Children's Theatre

Children & The Theatre
Theatre is so valuable and it is important that children are able to watch it and be involved with it. Through the use of theatre, children can be taught to empathise, be more creative and learn to have a wilder imagination. These are all incredibly important things that you need to be able to do as it means you can see the world in a different and more exciting way. Watching theatre performances can also teach children about humanity and how the world works and evolves. Being involved in theatre can help children to gain the skills and creativity to face the world and understand it. Children are our future and can change the world! For theatre to live on, children need to carry on studying and enjoying the theatrical world and pass it on through the generations. Performing shows aimed at their age range will encourage them to do this!

Polka Theatre
Located in the centre of Wimbledon, The Polka Theatre has been putting on exciting and interesting performances for children since 1979. Children between the ages 0 to 14 can go and enjoy a show at The Polka Theatre. Every show is supported by a learning programme and the theatre is dedicated to introducing children to the world of theatre.
I remember going to watch an adaptation of Roald Dahl's book 'The BFG' when I was in primary school. It was very exciting as it was one of the first shows that I got to watch as a child. I really enjoyed the show and started going to the theatre more frequently.
'Puss In Boots' is currently showing at the Polka Theatre. Some of the shows coming soon are 'Gorilla', 'Thumbelina' and 'Beauty And The Beast'.

Unicorn Theatre
Since being founded in 1947 as a touring company, The Unicorn Theatre has since been situated in the centre of London. It is known as the UK's leading professional theatre for young audiences and is constantly producing shows for audiences aged 2 to 21.
Recently I watched a production called 'Girls Like That' and was really impressed with it! It was very different to any show I had seen before and suited the audience as it was very modern and interesting. Some shows that are coming to The Unicorn Theatre soon are 'Breaking The Ice', 'Grass' and 'Minotaur'.

Companies such as The Polka Theatre and The Unicorn Theatre can help us with the work we are devising as we can look at previous shows that they have put on and take inspiration from them. By finding out what children enjoyed when watching theatre shows at The Polka and The Unicorn, we can interpret the same sort of style into our piece to make it enjoyable for the children. By looking at other theatre companies, we can find out ways to make the performance more exciting and captivating for our audience.

Devising Skills

There are many challenges to overcome when devising a piece of theatre. Where do you start? Where do you end? How do you make the piece effective for your target audience? How do you direct the piece when working with a large ensemble? These are just a few of the questions that you need to think about when you devise a theatre performance.

To overcome these challenges, there are skills that you need to obtain. For example, if you can't work well as a collective, the piece will take a lot longer to devise. Some other skills you need to have when devising theatre are spacial awareness, a sense of rhythm. You also need the ability to work from text, develop characters and explore texts and themes. It is also important to be able to improvise and know how to use physical theatre in performance. Some other things that you should know are how to construct and deconstruct different pieces of work and how to use different speed in performance.

I am confident in using both large and small performance spaces as I have quite a good sense of spatial awareness. For example, when we warm up in class and have to walk around with purpose, I always tend to walk into the areas that are more spacious with less people. This is to fill out and balance the space.

I am also quite confident devising performances with physical theatre as I did a lot of work with it on the 'East End Tales' topic. However, I would like to develop my skills even further and learn more about how to portray different emotions through physical theatre.

An Awesome Book - By Dallas Clayton

Questions:

What is your first opinion of the book?

I really like the book as it seems to spread a very positive message and can help young children to see the world in a different light. It inspires people to be bold and dream big which is something that I encourage everyone to do! The book is wild and crazy, but interesting and wonderful at the same time. From reading the story, I am already extremely excited to start devising a performance piece as there is so much that you can do with the topic of 'dreams'.

Why has it been selected for our 'Little People's Day' audience?
'An Awesome Book' has been selected to be performed for 'Little People's Day' as it can be performed in various ways (for example, theatre, music and dance), so it was a good way of getting all of the strands involved. Also, the book is aimed at very young audiences and the children coming to watch the show are from local primary schools and nurseries. Therefore, we book was very suitable for the performance piece that we are doing.