Polka Theatre

Polka Theatre is a charity based organisation dedicated to producing engaging and exciting theatre for children ages 0 to 14. Every year over 90,000 children come to Polka and are inspired, stimulated and engaged by theatre, often for the first time. Its two theatre spaces, the Main Theatre and the Adventure Theatre are designed especially for children so that their first taste of theatre is welcoming and relevant. Over the past few years Polka has developed its Early Years work and established itself as a centre for innovation in this field. Children as young as 9 months and their families are brought into a colourful and stimulating environment where simple stories are told in a sensory and visual way. They use puppetry and costume to keep the young audience engaged and to ensure they understand what is happening. The facility also offers a range of activities such as a dress up box, puppets, story books and a play ground for the children to enjoy. They even offer all this for free so anyone can enjoy the facilities and shows.

The main objective of Polka’s work is a programme of learning that encourages children to explore and develop their creativity. Every Polka show is supported by a learning programme. Schools visiting the theatre can benefit from online free resource packs and rehearsal diaries, show-related workshops and after-show talks. Polka embraces family learning and encourages it through exciting family days, after-show events and show-related activities packs. It also runs a regular programme of out-of-school clubs and summer schools giving children the freedom to explore their creativity and learn a wide-range of performance skills from storytelling to puppetry.

Children's Books- Calm Down Boris

Calm down Boris is a book for children about a little furry monster who is really affectionate towards anyone but his fur is too soft so when he kisses people it is uncomfortable for the people. The story line progresses to the point where everyone in the story is staying away from Boris, but then a big dog comes in and scares all the other monsters except Boris who runs up the the dog trying to kiss it which scares the dog and runs away. This heroic act makes every other monster like Boris and give him kisses. The book is very short and simple so the children can follow the story and not get bored. The book also includes a puppet of Boris for the reader to use and engage the child further.

Staging Ideas

We wanted to have our audience semi in the round so we can get closer to audience and interact with the more which will keep them engaged and therefore entertained. This will be the basic staging for Little red Riding Hood however we will have a screen at the back of the stage so when we do Goldilocks we just pushed the screen forward set the lights up and perform it. For Jack and the Beanstalk we will push the screen back and roll on a tower to be our beanstalk, that is our general idea of staging for Jack and the Beanstalk.

Goldilocks

We have created the story of goldilocks through the medium of silhouette and physical theatre. As Freya is playing Goldilocks we use her as the narrator of the story, we use a narrator so the children understand the story, stay engaged and are therefore entertained. I feel the main problem we face as a group is the transition in and out of different frames, we need to be more elegant in the transition because as it stands I feel it looks very rough and not good to watch so I fear it will lose the children's interest. This is a personal target for me as I need to practice rolling on and off more elegantly. I also feel like there needs to be a small piece of music with every transition so there isn't an awkward pause of nothing but the sound of us moving. 

Our original plan was to perform in other schools however we have recently changed it and are planning on performing in our own school and have the children come to us. This allows us to rehearse on our own stage and ensure that nothing can go wrong. 

My personal targets for next lesson is to remain focused and concentrate on what I'm doing as that can waste time and slow down the process of creating our piece.

Ideas for Goldilocks

As we didn't want to repeat the same method of storytelling that we used for little red riding hood. We discussed other methods of storytelling. Our three favourites methods were physical theatre, silhouettes and puppetry. I really like the idea of using puppets but that led some complications like where we going to get the puppets, are we going to make them and how much is this going to cost? We decided to combine the physical theatre and silhouette as they pretty much go together, we also thought that silhouette will entertain the children, which is the purpose of our piece. We also used a lesson getting familiar with acting in shadow by creating a performance of a gay love story. This got us familiar with silhouette and made us think outside the box in order to create this story.

Red Riding Hood 2nd half

Little red and the Wolf then talk, Red tells the wolf that she is going to a grandmother's house. When the Wolf tells red about a shortcut The wolf shakes his head so the children know he is lying. With every scene change we have narration to explain what's happening next so the children can follow the story and not get lost. We then use physical theatre to create grandmas front door and bed. In the original stories to grandma is eaten by the wolf followed shortly by red only to be saved by the woodcutter. We have change this because we didn't feel comfortable showing children are wolf eating an elderly woman and a child. Instead we have the wolf hiding the grandmother under the bed and the wolf doesn't eat red but the treats that were for her grandmother, we feel this is more appropriate for children.

