Today we did two more performances for the children of Broad water school. These were year 1 children compared to the year 2 children the day before. I felt during these performances the children were calmer and listened better to what we said rather than rushing around the entire set rummaging through boxes.
Today we tested out our new idea/element to our story which was taking out the 'Mystery Box' and instead having multiple different coloured keys around the space and one golden key that the children would have to find. As acting on previous feedback the children said they enjoyed looking/searching around the space for things. This worked better to our advantage as it meant the children were more controlled and didn't create such as mess as they did previously with the 'Mystery Box'. Also by changing to the coloured keys it helped keep pace where as when we had the mystery box pace slowed down and then meant there was a lot of silence and pauses. Meaning the children started to get bored and fiddle with the wrapping paper taking parts off.
Another change we incorporated into our piece was more narration over the video clip of 'The Story stealers backstory'. Originally this was just done by the wizard -Harry. However, Harry said he found it difficult to narrate over the clips when they were longer than was comfortable. Therefore, we had Fran - The Story Stealer' come out from behind the curtain and narrate with Harry. Creating more dialogue and interactions between characters. By having all the characters onstage at one time it was very exciting for the children as they got to see the dynamic of having different kinds of characters and how we all interacted with one another. A few comments here and there were "Its the story stealer!" "The wizard and the Story Stealer are in the same room!" "What will the story stealer do to the boxes?"
A final thing we changed was instead of having one of the golden keys hanging from the suspended circle. We had it completely attached in the centre of the circle with blue tac. This is because in our previous performances the children were finding it before we had even begun our story meaning they were instantly distracted and not paying as much attention to us as they should have been. By having is stuck in the centre it meant we had to instruct the children to do different things in these performances. For example, instead of just looking around we got the children to lay down on the floor and look up towards the ceiling. This created a moment of calm but also made it interesting as the children had to do different things physically instead of just standing the entire time.
Overall, these two performances were more controlled than the previous ones.
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