Midsummer Nights Dream - Children's Theatre Presentation

Here is a link to mine and Katrina's Slide show on Children's Theatre:

https://prezi.com/uycvckex7hjd/childrens-theatre/

And here is the script to this presentation:

Slide 1 – What is it?

Theatre that is aimed at children and their families which hopes to take children on a journey, educates, entertain and inspire. Children’s theatre is targeted to children ages 3 to 12 and tends to be very colourful, vibrant, fun and loud. They include singing and dancing and interaction throughout the play. Here is a clip of what children’s theatre should look like. This clip is the Cbeebies pantomime version of Aladdin.

Workshop

The acting style of children’s theatre does sort of mirror the behaviour of children. For example if a character is annoyed, they will stomp around grunting and moaning, sort of like how a toddler might act if they were annoyed.

 So now we want you guys to act as children according to these different emotions we are giving you.

·         Bored

·         Tired

·         Happy

·         Angry

·         Excited

·         Love

Now pick your favourite emotion and go wild with it.

Now you know what children’s theatre is about, I am going to tell you a little bit about the origins of children’s theatre

Slide 2 – history

Children's theatre originated from Russia and Britain in 20th century the most recognized practitioner was A.V. Lunacharskii who headed the first state theatre for children in Moscow.

Only the best actors were allowed to perform in front of the children in Russia due to the respect they held for their young minds

·         1904

The first notated performance of children’s theatre was of the play peter pan by J.M.Barrie

·         1920

Britain only really showed children’s theatre around Christmas as a special gift for the season.

·         1940

British children’s theatre companies began to tour in schools and theatres.

British children’s theatre companies drew upon Russia’s original model work for children’s theatre.

·         1960

Theatre in Education (TIE) was created in Britain.

·         2016

There is children’s theatre festivals held all across the world as you can see it has expanded greatly.

Children’s theatre has turned into children’s TV

Children’s TV programmes have now been transformed into children’s theatre productions

Slide 3 – Elements

·         Small cast of versatile actors

·         Portable productions

·         Audience Participation

·         Narration

·         Music, dance and singing

·         Heightened acting

·         Bright, vibrant and interesting set.

·         Set characters

·         Clarity

·         Magic and mystery

·         Puppetry

·         Educational objects – most children’s theatre companies aim their work to suit school curriculums or have some kind of educational moral with in them that designed to make the children think.

·         Colourful costumes – as you saw in the clip previously children’s theatre aims to be bright and colourful and they defiantly don’t forget the costumes. Costumes can be miss matched with clashing patterns and horrendously bright colours which are all ingredients to create a visually stimulating show for the children. In our show some of the costumes include a moon, an orange and yellow lions main, a colourful sparkly fairy dress and many more.

·         Slapstick comedy/silliness – a very appealing element to children’s theatre is the slapstick comedy scenes that explore the silliness of characters. A very famous slapstick scene is when someone throws a cream pie into another person’s face. Slapstick is predominantly used in pantomime however we also use it within our play. For example in the scene change song sparks hits Shakespeare in the face with a mop

·         Various topics- So children’s theatre covers a lot of topics and they can be educational , like a play about the romans , relevant to today’s society a play about pollution they can be about sensitive subjects like divorce and all of these aim to educate and teach the children about the topics that are surrounding or on day may be they also do  folk law and fairy tale children’s show and theses a lot more about fun and entertainment.

Slide 4 - Suitability

When making a children’s production here are things to contemplate…

·         Mental ability – this is important because if the play is not suited to their mental ability then they will not understand or take anything away from the performance

·         Timescale – the timescale of a children’s play is so important as if it is far too long then you shall lose their focus and the will start become fidgety and bored and will yet again take nothing away from the experience

·         School needs – you must be able to suit your play to the schools needs whether it be to their educational curriculum or to their students if for example a student had a learning disability they would need extra support during the performance.

·         Context – the context of your play has to be suitable for the children for example you can’t be doing a play about sexual abused however a play about fairies is suitable.

·         Age – the performance must be age appropriate and there can be no use of foul language or anything inappropriate that could taint their youthful minds

·         Venue – the venue is important to consider if you are touring and going from school to school or place to place. Your set design has to be suitable and able to adapt to its surroundings as well as you actors being prepared for performing with or without light, or with and audience up close, on the floor or in actual seating.