Red Riding Hood 1st half

We decided to open with Narration (a story telling technique) as this will grab the attention of the audience and we can build the character of Little Red. We then have a part where Red is looking for her basket and it is behind her, this will get some audience participation that will hold the children's attention. After Red has her basket we all sing a song about Red going to deliver treats to her sick grandmother the use of music should entertain the children and hold their attention.

After we skip off, we become trees and as the big bad wolf comes past us we become afraid. We then introduce the wolf with another song of Mr grinch (Mr wolf) The use of the song will entertain the children and hold their attention. Then little red comes back on stage, the wolf hides behind a tree and Little red announces she is lost to the audience. We then have a comedic moments where red walks from stage left to stage right but always walking towards the wolf as the wolf keeps running in front of her hopefully this will get someone audience interaction as the children will tell little red which way to go. I feel however that we need to go over this as without the mirror there the trees can't see where the Wolf is and so won't point in the right direction and our timing is always off, I feel we need to reassess how we going to do this. 

Once we organise this moment, red then gives up and notices a flower, as she bends over to pick up the flower the Wolf walks up behind her to grab her but she bends over and he misses. When red stands back up, she hits him in the face with her basket, this will make the children laugh.

Research - Silhouette

The general workings of a silhouette is the use of shadow to create a story. This happens by a back light being shone on a sheet and when people/object block the light they create a shadow. These shadows are then manipulated to form different shapes on the sheet which in turn visually shows a story.

The shadows are affected by a range of variables, for example the proximity between you and the light source, the angle in which your body is in and the placement of the light source all can change the shape and size of your shadow. The closer to the light source the bigger shadow is cast yet the shadow will be unfocused and the outline will be blurred, the closer to the sheet the smaller the shadow but the shadow's outline won't be blurred.

Children's Stories - The Very Hungry Caterpillar

The Very Hungry Caterpillar is a children's story about a caterpillar who ate a lot and then became a beautiful butterfly. The book involves a lot of pictures to visually show the children what the caterpillar is eating and therefor engages the children. Each page of the book has only one simple sentence on so the story isn't too complicated for the child to read and loose interest in. The book is also repetitive "On ... he ate through ... but he was still hungry." this helps the child associate the words that change to the picture and learn what things are, due to the pictures that take up the majority of the page.

The Opening

As a group, we thought about how we were going to get the wow factor at the start. We decided to start with a boring assembly hosted by two 'teachers' (Freya and Toby) but this assembly is interrupted by two other characters (Tom and Meg) who have found a 'big book full of stories'. We wanted to start boring so that the children are more excited to watch our stories. Tom and Meg then ask the audience if they want to hear some stories and can they help them wake-up Toby and Freya by using the magic words. This audience interaction grabs the attention of our audience and keeps the children paying attention while we open the show. Once Freya and Toby have been awaken and are enthusiastic about the stories, another technique to get the children excited about the stories, Meg offers three story titles that we could tell the children at each one either Tom, Freya or Toby act out a memorable moment from it (i.e. Freya pricks her finger then falls asleep, Toby calls for Rapunzel to let down her hair and Tom jumps, becomes a merman and flops on the floor a bit) all of these stories Meg finds a reason not to tell it. This adds some funny moments that the kids will enjoy and therefor will remain interested in the performance. We then have Freya, Toby and Tom all pointing in the book and asking for "that story" and Meg agrees. Since we don't tell the audience what the story is, they will still be captivated by what is happening on stage and wait to find out what story we are telling.

I really like our opening, I like the way it involves a lot of interaction with the audience to keep them engaged. I also like its simplicity in that there isn't a big musical number with a complicated dance and over the top lighting techniques as that, I feel, would be too much for the performance. My biggest worry is that the funny moment of Freya, Toby and Tom acting out moments from other story's wont get a reaction and we will loose the focus of our audience from the start. So I think that if after our first performance it doesn't get a reaction we should take that moment out and skip straight to Freya, Toby and Tom all pointing in the book and asking for "that story" and moving straight into our first story.

Pitching Our Stories

After doing research into our stories we each got the chance to pitch a story. I pitched the story of the golden goose but everyone agreed the story was too long and boring so it was vetoed. We also had the suggestion of the stories Thumbelina and "Cap-O'-Rushes" but I didn't understand the stories and everyone thought they sounded boring so we didn't do them either. We decided to do the stories Goldilocks, Red Riding Hood and Jack and the Beanstalk because they were familiar stories that we could easily adapt to entertain kids with.