This week, we took our show out on tour and presented it to an audience for the first time. We have been putting in lots of hard work and effort to fundraise, devise and put together a wonderful show for the children to enjoy, and there have been lots of highs and lows getting to the point that we're at now, but it made all of this work worth it when seeing the excitement from the children in each school we visited. I was very nervous about how they would react to some moments inside of the show, as people say "children are the harshest critics" because they will be honest with you, but many of them were amazed by the magic and mystery we added into each scene. I wasn't expecting them to react as they did, especially when I was going up to them and getting them to smell the flowers, but they seemed engrossed in what was happening on stage and I didn't see many of them getting bored of our performance which was great. All of the schools we went to ranged in age and the amount of audience members we had so the reactions were different, and each school hall was set out differently so we were presented with the challenge of having to figure out where to place our set and how much spacing we had between us, but we all worked through this very well and were able to put on a successful show to every school.
Primary School #1
As this was our first school, we were all very apprehensive at what the atmosphere would be like, but once we got into the space and started setting up, these nervous quickly turned to excitement. I was surprised at how big their school hall was as I was expecting something a lot smaller if we were only performing to 60 kids, but it gave us plenty of room to push the garden forward and include an aisle and some room at the sides for us to enter and exit from without the children or the actors feeling too cramped. Over the weekend, we brought a new backdrop, this one with the picture of a dark, evil lair, since we felt there wasn't enough room for us all to stand behind when we're not on stage, and I was impressed with how good it looked next to our forest one. It shows a contrast between good and evil, and we thought it would be better if Zac, Layla and anyone visiting the lair would be able to enter and exit from this new backdrop to show more of a journey.
As for the performance, I felt the energy that I gave was really strong all the way through, as this was something I struggled with during the runs we did, but I felt completely in the headspace of my character and I managed to keep up the physicality and voice of Hope throughout the show. However, something I need to improve on is opening out and sharing with the audience more as looking back at the footage from this performance, I was turning in towards the actors too much and it looked too closed off from everyone watching. For the next performance, I know I need to open my body out more and remember that I am an actor below my head as sometimes I forget to use my body, especially in a show that is very animated like this. As we reached halfway through of the performance, there was unfortunately a problem with the speaker and the sound disconnected, however, we did turn it up to the highest volume on Stevie's phone so it could be heard when we watched it back in the afternoon, but I was unable to hear on stage. At the end of the piece when we were about to go on for the dance, we decided that it would be impractical without being able to hear the sound so I suggested we sing along to the song, that way the children would clap along and create a rhythm for us to dance to, but this was a bad idea and nobody else in the company knew the words the whole way through. We made the quick decision for Zac to go and dance with them so they could burn some energy after sitting down for a while, but I thought the end of the piece was very flat and we let the panic get to us. Looking back, we should've thought on our feet and done a game that we had prepared in our character groups, and we should've taken the knowledge we learnt last term on coping under pressure and put it into practice.
Overall, I thought this performance was a strong start to our schools tour and there were a few technical glitches and issues within myself that I need to fix, but it's made me even more excited for the next two shows on Friday!
Primary School #2
I had quite a stressful morning before this performance and I let it get to me whilst we were preparing for the show, but my mood improved once I stepped out onto the stage and saw the amount of children in the audience for this show. I wasn't expecting this many but once we were told it was years 3-6 I knew it would be much more of a struggle than Tuesday's performance was. It felt very easy to control the children at Oakfield because there weren't as many of them, and we were pausing quite a lot to let the feedback from the audience die down, but they really enjoyed the performance and I loved interacting with the younger children in the front row as they were so mesmerised by what they were watching which was great to see. Their school hall was perfect for the amount of children we had watching the performance and there was plenty of room for us to all be on stage and dance without standing on top of them. However, there wasn't enough room for them to create an aisle, either in the middle or either side so when it came to the final scene and I had to runoff back to school, so I considered going behind the backdrop like everyone else. In the end, I made a quick decision to go out through the door on the side of the hall, this way I gave the others space to get ready for the final dance and for Layla to do her quick change, and it felt more realistic that I was going on my separate way.
