Our first step was writing down as many children's books, authors, stories and films as we could think of. We came up with the following:
- ROALD DAHL: "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" / "Matilda" / "The Twits" / "Fantastic Mr Fox"
"James and the Giant Peach" / "George's Medicine".
- PANTOMIMES: "Peter Pan" / "Cinderella" / "Jack and the Beanstalk" / "Snow White" / "Aladdin"
"Beauty and the Beast" / "Dick Whittington
- DR SEUSS: "Lorax" / "Grinch" / "Cat in the Hat" / "Horton Hears a Hoo" / "Green Eggs and Ham"
- OTHER: "Mr Men" / "Horrid Henry" / "Flat Stanley" / Rudolph / Nursery rhyme compilation
One of the first ideas we got rid of was anything Christmas related, as we are doing a Christmas play in our Single PA lessons, and so we would quickly become fed-up of Christmas and could get confused. We also decided against any pantomimes, as we felt that the children we'd be performing to would have seen a (if not more than one) version of some of them. Moreover, we rejected ideas from our "Other" section as we didn't take any particular liking to any of these ones - we couldn't get much inspiration from them when discussing them. These cuts left us with Dr Seuss and Roald Dahl. Next, we narrowed the Dr Seuss section down to the "Grinch", as this one was the only one which we thought had potential for us. Despite it being festive, it would be very different from our "Flint Street Nativity" play, and we also could see a lot of potential in this piece. Out of the Roald Dahl section, we discarded "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" and "James and the Giant Peach" because they would exceed the time limit. Our favourite idea from our Roald Dahl section was "Fantastic Mr Fox" because it would allow us all to multi-roll and work as different characters. As almost all of the characters are animals, we would be able to challenge ourselves through these rolls. However, we did also like "Matilda" as it is based in a school and would be current for them.
Our top three favourite options were "Grinch", "Matilda" and "Fantastic Mr Fox". However, in the end we decided on "Fantastic Mr Fox" as this would be most enjoyable, challenging and more suitable for our target age group.We could not find any negatives in doing this piece which would put us off of it, therefore we have decided to go with "Fantastic Mr Fox". We are aware that it shall be a challenge what with having to act as animals but we are eager to give it a go! To make the piece appropriate to our young audience we shall ensure that any scenes that are tense and possibly upsetting (when Mr Fox has his tail blown off) we shall perform in a way where there still is a bit of tension but not enough to upset them. Moreover, we shall include a lot of audience participation to involve the children and to keep them interested and engaged. We could do this by having a narrator to speak to them directly.As we will be performing to children, I have researched some Theatre in Education companies. I looked into "The Take Away Theatre Company" (http://www.takeawaytheatre.co.uk/) to find out about performing to children. I looked under their pantomime section and learned that if we include up-to-date songs and lots of audience participation then the show would be more likely to be successful. Therefore, I think at some point we should include a song that they might know and put in as much audience participation as we can.
