Today was an extremely important lesson! We read through the snow queen, decided which parts we wanted to put in our piece, made a synopsis and tried our different ideas out!
To start with we read through the Snow Queen for the first time! It wasn't the ENTIRE snow queen play as Rachel had written the main parts of the story as we are performing to nursery children which means we don't want the piece to be too long. The play tells the story of a girl called Gerda and her travel to find her friend Kai who has been stabbed by the Snow Queen- his heart turned to ice and everything he sees that is good turns to evil! She travels through many different places (including Lapland!) and meets many people which include a Flower Witch, a Prince and Princess, a Crow, a Finn Woman and of course- the Snow Queen! We listed all the characters in the play and all the different settings and eventually decided what parts of the play we were going to put into our piece. We also put in transitions of movement between each scene! We thought that this movement sequence could be portrayed by puppets! Gerda will be shown travelling from each 'world' in different ways! Below I'll write which way she will travel. We decided that we should have 6 scenes:
Scene 1) Grandma telling story to Gerda and Kai/ Goblins break mirror/ Snow Queen stabs Kai
(Transition- Gerda walking up the river.)
Scene 2) Gerda meets the Flower Witch
(Transition- Gerda is walking)
Scene 3) Gerda meets the Prince and Princess and befriends a helpful Crow!
(Transition- Gerda is flying on the crow)
Scene 4) Gerda is robbed but befriends the Robber Girl and meets the Reindeer
(Transition- Gerda rides Reindeer)
Scene 5) Gerda visits the Finn Woman
(Transition- Gerda climbs up the ice)
Scene 6) Gerda saves Kai
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After this, we got into little groups and put together our own ideas for a certain scene. Me, emily and Sarah put together a short piece which could be used as the Flower Witch. Emily was the Flower Witch, Sarah was Gerda and I was the Flower Witch's young son. We created a background story for the Flower Witch and her son which helped shape the scene and help the audience understand the Flower Witch and what she does! Basically, The Flower Witch has one son called Joey (obviously). Their husband was eaten by an evil flower (they live in flower land- there are flowers EVERYWHERE and there are thousands of species. The Flower Witch is very lonely and she's desperate to make her family bigger. I think that our use of the background was effective and I think she would definitely incorporate this into our piece. For example, her son says to her 'Are you lonely. I mean you've tried to kidnap so many girls' and the flower witch snaps! It's clear that this is a sensiive spot for the witch and that she's tried to take girls before- not just Gerda. She puts a spell on Gerda but the scent of Roses reminds Gerda of Kai and she snaps out of the charm! The Flower Witch is devastated but her son is relieved. I also liked the idea of the Flower Witch having a son- it allows us to put in the background story and I genuinely think that the ideas we created should be used in our actual piece. We also added music to the piece to enhance the mood. We used a serious piano piece to emphasise Gerda's realisation that she was looking for Kai (when The Flower Witch and her son are in bed). It was effective in giving the scene a sense of hope and relief! However, next time i think we should look into music more in depth to make sure the music choice is perfect and more slow and serious than the one we used!
After this the class split into two groups and we had to do a different scene- my group of myself, max, matt, sarah, lizzie and abbey. We chose to do Finn Woman's scene. We decided to use 'gossip' and 'rumours' to create suspense surrounding the Finn woman. We (max, me and abbey) used this at the beginning of the scene and spoke about how we had heard that she had 'killed 10 men because they refused to eat her stew' which was supposedly 'made out of her dead husband'! It gave background information which was important (we found today that background information is in fact extremely important to create an interesting and believable story) because it set up the story and allowed us to create tension in anticipation of what the Finn Woman was REALLY like. I also liked the cheeky characters of the villagers who encouraged Gerda to go and see the Finn woman- the way they looked at each other as if to say 'Let's trick her'. I think it made the piece seem more realistic....which in a way is good as it will allow the audience of young kids to relate to the cheekiness of the characters. I also liked the way we presented the Finn Woman herself- Lizzie used a sophisticated and evil-sounding voice which was very effective. She sounded intellectual for example when she said 'There is no power I can grant you that will make you more powerful'!! I feel that our ideas for the characters in this scene were really good and should be used in our main performance.
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