What do you think went well during the final performance?

I think that our group increased the character’s energy a lot more than we did in our rehearsals. Even though this was probably because we were in front of an audience, this improved the performance a lot because characters in children’s theatre are large and full of energy, so I felt that we represented that correctly. The theme of superheroes is appealing to children, and so I think that I feel we were to perform this in front of a young audience, it would be very successful to convey a story. I’m also pleased that the whole of our group were off script, so that we could focus more on characterisation and there were no large gaps between lines being said.

What do you think of your individual performance?

Overall, I think that my energy matches that of the rest of the group’s energy, which made the show more enjoyable to watch. I also think that my performance of the villain could have been slightly more threatening, but I think it added to the comedy to not be as threatening as a proper villain “should” be. However, my character could have had more quips between the Henchman, to show that he treats him badly and shows how much of a villain he truly can be, even if he doesn’t fully show it in front of the heroes.

What could have been improved?

The scene where Ven and Jet run on and off stage should have ended a lot quicker than it did and they should have only run off and on 3 times instead of 6. This is to make sure that the joke isn’t lost and it would keep it’s hilarity, so it doesn’t get boring – this could lose the audience’s interest, which could result in them talking to the person next to them, and this could distract both other audience members and actors. We should have also made Bad Guy Rabs conflict more with Ven and Jet, as he is supposed to be the big villain of the show, but it doesn’t truly reflect that when he isn’t on stage much and doesn’t really do anything else other than stealing the president. A suggestion of this could be that during the ‘Holding Out for a Hero’ sequence, Bad Guy Rabs puts obstacles in the way, such as the Henchman trying to fight them. This would ultimately make the scene more interesting, while still keeping the original joke. We also recognised that the Henchman doesn’t do that much either, and that he doesn’t have a backstory as to why he is working with Bad Guy Rabs. The scene between him and the President could have been longer to explain that and that could also have given the Henchman more lines as well. Costumes could also have had more attention to detail because in the performance, they looked incomplete and sometimes random. We could have changed the shoes and got rid of whatever we usually wear as ourselves, to fully get into the character and to enhance the performance for the audience.

If you had more time to work on this project, what would have you added?

The scenes could have been a lot longer because the performance is quite short and the ending is underwhelming. When Ven and Jet are trying to convince Bad Guy Rabs to let the President go, it seemed really out of character and too short when the villain agreed with the protagonists. There could have been a well choreographed fight scene, to create more conflict between the characters, and to make the performance more interesting.

Since the moral of this performance is “don’t judge a book by its cover”, we could have made the message a lot clearer at the end, with the heroes or the President acknowledging and understanding this, by apologising to Bad Guy Rabs or even telling the audience why it’s wrong to prejudge.

1. Character name – he uses the name Bad Guy Rabs as a villain persona to intimidate his enemies but his real name is Drew
2. Likes – he likes to read and write and is inspired by other villains that have disrupted the peace of Patronus before him. He also likes to listen to rock music, go on walks outside and make friends, but he doesn’t get an opportunity to because he lives in a cave and is scared of those who live in Patronus.
3. Dislikes – being alone and not being accepted, the colour pink, and he is very self-conscious about his looks, especially his height.
4. Where they live – he lives in the outskirts of Patronus with the Henchman where no-one can find him because he wants to avoid anyone seeing him.
5. What kind of accommodation they live in – he lives in a large, dark and wet cave hidden in a forest, away from the city.
6. Who they are related to – he doesn’t know who he is related to because he lived in an orphanage, until he was 18, for as long as he could remember. Although, he was once told that he does have an aunt that lives in Patronus and that she is very successful in her career.
7. Who they are friends with – since he lived with others in the orphanage, he was friends with them for quite a long while and was always appreciated by them. His best friend, who he considered to be his ‘sister’, was called Holly. He is also friends with the Henchman, even though he treats him badly. He just doesn’t want to admit that he actually really likes him being around.
8. Their pets – in the orphanage, they had a golden retriever called “Buddy” whom he had a really fun relationship with and loved to take him on walks.
9. What they do for a job – he considers himself to be a “professional villain”, even though he never signed up to be in the “Villain League” (enemies of the Hero League), since he thought it wasn’t worth it, and thought that they would just get in his way.
10. What they want to do – he wishes to be a hero in the Hero League, and trained for a long time, even when he was very young. Although, when he tried to apply, he was below the height requirements, so he thinks it is impossible to do what he dreams of doing.
11. What they do in the play – as revenge for not getting into the Hero League and not even getting invited to the Hero Awards Ceremony, he steals the President to make the heroes look bad so that he could prove that he is a better hero than them.
12. Batman or Superman – neither, he thinks that they are beneath him.
13. Phobias – he’s afraid of the dark, so really hates living in a cave, and being alone, because he spent the whole of his life surrounded by loving people, so isn’t used to being independent.
14. Where they went on holiday last – he doesn’t know what a holiday is and has never had the opportunity to go on one.
15. Favourite colour – blue, but he wears a lot more black to hide himself, both his physicality and personality, although he does love to wear his blue cape.
16. Their favourite program – he really loved the Spectacular Spider-Man cartoon series when he was young because he wanted to be just like Spider-Man.
17. Most likely to choose in a sweet shop – liquorice allsorts.
18. If they had one wish, what would it be? – to get into the Hero League, live in Patronus happily and be the most famous and successful hero, with lots of friends.

