Devising Log - Week Three

Log - 

What activities did we do today?

Today we looked at bring all the devised pieces together into one play. We did this by weaving all the scenes together as if they had all been broken up and thrown into one piece. We spent a lot of the time teaching the rest of the class our scene so the whole cast can be a part of it. However, this meant we had to develop our scene during this process as changes needed to be made in order to accommodate the amount of people present in our scene.

What ideas did you/your group come up with? 

As a group we came up with the ideas of having a section where we show how boring and miserable people who don't dream are. One of the ways we showed this was by the way we walked with the music into the next scene. Every single person in the room would get up very slowly and trudge as miserably as possible into their place along to the slow beat of Benji's guitar. The guitar and walking in rhythm was added because we needed a simpler way to show how miserbale everyone was due to the amount of people who were going to participate, it would have been very difficult for everyone to have been doing very complicated choreographed physical theatre routines on stage without anyone getting hurt or it becoming to messy and difficult for the audience to understand. We also had the idea of the dream team entering on scooters and whizzing around the stage sprinkling watering cans full of fairy dust onto the boring non dreamers heads. This also goes with the idea of using random everyday objects as something significant and completely unrelated to its actually purpose. Such as having a colander as a hat. 

Why have you chosen some of these ideas to develop further? 

The idea of sprinkling glitter onto the non-dreamers head was chosen because of its visual effects. Glitter, even at a young age, is associated with happiness, this idea of fairy tales and mythical creatures and everything to do with being uplifting and creative. If these ideas are easy to identify within glitter than it helps the children to understand and enjoy the play more. Every young child loves glitter because of the shear amount of sparkle and colour, making the play visually interesting. Glitter is also very closely linked to dreams as it is often associated with fairies and other creatures from fairy tales, these are exactly the kind of images that The book encourages the children to dream of, making the message a lot more clearer. Putting it in a watering can is just another random thing to do that enhances the play by making it different and not boring. It may also add a sense of humour to the play.

Why did you reject some of the ideas? 

We rejected the idea of of having the dream super heros enter at the beginning of the miserable scene and be present on stage until its their time to come in and cast dreams around the room. Originally this was going to be how the scene was set out however in todays lesson this was changed. Instead they enter onto stage in the middle of the scene and go directly to the non dreamers to spread their dreams. This was to outline the change in emotions and atmosphere from when they enter, showing a clear contrast between the dull side and vibrant bouncy side making the conceot easier for the children to understand. If the dream team had been on stage from the beginning the connection between the dreamers and making people dream happy dreams may not have been made defeting the point of that scene. 

What acting skills/performance skills are you using? Explain why these are suitable for the piece and the target audience.

In the play there is a choreographed sequence of repeated movements that we preform in lines all at the same time. For this you need to be able to preform in unison and to a certain rhythm for it to be effective. This requires team work skills and the awareness of what other people are doing. This is important because if your not aware of everyone else's movements then how are you supposed to move together as one body and in time to the music? It cannot happen endless everyone is aware of the beat and the movement. You must also be able to find the rhythm of the song otherwise it will be very difficult to move a long to it. These skills are important as they help the children pick out distinctive feature of the play. For example, if everyone is moving in unison then the idea of everyone doing the same thing and following everyone else becomes a lot clearer and doesn't involve as much speech. If we aren't moving in unison then the audience may find it hard to be drawn into those features as they focusing on all that is going on on stage. The footsteps also make a sound that becomes a nice beat to the song, this helps the audience enjoy and pick out the rhythm better. If they are able to pick out the rhythm then maybe they will be able to understand the song better and clap along or tap to the beat. This interaction between the music and the audience helps them to be engaged.