Snow Queen Performance Review

 We performed the Snow Queen on two different occasions- one to the pre-school children from the College's nursery and also to 

 I believe that our set worked really well in the Snow Queen. The forest and the palace were my favourite pieces of set as they worked really well. I liked the colour schemes that we used in our set of silver and white BUT I do feel  as though we could've made this colour scheme stronger by using it in the Flower Garden scene. This would make it clearer that the entire 'land' is under the power of the Snow Queen. I also believe that our costumes worked well- particularly the Snow Queen. Her dress was perfect for the part and so was her cape as they were both elegant and fit with the colour scheme of the Snow Queen- blue,white and silver. I believe all of our costumes made sense and suited the characters which they were used for. For example- the flower witch and her children each wore flower print dresses, the royal family wore 'smart' looking dresses and clothes, the robbers wore all black and the Snow Queen, of course, looked amazing. The only characters I feel like we could've improved were Kai, Gerda and Grandma's. They just looked like everyday clothes and although, kai and Gerda were just normal children, I believe we should have researched the context of the Snow queen more thoroughly to ensure we had the right period of costume- which, of course, we didn't. The Grandma's scarf looked good and so did her woolly clothes but I believe she should have been wearing a pair of glasses to make her look even more of a stereotypical Grandmother. Apart from acting, I believe that overall our costume, make up and set were our stand out areas and I believe this was important as it allowed our young audience to identify the setting and characters easily.

 There were a few things that didn't go to plan on the day but there was nothing major. On our first performance, in front of the young nursery children, Beth (Gerda) slipped over on stage. However, she managed to stay in role and didn't let it faze her which looked very good. There was also a few problems with lighting when Gerda and the Crow are travelling- the lights came up on the Snow palace instead of coming up in a wash. However, we carried on as normal and all turned out fine. On our second performance, we performed in front of the year 13s and Rachel's children. In the very first scene, Polly's mind went blank when she is telling the story but me and Gerda helped her out by asking her questions to help her remember her lines. They helped slightly but Polly's mind was blank so we skipped past the story and finished the scene. I believe this was the right thing to do to ensure the performance still looked slick and to ensure it didn't look as though Polly had forgotten her lines. During this performance, Rachel's son got up and got very involved in the piece which was very challenging but it was good as it tested us on our knowledge and understanding of our target audience- young children. He stood up and confronted the Snow Queen (Lizzy). Lizzy was PERFECT. She gave him perfect answers and in the end persuaded him to go and sit back down. I think I could have been better at dealing with young audience as I lost concentration and was close to coming out of character. I was too scared to interact too much with the audience in case I lost concentration totally. 

 We had to adapt certain parts of the performance to tailor it to the audience. For example, we had to ensure that we didn't use the words 'stab', 'death' or 'kill' as these words are all very violent and emotional and wouldn't be suitable to use in front of children as young as 18 months old. For each performance, we had to change aspects of the performance as the two audiences were very different. Our first performance to the nursery children didn't involve as much direct address to the audience as the children were very young and we knew that they might not be able to respond. However, on the 2nd performance, with the year 13s we knew that they would be very vocal and it was going to involve them as much as possible. For example, Beth gave Rachel's little girl the teddy bear to look after at the beginning of the journey and the robbers went right up to audience during their scene- using direct address and eye contact. I believe that next time we could ask the audience even more questions- even if they are young because the more you ask, the better the reaction you will get. For example, the more questions you ask them, the more confident they will get in reacting to questions and therefore they will enjoy it more. We didn't really have any last minute changes other than the decision to not use the sleigh. The Snow Queen (Lizzy)'s costume involved a very long 'cape' and it just wasn't suitable for her to travel round in the sleigh as it would've looked clumsy and chances are, her cape would've fallen off! This was a wise decision but if I were to do the performance again, I would make the sleigh bigger or with a 'door' so that getting into it wouldn't have been such an issue.