We performed Sleeping Beauty 18 times to Primary School, and we then had 2 evening shows for the public. Over these shows, a lot went well but there were also many issues that we experienced.
Our first show, was the show to the SEN school. I had been anxious about this, simply because I didn’t know how the children were going to react, as well as the fact it was our opening show. We had to make alterations to the music and the lighting for this show, to keep it as relaxed as we could. However, the audience loved it! They were very interactive with us, clearly engaged in our production. They were a very loud audience, however this just made us more energetic and excited to perform. I think I did very well in my first show, despite being nervous about it. I was aware the whole time, and charismatic, which encouraged audience responses of laughter.
However, something that I struggled with in every show I was the Queen for, was getting out of costume after the death scene. Right after the Queen dies, I have to be on stage as a dog, so each show I had seconds to change. It wasn’t possible to fully change my costume in that time, so what I did was when I left stage, I would run through the green room and go back stage, taking off my shawl and necklace and putting the dog hat on. If I had time, I took my heels off and put jazz shoes on, however I never had time to take my skirt off. This did cause confusion for the children, as they had just seen me as the Queen, and I was still recognisable because of the skirt.
I really liked how I played my character in the end, particularly in the King and Queen scene. Me and Zac had a lot of fun performing this scene each day, as the audiences always loved it and would interact with us. This scene was never the same, because sections in it depending on how the audience responded, and my reactions to Zac were often affected by the audience. We also got to ad-lib a lot here, because lines were improvised. I have never had the opportunity to ad-lib in a performance, so I really enjoyed the spontaneous nature of it.
We had a few technical issues with the music throughout the run of our show. There was one time, just before the show was about to begin when Jess told me her music wasn’t working. I then had to run to find a technician who could solve this, and the issue was resolved. This didn’t affect the performance, but we were really worried that we wouldn’t find a way to fix it, and if we couldn’t then we would have had to use percussion for the whole show. An issue we encountered in one show, was that there was no music in the Everybody needs a Nanna song, due to a technical issue. This had happened previously, but only in rehearsals, so it was never an issue. However, in this one show the music never started right before the song, and we couldn’t communicate with anyone about it as we were on stage. Me, Zac and the Nannas who were all onstage at the time, had to improvise and expand on the scene before the song. We didn’t know if or when the music was going to start, but we problem solved the situation by continuing the scene, with Zac saying the princess didn’t need nannas and me disagreeing. Eventually, Jess counted us into the song, but there was still no music. We only had percussion to accompany us, and to make up for the loss of sound, we all sung a lot louder, to cover up the fact that something had gone wrong. I don’t think that the audience suspected anything had gone wrong, due to how we all stayed in character despite the panic, and we adjusted to the issue by not blocking each other’s improvisation.
A problem we faced as a company in the two weeks of performing, was that quite a lot of our cast were ill throughout production. This meant that we had to re-arrange a lot of the ensemble sections that were necessary. I ended up bringing on some of the branches in the scene where the Prince is talking to the people in the hedge, as Kayla was ill. However, seconds before this I had to collect the umbrellas from the nannas, so it was a rush for me to make it in time to go on-stage. I also had no rehearsal for this, so I didn’t know the timing to go on or off stage, I had to follow Holly to keep the production running smoothly.
A specific scene I am proud of, was the Queen’s death scene. In this, I would walk across the stage, stopping for Finley to remove my crown. I would then continue down the stage and exit through the bottom right vom. In the performances, my director told me that this scene looked beautiful, and was very moving. I am very proud of this, and I made the moment emotional by looking at Finley as he walked away from me, symboling my characters death.
Overall, our performances went really well. Even when we received quiet audience, we still continued performing consistently with energy, the same as we would when our audience was very interactive with us. I have throughly enjoyed this project, and I have learnt so many skills about how to perform children’s theatre.
Izzy’s Year 2 Blog 