This performance was great as the children gave us so many reactions that we could work with and even though it got loud at times, it was really lovely to hear all of the kids call out to the fairies and boo when the Evil Wizard came on stage. However, we had a few SEN children in the audience which I wish we would have been informed about before coming to the school or on arrival, and we could've altered our performance so it was more comfortable for them and they could get involved without the room getting too noisy. I would like to do more work on this in the future and learn how we can adapt a show for people with SEN and what that entails, and it would've been nice to work on that with a show like this, but I would still enjoy that opportunity! I was really proud of my performance at this school as I was right mindset for the character and something in me felt more amazed at the forest and I was able to lose myself in the characters and elements I met along the way easier than I have in previous rehearsals and the last performance, I felt much more caught up in the ways of life I find in the forest during the performance and I think the reactions of the children in the audience spurred me on to remember that Hope is one of them and I could easily play off their energy. Also, I really improved on being able to open up and share with the audience during this performance as I kept checking in with myself during scenes and repositioning myself if needed, I was really happy with how I reacted to this and I want to keep this up throughout the afternoon and into the next show.
Overall, this show was very chaotic with the amount of children we had to deal with and I was worried it may affect our performances, but it actually gave me the energy to bring a bigger and better version of my character to the show and I hope I feel the same after this afternoon's performance!
Primary School #3
Our third performance of the schools tour was our biggest challenge yet, but considering we had another school to travel to in the morning, I was impressed by how much we gave into this performance and the energy was still really strong. Our first issue was coming into the space and seeing that they had a stage set up already, and even though the lovely teacher who showed us to the hall said we didn't have to use the stage if we didn't want to, but there wasn't much room for us to perform anywhere else on the floor. We also had the problem that the stage was too small for us to all fit on for the final scenes and the dance, so we decided to compromise by performing some parts on the floor and some onstage so it was more spread out and everyone had more freedom to move rather than clumped in a huddle at the back. This was a struggle at some points of the show, as we had to make the quick decisions of which characters would go on the stage and which ones would better on the floor. I especially found it difficult giving everybody a hug during the final scene as I had to climb down from the stage to hug the fairies and I nearly slipped on the grass going over to hug Grace, I should've done what I could to avoid slipping and taking down a mushroom in the process, it would've been better for me to walk around it and I will pay more attention to details like this in any future performances.
However, I wanted to give my all to this performance as it was our last one of the week and even though there weren't nearly as many children as we had during the morning performance at Old Bexley, the kids were very energetic and I heard many noises of amazement when we enter the forest for the first time, showing that I am sharing this journey with them and they are able to use their imaginations to see what this forest looks like beyond the backdrop. Speaking of the backdrops, as we had the stage we didn't have much room to keep the backdrops upstage, so we decided to have one either side of the stage so it's easier for us to walk up to the stairs from each side. We also decided that Zac and would be behind the lair backdrop with Layla alternating as she changed character, that way there would be plenty of room on either side and it feels more like two separate locations, and there's much more travel going on when we head for the lair. I really enjoyed the Q and A we did about acting afterwards as I liked explaining about our theatre company and what our experience has been like at the Miskin, and how this advice could come in handy to the children as they get ready to perform their own Christmas show. This school seems very passionate about acting and it was nice to have them ask us questions about our training so far and how we came to put this piece together.
Overall, we had a big challenge of setting ourselves up and rearranging the staging to suit this new space, it's something we hadn't prepared ourselves for but we still managed to give an informative and exciting performance, with a world which the children could imagine themselves in!
Miskin Theatre
To round off our tour, we were lucky enough to be given an in house performance of our show to showcase our work to the wider Miskin company. I really enjoy performing to other companies in the theatre as I always feel that it's a very safe space for actors to make choices, present them to other actors and get constructive feedback afterwards, and even though this show is aimed to children, they were all very supportive of the story we've created and the characters inside of it. I thought our final performance went really well and having great energy from the audience rubbed off on us, I think because it was our final show everyone wanted to go out with a bang and we definitely did that! When we were told we were going to perform in the white room, I was worried that we wouldn't take it as seriously as we've been rehearsing in there and it would be too familiar to us, but I think having the studio instead with the seating bank out was a lot more alien to us and we could perform it as if it was another school. It was so lovely that even though they weren't our target audience, the actors we really supportive and could imagine a forest like this with all these characters inside it. I couldn't make as much of a connection with them as I could with the children when I was interacting with them, but it was good for me to challenge myself and see how my performance affects a more mature audience.
Overall, I thought our final performance was strong and we managed to take on all of the notes of our runs and other shows to make this the best one yet. We've had so many lovely moments and things to improve on over our show week, and it was very reassuring knowing that we had a supportive and excited audience waiting for us on our final day!
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