Evaluation of Children’s Theatre performances.

Evaluation of Children’s Theatre performances.

During the last term we have been developing our very own childrens theatre piece in titled “Mr. Snuggles’ Adventure”. We spent 6 weeks devising, producing and scripting a quest style story. We rehearsed consistently and were told we would be going on tour to multiple primary schools. On the 16^th, 17^th and 18^th of March we performed our devised performance play to four different audiences.

We performed our first performance on the 16^th of March at a school called Saint Nicholas primary school to year 3 and 4s together. We felt as group this performance went better than expected as our last full rehearsal didn’t as well as the previous because we had lots more constructive feedback than the show usually gets, and we were worried about changing all these things so close to the performance just in case we forgot what we have added and taken out. Also just in case it didn’t work in the actual performance as we didn’t have time to show the final cut.

Our second performance was at Brent school, during the performance we found that we didn’t get as much reaction as we previously had. We believe the reason for this was that the children were younger and didn’t understand some of the concepts, for example, they perceived the scary story to be about Mr Snuggles when it was about a different school pet called Harvey. As a result in the Q&A afterwards there were a lot of questions around this, for clarification. One question they asked was how did the hamster reappear if the was stolen? We asked them for their favorite parts, and they said things like, ‘the hamster reappearing at the end in a race car’ and Nathan’s geeky character.

The third performance, was by far, the toughest audience we had come across. The main reason being they were older, years 5 & 6. They were at the pinnacle age of being ‘too cool for school’, this resulted in them being reluctant to laugh at the more immature jokes we had in the performance because it appeared as though they were conscious of their peers judging them. However, they did know the answers to the quiz game which meant we had more audience participation which was more fun for us. We also asked what they thought of the play, and we could tell the difference in maturity levels from the second performance to the third, in that, their responses were mainly about the changes in the plot, e.g the scary story.

The final performance was by far our best performance. The audience were very receptive and energetic, year 1 & 2, which brought our energy up. We know they enjoyed it, as when we asked them, they were very enthusiastic in their response. They asked lots of questions about the performance, like: ‘What happened to the hamster?’ and ‘How did the hamster get on top of the set?’ They also commented on our slow motion scene, as did the first audience, saying that they like it and thought it was funny, which meant our pacing/timing was right.

The set started off great, it was simplistic, colourful and it added to the performance because ti showed where we were and as we were always in one room the set didn’t need to change, which was useful for us. As time went on, it started to fall apart. The reasons for this were,  we used pins to keep the paper on, also, because we had been transporting it lots and in transit damage occurred. However, that said, it was easy to transport as it split into two halves but in saying that it was fiddly to put together quickly in time to perform. Another thing was that the pins would fall off, so, in the final couple of shows we had to search for the pins before we left. This was a possible safety hazard to the children, when the pins fell off the paper part ripped. Though, it had it’s benefits: we used it to change costumes or to make it seem like someone had left the room/stage.

Another piece of set which was good for transport were our collapsible box chairs. We put props in there to keep them together and safe, which we learned was a very helpful asset as other groups kept losing/misplacing props. They were very versatile as we could use them to sit on during the performance. We also made it into a computer.

Our costume was a very natural classroom attire. It was in keeping with modern day schools. Our costumes were used to define our characters. For example, Nathan being the stereotypical ‘geek’ or ‘nerd’ wearing a tie, shirt and blazer, whereas, the other characters had jumpers wrapped around their waists or hoodies over shirts in the style of ‘cool’ kids. We never changed costume really, just added more clothes over the top when needed to multi-role. It was a very adaptable costume, that said, one mishap was a broken zipper, though that was the only one.

We had music and sound effects throughout the performance, including using ourselves to make the music out of our props, to enhance the performance musically with a beat. We chose to do this as we discovered that children form these age groups respond well to this. It worked well and we had feedback from a child saying he liked the song in the beginning and their recognition of the music/sounds meant they relate to the story as it included noises they would hear in everyday life. Sometimes the sound effect were a bit quick or didn’t go on for long enough but that was a shared responsibility for the actors and technician. Mainly, the mistakes happened in the first performance as we had not had a lot of rehearsal time with our technician, however, after the first performance, took the time out to practice with the sound and from then on it became more fluid. The sound  was  a good asset as we used it to build intensity, for example, the scary story. We also used it for comedy, for example, Nathan running back and forth to find his lie detector and James playing the songs wrongly.

The only lighting effect we used were battery operated sticky lights to portray the computer screen for the lie detector screen. This was very effective as it completely transformed the box chair and gave the illusion of the light radiating from a screen.

There were five characters and a technician who puppeteered the hamster from behind the screen. They included: Nathan the Nerd, James the cool kid, Daisy the secret smart one, Lily the popular, unkind girl, and Saskia the bossy one, a stereotypical re[presentation of the standard ‘school’ characters. This was something we hoped would resonate with the audience from shows/films they watch at home/cinema. All the characters were equal in amount of time on stage and had equal distribution of lines. The performance itself was based on the ‘80s classic film, ‘The Breakfast Club.’ The characters were loosely based around the characters of this film with adjustments made for the younger audience. There were no dominant characters, they all had a presence and were fundamental to the plot. We all used different accents/voices and body language to differentiate our characters, so, that each stood out independently. For example, Nathan was always clutching a notebook or folding his arms as he was quite an attitudinal nerd, in comparison, James, had a hoodie and trainers on to show his opposition to authority.

The dialogue was informal and scripted individually, so that they all expressed themselves differently, for example, Nathan’s character was more authoritative whereas Daisy, on the other hand, was less confident, spoke in a high, slow, doubtful voice which signified she was covering up her intelligence in her peers’ company. The vocabulary had to be understandable and in simple sentences, however, a lot of feedback was given about our articulation, for example, Daisy mis-pronounced one of her lines and the kids picked up on it and started speaking about it during the performance. This resulted in losing the attention of the audience for a short period of time.