Slide 5 – midsummer

We have been mentioning our play and so now is a good time to tell you what our play is and how we have made it suitable for children.

We have chosen Shakespeare’s a midsummer night’s dream and adapted it to make it suitable for ages 3-6. We chose this play because it has an educational aspect through learning about Shakespeare and the language he used but at the same time the story is magical and light hearted as long as you remove the death threats

Which is exactly what we have done? Not only have we have we cut the running time down to 50 minutes by removing unnecessary lines we have also replaced any remotely negative words with lighter hearted ones. For example Demetrius’s line “I am sick when I look on thee” we have changed to “I am sad when I look on thee” to avoid any possible offence. We have also added 3 characters sparks, gaffer and Shakespeare himself. They have been added to explain what a play is who Shakespeare is and they also help the children understand what is happening in the scene with the complex language.

So the end result is a fun play that teaches children a little about Shakespeare and how the theatre works. Sparks and gaffer are also the goofy slapstick characters that we touched upon earlier. 

Slide 6 – skills

·         Dance – dance is included in almost every children’ theatre play, you don’t have to be a great dancer you just need to have some rhythm to manage the light dancer that come hand in hand in children’s theatre

·         Sing – just like dancing, you don’t have to be amazing because a lot of the songs can be sung as your character. For example sparks and gaffer in our play don’t have to be the best vocalists as they have goofy farmer accents. However some characters will have to be able to sing for example the fairy in our production of midsummer night’s dream which is why it is important to have this skill.

·         Act - it is quintessential and almost absurdly obvious that you need this skill to do children’s theatre or in fact any theatre at all.

·         Projection – being able to project is a lot more then shouting it is being able to hear throughout your performing space without shouting and for children’s theatre this is a vital skill as there is a lot of audience of interaction and they need to know what they are meant to be doing.

·         Accents – accents are not always used within children’s theatre however you may be required to put on a funny voice as it is quite funny for the children. This would therefor require you to be clear whilst talking in a accent as the children may not understand what you are saying and you must be constant with your accent as the children may become confused if your voice keeps changing.

·         Stage combat – this sounds a bit odd as you wouldn’t expect any fighting in a children’s show but the reason stage combat is an important is due to the slapstick moment that may appear throughout the show so you must know how to react, or throw yourself or hit someone with hurting them or you

·         Good Memory - learn you lines!

·         Good stamina – it is important to have good stamina because you need to have a high amount of energy in a children’s show and this level of energy must be sustained throughout

·         Attitude – having a positive attitude or the right mind set to the production will enable for the whole experience to seem a lot more enjoyable for the children and yourself.

Slide 7 – creative ideas

Here are some of the ideas that we have had to further develop our play for children’s theatre...

·         Audience participation – we feel that audience participation is lacking in our play and there is missed opportunities to get the audience involved for example the repetitive scene change song, the final chorus could be sung by our audience

·         Interactions – there are many points through the play where the actors on stage could interact with the actors on stage and the audience for example when the mechanical are on stage snug could wave shyly to the audience and then cower when they wave back and also any point when the trio at the back are speaking the other actors on stage could have a bit more interaction with each other

·         Makeup –we also thought that adding specific make up to certain character would enhance the children experience for example we could apply mud to the Faces of the mechanicals in order to show they are work men and not of the same statues of the Athenians  also the fairy would have glitter to heighten the magic element of the play

·         Handouts- as an extra interaction with the audience, we thought it would be fun idea to place glow stick underneath the seats before the show so that the audience can use them during the magical songs when sparks and gaffer tell them to.

·         Set- our current set is minimalistic and with better budget could be extreme and over the top with every single thing represented.

·         Dance- we could further develop of dances by placing actors amongst the audience to break into dance and get everyone dance to the end song, also we could have a simple dance that only involves your arm that they could follow.

·         Multimedia- the use of a projection screen could be very interesting and fun and would also allow the scene to be set without having to use a black out to bring new set on.  Also lyrics to some of the songs could be projected onto to the screen so that the audience could sing along.