2nd July Thursday – Rehearsal

During this lesson we had a chance to go to the new theatre where our piece was being performed and learn what time we were going to be coming on and off stage. We also had a chance to run through our piece in the theatre and watch the other Theatres class’ performance.

Before going into the new theatre, we had about an hour to run through our piece to sharpen up sections in our performance.

Once we got into the new theatre, each strand in the school was told when to come on and off stage and we ran through the staging during this time. This was helpful because it avoided having any confusion on the day as everyone would know when to come on and off of stage.

After all the other strands left, our theatre strand was given some time to run through and practice our piece in the actual performance space as well as being able to watch the other theatre class’ performance.

As a result, our performance run through was a bit rough. As our piece was being performed as a collective group, things such as people not being bothered to put all their energy and effort in when others did made the piece look silly.  As our piece is also very different to the other theatre class’ performance, many people compared our piece to theirs saying how theirs was better because it had more singing and dancing.

I personally believe it’s unfair to compare two pieces of theatre which are completely different in style as our approach was different to theirs. Even though I believe our overall piece could be stronger by having people put more effort in and maybe adding more sections to our piece, it’s important to remember our target audience isn’t teenagers, but young children. Our aim is to tell our audience a story, to get them to understand the message and enjoy it.

In this aspect I believe we have the perfect style of theatre; physical theatre. There is no better way of telling children a story than with the use of music and movement as well as colours. That is what our piece is and as long as all of our effort and energy is put in during the performance, it doesn’t matter what anyone thinks of it other than the children.

They are the target audience, so their opinion is what will matter.