Group Contract

Hyperspace group contract:

 

 

- no unjust swearing

 

-inform if you're going to be late

 

- make sure every voice is heard

 

- any issues to be addressed immediately

 

- Tuesday's (3pm-6/7pm) Friday's (11am-1pm)

 

- Monday's (1 hour extra) MINIMUM

 

- Blog time 1 hour a week (together)

 

 

 

we agree to follow this contract:

 

 

Eden, Corrina, Kj, Kurt.

Splitting groups

When Ella spoke to all the groups on the Monday, she then asked if all the groups we're okay...we all nodded but Tom said he was slightly concerned and it was because of us not coming in for extra rehearsal time as we was finding it hard to get some time to rehearse as there was usually someone who couldn't make it in. He had not addressed this issue with us so it was very awkward and new to us as we had no idea he was going to say it, it was out of the blue. Ella had mentioned that all the groups we're to discuss issues to try fix them, talk about extra rehearsal etc. After every group discussing, Ella stopped us and told us that she could tell just be looking at us all that there is friction. She then suggested that if we did not have anything secure to show by Wednesday at 12, then it would be considered that mine & Jovans group would be split/rearranged and the three other boys put into groups also. This obviously shocked us all and meant we needed to come in on Tuesday to get something done. 

The next day KJ came in as she wasn't in on Monday for reasons, she then told us three different stories that children ranged from 5-11 made up. One that was told by an 8 year old particularly caught our attention which was about animals racing to get to snow whites wedding and one animal cheats and the moral of the story was to teach children to play fair & no cheating. We came up with a story of a dragon who sneezed because he had allergies and fire came out every time he sneezed so three animals had to make a potion to make the dragon feel better and we was going to get the animals to race to get to the dragon. So we performed a scene including me,Eden, and Tom as the animals and kelsey as well as the scene of making the potions. We added music and had some props too. 

I had to leave earlier on the Tuesday as I had no way home. While I was gone there was some issues made across the group and people confronted each other about there issues with one another. This broke some friction and got peoples problems off their chests. I was not there and missed it all and was not able to state any issues I had. 

After we performed on Tuesday, Ella explained she expected more to be done from us and she thought we was playing down to young. We knew something would be said but at the same time it was frustrating. She mentioned time travelling or horrible histories to do, she thought we was thinking to far out the box and was making it to difficult for ourselves. We then got asked how we felt about it and Eden mentioned a split would be best, I agreed in this sense. Ella asked who would want to do horrible histories and me, Eden, KJ, Georgia, Tom, Kurt, and Jack put our hands up. Ella made a group of me Eden Georgia KJ & Jack to do horrible histories and wanted Metin in Jovan's group or a group of Kelsey, Tom, Kurt, and Metin. After that was settled, Kelsey was not happy with her new group and she spoke to Ella. Our old group of six was taken to speak to Ella and we had to say what we thought about our group, Ella said after the talk that we should get lunch and talk about it. In lunch time we had a group discussion and I addressed issues that I had but obviously not to hurt anybody's feelings, I felt so much better when I said it. Eden said she wanted to leave the group and me & KJ said a split would be best, eventually things got blown out of proportion and out of hand and we eventually said that our group of six and the three other boys decide as a nine who we want to work with. My new group is me, Eden, KJ, & Kurt. I am happy with this group, we have been looking at research for horrible histories and the little sketch videos they did on YouTube that gives great facts. 

New idea

On Monday the 9th February, we as a group decided we needed to think of a new idea as our two past ideas just was not working.

Kj was not in on Monday and had her reasons but we contacted her when needed too & when we thought of ideas. 

I wrote some notes on the ideas we came up with...

Children's theatre ideas: 

- Re tell a story

- Possibly do a bandit hunt

- Comedy

- Could introduce different characters

- Adventures

- sharing (morals)

- teaching breakfast is important 

- breakfast is important

- teaching healthy foods

- adding educational facts

- surveys 

- dental surgeries

- short funny sketches

- narrative story lines

- re tell red riding hood possibly 

- with celebrities/well known

- back ground music 

So because we first thought of doing sketches on healthy eating I wrote down some sketch ideas: 

Sketch ideas:

- two people per sketch

- roughly 5 minutes per sketch

- could involve audience 

- roughly 3 sketches

- Velcro 

- superhero foods

- regional foods

- talking at the beginning like Caucasian chalk circle

After that, we spoke to kj and she said she liked the idea so we went with the idea of making a piece based on healthy eating so it would be a fun, but educational piece for the children. We also thought of an idea of healthy gfoods vs junk food and superhero fruits. We told Ella this idea and mentioned instead of having sketches to jut make it a narrative tale as the children could get bored if we did sketches. 

She gave all groups this sheet: 

She wanted us as groups to decide out of those categories which one our group was based around, ours was around inanimate objects. 

On Tuesday we came in and Kj had told us that earlier that week she asked a few children (different ages) to make up a story. One that was told by an 8 year old particularly caught our attention which was about animals racing to get to snow whites wedding and one animal cheats and the moral of the story was to teach children to play fair & no cheating. We came up with a story of a dragon who sneezed because he had allergies and fire came out everytime he sneezed so three animals had to make a potion to make the dragon feel better and we was going to get the animals to race to get to the dragon. So we performed a scene including me,Eden, and tom as the animals and kelsey as well as the scene of making the potions. We added music and had some props and thought we had done well but Ella said she expected more to be done from us and thought we was playing it too young and the children could get bored. This obviously made us all feel down but we had to get on with it, she mentioned an idea of horrible histories or time travelling which we could do so we had time to think about it.

