettes we made. To improve as a group we need to put more energy into our rehearsals now so that we can get a better end result as I feel some of us could be putting more energy into our pieces which would then help us to get a better reaction from the children. we will also need to practice this piece the most as it is a very physical and precise piece so will need to practice to make this as perfect as possible so the silhouettes look better.

Research: TV Shows

TV show 1: Tree Fu Tom

Tree Fu Tom is a live-action/CGI CBeebies children's television program which has been shown on BBC and CBeebies in the UK and Sprout and NBC Kids in the USA. It is set in a miniature magical countryside and village area (Treetopolis) on the top of a part of a trunk of a big tree in a British-type woodland, where the trunk turns horizontal and then vertical again. It is aimed mostly at 2-6 year olds. The series was developed in conjunction with the Dyspraxia Foundation with the aim of promoting movement. Foundation specialists Sally Payne and Dr Lynda Foulder-Hughes worked with the series creators to develop the movements Tree Fu Tom uses to create magic. Five percent of children have developmental coordination disorder, and these movements are similar to those used by occupational therapists to help child development. It is also hoped that the spells will help get exercise into the lives of young children.

Opinion: This is a successful Children's TV show for many reasons like the the interesting stories that helps play on young children's imagination with bright colour and unique characters in the story. This show is also successful as it help children with interaction towards the show as its about being energetic and this TV show helped children channel their creativeness and energy towards a better life style at a young age

TV show 2: Something Special

Something Special is a children's television programme presented by a men called Justin Fletcher and produced and broadcast by the BBC. It is designed to help entertain children with signing and is specifically aimed at children with delayed learning and communication difficulties. The show is on the CBeebies channel and in the past was also broadcast as part of the CBeebies programme strand on BBC One and BBC Two. The name of the programme derives from the idea that all children, irrespective of their position on the learning spectrum, are special. Their format of the show has evolved considerably since the original series. In 2012, a new series, "Something Special - We're All Friends" started, introducing some minor changes to the "Out and About" format. This format change has also included a change in location, and introduced the Tumble Tap, a tablet computer showing the "special things" to look for.

Opinion: Something Special is a successful children’s show because it is able to keep children’s attention as it only runs from between 15-20 minutes which means it doesn’t bore the children with a long run time. The show also uses creative ways of telling their stories with the characters like Mr tumble who are very flamboyant which is entertaining to young children as well as having a distinctive voice that is ear catching and easy to understand for young children. Another reason the show is successful is that it is musical gifted with engaging songs for young children with important messages and catchy tunes.

Goldilocks part 1

Today in lesson we started to work on Goldilocks by using silhouette. We practice first by making the simple images in the story like the beds and the chairs to find simple ways on creating them.

We then started the performance by creating our 3 bears. Me, Tom and Dom created papa bear, we made him by using me as the base of his body and holding my hands above my head to make the ears, Tom was in front of me making the arms of the bear and Dom was behind to make the silhouette of the bear bigger. Toby, Carl and Dan S made mama bear by doing a similar shape to papa bear but closer to the sheet so that the bear appears smaller than papa bear. Meg and Dan M made baby bear by meg sitting crossed legged and holding her hands above her head to make ears and Dan M kneeling behind her to add the arms of baby bear. We then created a forest after the bears, the people who made papa bear made a tree on the right of the silhouette using our bodies as the trunk and hands as the branches but I e of us made a bird using his hands that sat on a branch. Another tree was made on the other side and Meg with Dan M made a silhouette of 2 flowers on the ground as Freya as Goldilocks walks through. We then created the 3 bears chairs, I made mama bears chair by kneeling on 1 knee to make the base and my body for the back of the chair. Meg made baby bears chair the same way but was closer to the sheet so it appears smaller. Papa bears chair is made by Carl and Tom, Carl was the base and Tom was the back. Our next creation was the beds, we made papa bears bed first which was made from Tom, Dom, Meg, Dan M and me, the four of them shaped the bed and I was used as a balance for whoever laid on the bed as I was hidden in the shadow for Freya to put her hand on. Me, Toby and Dan S made mama bears bed which was made with me and Toby as the base and Dan S as the back of the bed. Baby bears bed was made with Meg, Carl, Tom, Dan M and which was done similar to papa bears bed but closer to the sheet so we were smaller. These where the main silhouette for our story of Goldilocks we focused and worked on today in lesson.

