In Week 5 and 6, we have been working on rehearsing a finalised script with both the Year 3's and 1's that ties together many of the concepts we've been experimenting with in our sessions up until this point. With the Year 3's, primarily we have been aiming to empower the children with their imagination and knowledge of their local area, whereas with the Year 1's we have been aiming to support their learning of the text 'We're going on a bear hunt' and knowledge of dinosaurs.
Here is the finalised script for the Year 3's:
In these two weeks, our role as facilitators slightly changed since we weren't necessarily leading tasks, but were trying to assist Susanna in running the rehearsal as a director and ensuring the flow of the rehearsal was kept. By all of us having a copy of the script, we were all organised and were able to reference it when we were unsure what was going on - for example if a child with a line forgot what to say. We had an actual stage we could use which was great since it elevated the idea of the Year 3's being actors in a play, and this air of excitement felt so nice to witness as it was clearly something all the children really liked.
The Year 3 script that we've evolved, I think, is a great basis for an informal showing and culmination of the project. Some of the exercises that the children enjoyed the most - the visualisations of a concrete jungle, soundscapes and the acrostic poems had been tied into the script into some way, as well as an implementation of the theme of Christmas. As a result, the children could grasp what they were doing quite quickly because there was a sense of familiarity and safeness around what we were doing. This also made the rehearsal process more efficient when it came to these familiar areas. For example, when myself, Stella and Sean reunited with the group we made the acrostic poems with 6 weeks earlier, we asked them if they remembered the acrostic poems and they all leaped up enthusiastically and performed it to us as they had done 5 weeks before. It felt quite rewarding since it was lovely to see that they had all remembered it and performed it as if they had been rehearsing it. As a result, this made it easier for us as the facilitators because it felt like we'd cemented a relationship earlier on in the process where because we had invested in the children, they eventually invested in us and the final showing. Another good aspect of the script was the idea of having narrators, many of which were lines that we as facilitators said on behalf of the group. From my knowledge from Year 12, narration is a great device especially in children's theatre shows to constantly hold the hand of the audience so they know what is going on. Our audience will be mainly the classmates of the children, so this seems suitable.
In contrast, some of the less efficient areas of the rehearsal process was when we gave the children lines. Randomly selecting children to give the lines to had the intention of trying to be inclusive and give the children a chance to feel particularly involved and important within the piece, which was great and successful. Nevertheless, sometimes we had challenges when a child forgot they had a line or didn't know their cue. We tried to tackle this as facilitators by pairing up with children that had lines so we could give them a quick nudge if need be. We also gave the children little narrator cards that they could take home and practice, which definitely made a difference as by the second week many of the children seemed to be much more secure with their lines. I'd also argue that by this stage of the project, our relationships with the children became a lot tighter. They felt a lot more comfortable with us and because there wasn't a fast paced structure to the workshop and we were focusing more on rehearsal and quality, a lot of the children seemed to have conversations with us and seem more warm towards us as facilitators. This was rewarding as by this point it seemed clear that the Year 3's really valued the experience yet it wasn't that we were put on a pedestal as the people 'bringing theatre' to them - it felt like a humble experience where we were grateful for their participation, and they were equally grateful for the opportunity. Personally, these conversations were sometimes a setback and I have to admit that I as a facilitator found it a challenge in the first week to balance my personal interactions with the children and to develop the relationships there and putting the work first and getting to the end project. On reflection, I think that is one of the predicaments of community theatre: when you are working with community groups over a few weeks, you're not just looking to create theatre but also looking to build bonds and nourish the idea of community. What's lovely about our project is that we're all in the same community of Croydon, so it feels quite natural that some of us made friends with the younger kids, and this has definitely been one of the most rewarding and successful elements of the project.
With the Year Three's, the rehearsal process worked well enough that we were able to finish the vast amount of show in the two week rehearsal process - particularly surprising since we had a group of at least 30 children and not an awful lot of time. A lot of the elements of the script were cut to enable this to happen, but I think this was good because this posed the emphasis on quality over quantity. However, I think that one of the places where our facilitation lacked in the success of this was the fact that we may have rushed it, and lost some of the beautiful detail we'd developed with the children in the devising activities earlier in the process. The direction we gave was less about physicality and emotion as we'd repeated and emphasised throughout the weeks, but more about technical delivery - cues, projection, pace etc. However, having said this, it seemed that the Year 3's had actually put the work in themselves when it came to rehearsing it all the way through, so it ended up being quite good quality. What helped this to work was the fact that we would divide the script up into chunks and rehearse the chunks individually and repeat them so that the children could grasp a sense of familiarity. Hand in hand with this was the sense that all the children were so enthusiastic about the work and committed that they made the quality a lot better through their dedication and lack of self consciousness. We hardly faced any problems of stage fright or nerves, which was a success - the children mainly just did it. This, again, was probably informed by the warm atmosphere we have attempted to create throughout the workshops we've had with the children - putting our importance on their safety and comfort over the theatrical aspects.
Here is the finalised script that we rehearsed with the Year One's:
I think the successful thing about the Year 1 script was that it followed a story that all the Year One children were familiar with, not only because we'd been following this narrative in our workshops but also because they'd been learning about the book 'We're Going on a Bear Hunt' on their lessons. This perhaps made it easier for the children to grasp a sense of security over what they were involved in. The concepts we'd looked at throughout the weeks weren't as present and evident in this script as they were with the Year 3's, yet I would argue that came down to the need for simplicity with the Year 1 script.
As facilitators, I would say we definitely had a more challenging rehearsal process with the Year One's than the Year Three's, which is no surprise since the Year 1's are much younger and with the fun and free atmosphere we created, I expected no different. Unlike with Year 3, we didn't give the individual children in Year 1 individual lines to say, which I think was a safe choice since even the orchestration of the Year 13's saying the lines and the children responding seemed difficult. One of the main challenges we encountered was trying to get the children to listen and follow direction. When they did listen, they would often continue talking or laughing when performing the material, which slowed down the efficiency of the process, nevertheless it was good to see that they were enjoying themselves. As facilitators, what I have learnt is that you have to be very patient with young children when they are not being responsive. Putting our hands up and waiting for a response, a technique that has proved useful in previous workshop sessions, seemed more effective at controlling the children's noise level but we still struggled quite significantly. Likewise, with the two rehearsal weeks, we definitely encountered a new problem with behaviour. There were a few children who probably didn't have the attention span for the focus of a rehearsal process in one fixed location, and in the plans for rehearsing we didn't really cater to these children and their different learning styles, which probably contributed to increased bad behaviour. Individual situations were easier to cope with than others, but overall as facilitators I think we found the best tactic was not to patronise the children but instead to treat them like professionals and let them be in control. Besides, I think it's safe to say that some children wouldn't have engaged with the process regardless of how well behaved they were, so those that were being naughty for the sake of it and those that were genuinely disillusioned with the project were separated and were able to have control over their contribution and participation. We could handle children that felt uncomfortable with the idea of performing by giving them the option to sit out or by standing next to them and doing it with them.
Like with Year Three, some of the detail that we had worked on in previous sessions revolving around physicality was lost, especially with the lack of concentration. Yet the essence of the story was there by the end of rehearsing the piece. We had less material to work on, and so what was successful was that it seemed that most of the children knew the gist of what was going on and could look to us for guidance and prompts if need be. But the main aim of telling the story of 'We're Going on a Bear Hunt' mixed with dinosaurs was there by the end of the rehearsal process, and we also included the dinosaur masks that we'd made and the dance which made the rehearsals more fun for the children.
No comments:
Post a Comment