Mr Kelly story telling

For the past few weeks, we have been creating fairytale like stories to perform to young children, we have incorporated alot of story telling techniques like Movement. In the first play we did little red riding hood, i play the part of the wolf. its really good because we have alot of different movement sequences which are good at keeping children engaged and focused. I also really enjoyed the fact that we created the forest or when we became animals of the forest, its also quite difficult story telling to children, because you have to use a completely different tone of voice to keep them engaged, also throughout little red riding hood. Dan Mckay narrates it, which is helping the children to understand the storyline.

Aswell as the small dances in the piece, there is also a song, and other ways to get the audience involved. My favourite part of the play is when the other characters are singing to the Wolf about how bad he is. Its very engaging for the children because we break the fourth wall of communicating with the audience, you have to get young children involved with whats going on up on the stage. Thats a very important way to storytelling.

In the next play we have been looking at different ways of storytelling, at the start of last lesson we got together different storytelling ideas, for example, puppetry work, silouhette, physical movement. After quite a long discussion about which one would be the best for children's storytelling, we decided to give the silouhette idea a go. So we blocked every window with paper and put a huge white sheet across the room and attached it to the ceiling. After setting up a powerful light. Mr kelly got us all to form different objects in groups as little as 3 people. Only then i realised how hard it is to work with shadows. I however feel that because it was so difficult, we may not have enough time to be able to do a full run-through without making a mistake, i think somebody had the idea of someone also narrating over it. So that way the children can again follow the storyline and not be 100 percent relying on our shadows to be perfect.

Little Shop Of Horrors 27th-31st April

This week on monday i came into the drama department to find out some great news, i got the part of the dentist, which was the part i enjoyed auditioning with the most, i feel that the cast list was thought through extremely well and i know they won't regret picking me to play the part. Now that i know I'm Orin ( The Dentist ), i can watch the film again and study the script, to understand the character more.

Also Dan Mckay is choreographing this performance, and Dan is a brilliant dancer so I'm really looking forward to seeing his colours show. The first number we do ' Skidrow' is so well choreographed, its very complex and Dan has done a good job of it. We spent the first few lessons of this week, listening to the song Skidrow. Working out who sings what and the harmonies we have to use. Its now the end of the week and we have managed to run the whole dance while singing, we are all in time and it sounds really good.

Aswell as receiving the Dentist part i also am playing drums for a number, which I'm very happy about because Drumming and acting are my favourite things to do, so doing both will mean this show is going to be a fun one, i also can't wait to find out what I'm playing, in drumming i listen to alot of metal, so its going to be interesting learning a completely different style.

We haven't yet done any of the scenes i am in, but i have been practicing my character work and I'm going to start learning my lines!

Little Shop of Horrors 20th-25th April

Just before the easter holiday we found out that we will be putting on the show 'Little Shop of Horrors', at first i was a little worried because I'm not too keen on dancing and over exaggerating when i act, I'm usually into much more serious plays. However, when we were told to study the pieces that we had to audition with, i ordered a copy of the film off amazon, then watched it over the holiday, to get to know the story line and how each of the characters were played. It was only after watching the film that i started to get excited. It isn't really a dancing show, it actually focuses a lot more on the general storyline. My favourite character was the dentist because he is a character that i can play well/ have the potential to play well, after practicing for a while i got the accent and movement of the character down to a T.

During the week we had to audition every part, in order to get a main part we had to show the teachers that we were capable of singing, i however didn't want to sing in front of everyone so i asked to sing at lunchtime, it went really well. Also when i got round to auditioning for the dentist, i made sure i acted the part with precision, and i ended up getting a good few laughs, which is good news!

Its been a fun week getting to know the play and its characters, i can't wait to go into drama and find out the cast list next week!