 

Todays lesson was a fun lesson and I believe we are starting to show some flair and imagination with our idea of silhouette but we could still be more imaginative with how we create the shadows as well as what we make with the silhouette as we have currently made mostly basic silhouettes for our piece so we all need to go and research ideas to add the flair to our performance. We also need to be practice "Little Red" in our own time so that when we next need to run "Little Red" we can just go for it with loads of energy and not need to spend time re-teaching ourselves the performance.

Little Red part 2

Today in lesson we continued working on Little Red ridding hood and finished staging the story. After Red has become tired of running back and forward across the stage, the wolf goes to grab her. Red then ducks after saying "ow, a daisy" and the wolf misses grabbing her, for a second red stays down as we can see that the wolf is puzzled about how he missed the grab. Red then lifts her arm up knocking the wolf over. Red is now aware of the wolf's presence. Red apologies by saying "sorry kitty" which is another joke towards the wolf. The wolf gets up and says "I'm no kitty, I'm the wolf". The wolf then becomes interested by reds basket of cookies and tries to take them but fails. Reds tells the wolf that the cookies are for he grandmother. The wolf then tricks red and sends her in the opposite direction so he can get there first.

Our next scene in the show is at reds grandmother's house. As we create a bed made of 4 people with Toby as the grandmother sat on the bed. Freya is the door to the house , the wolf rings the door bell and then again and again getting faster until he hits it one last time. Freya is saying "ding dong" each time the bell rings. The grandmother shouts "who is it". The wolf then says "it's red" with a silly voice. The grandmother then opens the door, the wolf hose to attack but the grandmother says "Hello red" because she's a confused old lady. The grandmother invites the old in so the wolf quickly pushes the grandmother under the bed. The scene then changes back to the forest as red skips through as the rest of the cast have formed creepy trees that turn happy as she comes past them. 

We go back into the bed made of the four of us and Freya being the door again as red knocks. The wolf dressed as the grandmother invites her into the house. We took the classic lines of "what big teeth you have" and "all the better to eat  you with", then changed some of it to make it more appealing for children like those lines became "all the better to eat you cookies". After this Red screams in terror as the scene freezes and focus hose to the narrator (Dan M) as he says "boy and girls, red needs our help". He looks around and realize he is the only one that can help so jumps into the story and scares the wolf off. Dan then narrates what happens after that which is how Red and her grandmother lives happily ever after.

 

This was a very good lesson as we have now finished our story of "Little Red" which means we are making good use of our time leading up our performance at a children's school. We are moving on to our second story next lesson which is Goldilocks so we are all trying to come up with creative ways to tell this story that isn't similar to how we're performing "Little Red". we thought of a few ideas like puppets or silhouettes but we will decide what one is better in our next lesson to tell the story of Goldilocks. To improve ourselves more as company I think we all need to do some more research to children's theatre as most of us are struggling to come up with ideas for our story in successful ways for children that isn't repeating what we have done already.

Research: Books

Story book 1: The Very Hungry Caterpillar

The Very Hungry Caterpillar is a children's book illustrated and written by Eric Carle which was first published by the World Publishing Company in 1969, later published by Penguin Putnam.  It’s about a caterpillar that eats its way through a wide variety of foodstuffs before pupating and emerging as a butterfly. The Very Hungry Caterpillar uses colourful picture and simple text with educational themes like counting, learning the days of the week, different types of foods, and how a caterpillar becomes a butterfly.

Synopsise:

A green baby caterpillar hatches from an egg, and then starts craving food. He eats through fruits for five days, one piece of fruit on the first, two on the second, and so on up to the fifth day. Then the caterpillar starts to eat more types of foods. Soon after the caterpillar is finished eating he realise that he has eaten too much and feels ill. The caterpillar soon feels better and then spins a cocoon in which he stays for the following two weeks. Later, the caterpillar emerges as a bright, colourful butterfly with large, gorgeous, multi-coloured wings. These are the types of food that the caterpillar eats: 1 apple, 2 pears, 3 plums, 4 strawberries, 5 oranges, 1 piece of chocolate cake, 1 ice cream cone 1 pickle, 1 slice of Swiss cheese, 1 slice of salami, 1 lollipop, 1 piece of cherry pie, 1 sausage, 1 cupcake, 1 slice of watermelon and 1 green leaf.

