Rehearsals

During our theatre classes, we completed many activities and exercises to help us get into character and to focus for the lesson.
The exercise 'Sleeping Bunnies' consisted of pretending to be asleep and then hopping around the room when the music started playing. This was to get us to wake up more and feel energised. It also helped me to get rid of some of my tension and feel less embarrassed about acting in a very over-the-top way for the target audience - young children.

We then took some time to reflect on a dream that we had remembered. It was interesting to see what everyone else had to say. My dream was that I was lost in a magical world and fascinated by everything that surrounded me. Describing our dreams to a partner helped us to imagine how we could stage it and develop it into a piece of theatre to use for the final performance. 

After this, we took one section of our dream and acted it out in just a few repetitive motions. For my dream. I looked around in three sudden movements with the sound 'doof' as if I was stepping on the floor. Then I pretended to hold onto a railing and walk up some stairs whilst looking around and making a creaking noise. I wanted my piece to show that I was in a world that I was utterly intrigued and fascinated by, leaving it to the audience to imagine what I was visualising.

I then had to take this piece and exaggerate it completely. It felt strange as I am not used to performing this sort of theatre. I thought it would be embarrassing, but it turned out to be enjoyable and interesting. By exaggerating the work we helped the audience to understand and view the piece more easily. Some of the exaggerating also added a comedic element to the piece. Comedy was intertwined even more when we put the piece into slow motion. The sounds were dragged out and the body movements were very slow.

Previously, our class was lucky enough to be given the opportunity to be given a workshop from two actors from The 'Frantic Assembly' Theatre Company. It was incredibly fun and I feel as though I learnt a lot more about movement in theatre. One of the activities was to get with a partner and discover their body using different movement. My routine with Clement included two lifts, pushing and pulling to move in different directions and discovering through movements such as going under his arm or twisting his head. This activity was to use your body in a more interesting room to create a character. 
It was later decided that these routines would be included in our performance for Little People's Day to give a sense of different things happening in someones head during a dream.

To begin the performance, we all stood in a position from our piece with a partner, whispering 'Yes - There are places in the world where dreams are almost dead'. Then one group would start performing after the other, like a chain reaction. Connor was on the floor in the middle of the room, trying to sleep with all the dreams filling up his head. Then, a few people from around the sides of the room would explore the space and as they touched each pair, they would slowly melt to the ground as if the dream had died. After this, Connor awoke from his sleep and looked around as we each began to perform our individual dream pieces that we devised. The aim was to make the performance almost look like a 'Dream Machine'. We all included sounds and repetitive movements which made it look like a more interesting factory machine. Eventually, Connor jumped up in the air and we all continued our routines in slow motion, as if all of the dreams were fading away. Still in slow motion, we moved into positions in the middle of the room. We all organised ourselves on different levels to create a huge 'Dinosaur' using physical theatre. Some people at the front used their arms to create the mouth, and others used their hands to represent the eyes opening and closing. I was one of the spikes in the middle of the dinosaur that swayed as the tail moved around at the back. At the end, we all pushed back and then forwards and let out a huge 'ROAR'. I think the children would enjoy this piece as it was very interesting and quite exciting to watch. Finally, we exit the stage from our dinosaur positions into the front row of the audience.