The Death of Cinna (the Poet)

Screams for freedom

He sits in his chair, nervous

The sounds of his pencil scribbling on paper

Desparate to stay indoors

For the Crown

Is a beast without a heart

On 13/2/20, our class went to the Unicorn Theatre in London, a theatre that is solely based on creating shows aimed at children. The two shows that we went to see were I, Cinna (the Poet) and The Bee In Me.

I, Cinna was about a very minor character in Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar who gets killed just for having the same name as a conspirator that assassinated Caesar. Cinna was a poet who struggled to write and get through life due to his social class. The show was set in modern day, so phones and computers were used, as well as police rioting and protesting footage was shown throughout. The show’s cast was only one man, Tim Crouch, who played Cinna but he was also the writer of the script. It was originally shown in 2012, with some parts of the script not being used in this performance.

Before the show, the audience was given a notebook and pencil before the show. This was to be used later on when Cinna asks the audience to write certain words on different pages in the book – a clear representation of audience participation, which always works well with child audiences, as they feel like they are impacting the story in some way. It also made them feel like a poet, which is inspiring to a lot of children and could potentially impact what career they want to choose when they’re older. The show was aimed at 11-14 year olds, so some mature themes were mentioned, such as how Caesar was assassinated and conversations about politics and who or what you would be willing to die and kill for. The audience seemed to be a little bit uncomfortable when they were hearing this, but I think it added to the experience and that it made them understand how Cinna was feeling. I think our group could incorporate audience participation in our performance because that could make the experience more interesting, it would keep their attention on the performance itself if they were being spoken to, and the element of ‘breaking the fourth wall’ in theatre for children excites them because they feel that interacting with the characters on stage makes them feel important.

The Bee In Me was about a young child that was neglected by their parents. The show often references the main character turning into a bee and also treats every scene as if it is a level in a video game – this shows that every day for the young child is a challenge without reassurance from their parents, so uses turning into a bee as a form of escapism to make them feel better about the situation that they are in. The show’s cast was three people, who played all the characters in the show. All of them were narrating what was going on, like telling a story. The main character of the young child wasn’t named, as the cast often referred to that character as ‘you’, meaning the audience could feel like they are actually in the story and it helps them understand what it’s like to be neglected and help visualise what it’s like to be in that child’s shoes. The show was aimed at 6-9 year olds, so didn’t explicitly explore any serious topics other than the neglect, but other topics such as bullying, stranger danger and struggles in school life were involved, topics that are often touched upon and explained in a lot of other pieces of children’s theatre to educate them. During the show, a lot of rhetorical questions were asked by the main character, which made the audience keen to answer them because child audiences like audience interaction and they think that questions are always aimed at them. The actors did make it clear when real questions and rhetorical questions were asked, but this didn’t seem to translate very clearly to the audience and the actors seemed unsure of how to calm the children down afterwards. We can use this research in our performance to make sure to make it clear when we want any questions to be answered by the audience and to have a method in place to bring back the attention of the audience if they become overexcited or the meaning of words or phrases is lost in translation.

To increase our understanding of the characteristics and behaviours of children (so that we can improve our acting during our performances), we had to be in the role of our 8 year old selves at a children’s party. During this party, there were a lot of games, such as musical chairs, musical statues, pass the parcel and other traditional children’s games. The purpose of this was to understand how energetic young children are and that they find it very difficult to sit still, and they have a shorter attention span. This also helped us explore how we felt we acted as a child and remember the interests that we had, so that we can use this in our performances to keep the audience interested and entertained. To get into character and get fully immersed into being in a children’s party, we had to arrive in costume – we were told to dress up as our favourite superhero or cartoon character. This was because children, generally, really like to dress up and dressing up as who they admire makes them feel better about themselves and brings their mindsets out of the real world temporarily as a form of escapism for fun. I dressed up as Iron Man because I really liked and admired the character growing up and I feel that it would be a costume that my 8 year old self would really like to wear.

Interview with my 8 year old self – https://youtu.be/9yduotolRTI

Vlog after the party – https://youtu.be/gpZ0Ajwf1zU

Notes:

• Emotional memory – bringing back memories as a child and how you felt at that time improves the delivery of the performance to make it more realistic for the audience.
• Energy – children have a lot of energy so it is important to match them so that the performance is more interesting and they pay attention at all times.
• Don’t be patronising or aggressive towards them – they may be smarter than you initially think and you don’t want to upset them as this should be an enjoyable experience for them.
• Most children don’t have good attention spans, so keep things interesting, difficult and full of energy every minute that you are on stage. They have a big sense of wonder, so keeping things different is key.
• Some of them may not have access to theatre, so we may be the influencer and catalyst for them to study drama or just be there to give them an experience that they haven’t had before that could be important for the future.

The company members are me, Jordan, Jabs, Vishnu and Lauren. As a group, we discussed the rules that our company should adopt so that this project can run smoothly and that we are able to finish our project on time.

• 3 lates and you are out of the group
• Respect all members
• Remain 100% focused
• Don’t speak when others are speaking
• Listen and respect other people’s ideas
• Have fun