Eden's 8th birthday party

On the 29th January, we was invited to Eden's eighth birthday party. We had to come dressed as superheros and stay in character the whole time.

We had to stay in character the whole time as our eight year olds selves. I found this very hard as I was eight years old eight years ago. After the task we got given party bags with questionnaires in them, asking us to fill it out as an adult and one filled out as an eight year old. 

And then we had to write on a piece of paper what we learnt from doing the birthday party as an eight year old. 

Ella also gave us a sheet of advice/tips:

we had to get in partners to interview each other the questionnaire when being an 8 year old. 

First idea's

On the 5th February, Ella wanted too see how far we had got with our children's theatre piece. We had an idea abut fears/nightmares/what scare children. We come up with this:

We already discussed that this idea was going away from the idea of children's theatre and wasn't focusing on the age range of 5+. We said it was a little GCSE, but we would rather show Ella something than not show anything at all. We showed it, and the majority of the feedback was negative, we knew it was coming but still felt a little down about it. We then got another hour too fix it up by having Matt and Coral from the second year to help mentor us to change it or make it better. We came up with this:

We got laughs throughout the performance, and explained afterwards that we were all parts of Kelsey's mind, after that Ella said it was too similar to a pixar film coming out soon, and a old group in NHC done this idea before which we was not aware of any of them. We know this is just the beginning but were hoping something good can possibly come from this. 

Unicorn & Polka Theatre Trips

Our first trip was to Unicorn theatre too see 'Polar bears gone wild' and 'Caucasian chalk circle'.

Polar bears gone wild was the first performance in the smallest room of the theatre, and was for ages from 2+, I surprisingly found this performance really funny. They did not talk at all, and there was only two people in the performance.

The set was really basic but really clever, they used mini polar bears to show their journey up the mountain. They did not speak, they used music and sound effects which made it really funny. They used pictures and got the audience to participate which made the children really excited, it was a really good performance. 

The show later that day was in a bigger part of the theatre and was a three hour long piece called 'Caucasian chalk circle'. This age range was 11+. It took me a while to understand what the piece was about which was shocking as it had 11 year olds watching. It was based on birth, children, rape, kidnapping and so on. 

My group wrote some notes on this: 

The audience that we had for Caucasian chalk circle was very hard to sit with, they we're talkative and rude. They laughed at scenes like rape and cringed at kisses, it's purely because they are embarrassed cos they are with the teachers and their friends. 

Our next trip was today, it was a trip to the Polka theatre in Wimbledon. We. Saw two shows again, Peter Pan and Teddy Too. 

We watched Peter Pan first, it was the longest out of the two and again, my group wrote notes on it: 

We then watched Teddy Too, it was for younger children aged 2+, it was clever but very young. 

Notes were written.

Watching these four performances really helped out my group, and it personally gave me a different outlook on children's theatre than I had before. Really grateful I got the chance too see these performances as it's really helped and think they can make good contributions to our own performance.

Kneehighs the wild bride...

The other day, Ella played a radio recording of the wild bride by the company Knee highs who create theatre for children to watch but does not specialise in children's theatre. Georgia wrote some notes:

I wrote these notes while discussing with my group: 

Kneehighs the wild bride

- no age range written but would say 12 plus (actually 8 years and plus)

- gruesome with cutting her hand off

- religious contributions 

- surprised the devil was involved 

- you can hear it when she has her hands cut off 

- I liked it 

- the music added worked well/ quite important 

- by hearing it, I pictured the story in my head

- 'she's to clean' meaning purity / virginity 

- 'need to dirty her up' can be seen as making her a slut

- sounds like a camp fire story at the beginning 

- stories about being sold to the devil is called a Faustian tale

- the 'cross roads' is seen where magical things happen/where you most likely meet the devil

- blues music

puppet shows

Last Thursday we had to make a puppet show in our children's theatre groups with our sock puppets we had made on the Monday. It had to be based on something being lost...my group decided to make one of the characters lost which was Georgia's sock puppet called 'Mr Snazzles', we made kj's and Tom's puppets the evil characters, Kelsey and Georgia were bestfriends and mine and Eden's puppets were bestfriends. Our idea was that Kelsey would mention to us all to go on a hike up a mountain and we all split up in pairs and Kelsey and Georgia bump into Tom's puppet, so then Kj takes Mr Snazzles behind Kelseys back. She then worries and calls for mine and Eden's puppets. We did not get far and when we performed it...it was not that good and Ella said our show needed to have a conclusion which it didn't.

I had to leave as soon as we performed these because I had to leave early. But I got told by my group we have to think of an idea and create a new piece on Monday 26th.

On Monday, we had to think of a new idea, our group thought of 'going on a bandit hunt', just like the old story 'were going on a bear hunt', we made props, including a bunch of lolly sticks tied up to be used as logs, during the performance, Tom threw the sticks too far across the table, we tried to get them back as we needed to use them again later in the puppet show, we could not reach them and had to improvise on the spot, which made the show really long in the end. It was really embarrassing but we got threw it and just had to carry on.