Workshop Plan + Evaluation

Workshop Planning:

 

During the week after our performance we will be travelling in small groups to local primary schools to lead a workshop. The children we will be working with would've been to see 'Hamelin'.

My group consists of myself, Louie, Dan, Rebecca and Chloe. There's two from dance, one from CAP, one from Musical Theatre and then me, from Theatre.
 

Our groups will have one person from each strand and we have 5 minutes each to create a short workshop based around our particular skill set, for example, I'll run an acting exercise, someone from Musical theatre might teach a song to the children and someone from dance, can help teach them one of the 'rat dances' from 'Hamelin'.

Introduction
 Firstly, we plan to introduce ourselves, and what parts we played in the performance, and create a friendly atmosphere for the kids to feel comfortable to ask questions and participate.

 

 

First Exercise
 Firstly, we're going to act out different emotions, for example different ways of showing how a happy character might behave, a sad, or angry character. As a group we've talked about how we're going to get the kids to walk around the room, 'exploring the space' and giving us different emotions. 
 

Second Exercise

We'll the kids into groups, and act out different characters from the play, testing out different hierarchy and status', for example the King and Queen Rat, and then the Mayor of 'Hamelin' compared to the market workers. This will hopefully get the children engaged, and thinking about the different characters in the performance, and a chance to tell us who their favourite characters were. I will mainly run the first two exercises, as they are acting orientated.

Third Exercise

Louie, and Chloe, who are from Dance, will then lead a short workshop on the dance of the rats, and will firstly demonstrate them a snippet of the dance, and then engage with them in learning it, in small groups, and hopefully some children will feel comfortable in performing it to us afterwards. Dan, who is from Musical Theatre, will also help with this.

Final Exercise:
Rebecca, from CAP, will lead a discussion in which the children will sit around in a circle and talk about the performance, what they enjoyed, what bits they found funny, and what questions they want to ask us. This will nicely round off what has hopefully been a successful workshop for the children.
 
Our workshop went really well, the kids were really engaged and asked loads of questions, and were really excitable, we had to calm them down so they could focus  but all in all it was really lovely meeting them, and seeing their reactions to our performances we'd worked so hard on.

Performance Evaluation

Performance Evaluation

We did our performances of 'Hamelin' at the Ashcroft theatre in Fairfield Halls, on 2nd and 3rd of July, and it went fantastically. I was thoroughly proud of myself and the whole cast, I think we did a great job.

On the 3rd of July, we did three performances in one day, which would naturally be tiring anyway, but especially as our piece was so physically and vocally demanding. Because we were aiming our piece to be a children, family orientated piece, it was a challenge, to keep up energy for all three performances but it went so well, and we had such a great reaction from the children. Before our show began, we had our pre set, which included us walking on the stage, one by one, and it was so exciting being on stage and holding our positions, as we heard the children shuffling in their seats, really bubbly and happy.

The energy was able to be maintained because of the adrenaline, and excitement we felt before it began, and during. I think we achieved what we set out to, and excelled it, because of the reaction we got from the audience, and the happiness we saw from their faces. It was so fantastic and self rewarding, and a wonderful way of reminding us exactly why we set out to do this performance.

It also really excited all of us to do our workshops, and meet the children who came to see it.