Opinion:

This story dose well to entertain young children because in the story book it’s able to attracted their attention with big colourful pictures of food which is affective as its eye catching for due to the contrasts of colours. This can help our performance because we can make bright and colourful costumes for our charters to capture the children’s attention while they watch our piece. The book is also effective because it has educational purposes as each teaches children how to count and other things like different types of food but even with these educational tools in the story children still find the book fun.

Story book 2: Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See?

“Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See?” Is a children's picture book published in 1967. It was written and illustrated by Bill Martin, Jr. and Eric Carle, the book is designed to help toddler’s learn different colours and the meanings of everyday objects. The book itself has little plot. Instead, the narrator of the book asks various animals what they see with them saying what they see is another coloured animal and this is repeated following the chain of animals. The story itself has a Brown Bear, Red Bird, Yellow Duck, Blue Horse, Green Frog, Purple Cat, White Dog, Black Sheep, a Goldfish, a Teacher and Students.

Opinion:

Brown bear, Brown bear, what do you see? Is written by the same person who create the very Hungry caterpillar so they have similar methods of telling the story but Brown bear, Brown bear, what do you see? Has more creative art work for pictures as it has a lot more to show with the different types of animals. This links to my point about using bright and colourful thing to capture the children’s attention towards our show. The book itself has little story and more educational themes but is still very entertain which could show that our show doesn’t need to have a big plot but just needs to be entertain for the children with colours and creative, loveable characters.

Little Red part 1

Today in lesson we started work on Little Red Riding hood for our performing to children workshop. We cast Meg as Little Red, Dan MacKay as Narrator, Dan Smith as The wolf and Toby as Red’s Grandma. We start our piece with Little Red interacting with me, Tom, Carl, Dom, Toby and Freya as we our all pretending to be animals like Birds, squirrels and deer’s, all friendly woodland creature. Red than runs to the front and says “Hello boys and girls, I’m Little Red Riding Hood”, the woodland creatures than go “Noooooo, you’re Little Red”. Red than asks “Has anyone seen my Basket”, the narrator now holds up the basket and the animals point at the basket to encourage the children to tell Red where her basket is. After the children have shouted at red telling her where the basket is, Red and the animals join arms and sing “I’m off to see my Grandma” which is a changed version of “I’m off to see the wizard” from “The wizard of Oz”.

“I’m off to see my Grandma,

My Grandma who lives in the wood
I hear she sick and feels a bit ikk
oh, what am I going to do.
I'll take her some treat right into woods
And make her feel better just like she should
Because, because, because, because, because
Her name is little red riding hood
We're off to see her grandma
Her grandma who live in the woods”

Me, Tom, Carl, Dom, Toby and Freya then all become trees in a forest as the Wolf then appears on stage and another song starts. This song is a change version of “Mr Grinch” from “Grinch” but is changed to “Mr Wolf”.

Trees: “You’re an mean one Mr Wolf
You really are a fiend
You're as cuddly as a hedgehog
And as charming as a mouse
Mr wolf!
You're nothing but a bad kitty with furry black tail”
Wolf: "I'm no kitty"
Trees: "You're monster Mr wolf
Your hearts an empty soul
Your brain is full of spiders
you've got evil in your soul
Mr wolf!
I wouldn't touch you with a 13 and half foot branch"
Wolf: "Booo"

The song ends and the wolf hides as Meg runs on Lost and confused, she then asks the children what way to go but as she asks the children what way to go some of the trees point in one direction and the rest point in the other direction. The wolf then enters and all the trees point in the other direction to the wolf and the children shout at Red to run away, as she goes to leave the wolf runs to the other side of the stage so the trees then point in the other direction and the children tell Red to run the other way. This repeats until the wolf then runs up to Red.

Todays rehearsal went very well today as one of our first starting on "Little Red" as we have managed to create 2 songs as well as half of the performance today which is a very good starting point. to improve we need to do just as good next lesson so that we can finish staging this story and just focus on perfecting the story with the audience interaction and child friendly humor we would like in our piece.