Essay (Beautiful Things)

I think that the play 'beautiful thing' was a very effective piece and doesn't just entertain you as an audience but also makes you think about aspects within this world that we live in, it has a yearning sweetness between the two main boys; Jamie and Ste and is a captivating story of love between two young boys.
I think that the set design of the play was very naturalistic and because of this made you believe every word that came out of each of the characters' mouths. The set wasn't too complicated and only changes between outside their house and the bedroom inside the house, I think that the idea of little scene change is good idea because that means that myself as the audience doesn't have to wait long for scene changes also the little changes means that the places they describe, have to be described really well as they do not show to us for example they talked about a park multiple times in the play is left for our imagination to create and there's nothing better than watching a really good performance and leaving your imagination to run wild. They didn’t have any messy scene changes which is good as too many messy scene changes will spoil the the flow of the piece and therefore that is why it is best to keep the props and staging simple which they did leaving them to be slick and quick.
Their stage helped create the atmosphere of the piece and they used some props but not many, just enough to make it seem realistic an example of this is using a cigarette to portray Leah who is excluded from school and spends her free time perfecting her impersonation of ‘Mama Cass’. The atmosphere of the performance changes throughout the play however it was never dull whether it was Jaime and his mother having a row or Leah impersonating Mama Cass, it was never dull which is good because a dull performance is a bad performance. Having a simple set and having simple props added to the atmosphere due to their surroundings and where they lived and the way the Mother was obsessed with the plant that hung outside her front door and this small action added to the overall atmosphere of the piece.
In the piece the costumes that they wore added to nature - like atmosphere of the piece as they wore dark, dull colours it added to the atmosphere because if they wore bright colours that would have contrasted with the atmosphere of the performance. The lighting in the play was very natural the reason i think that they chose natural and non - dramatic lighting is because it made the audience be able to focus all over the stage as their was always something going on and also to indicate the time of day and place they were in. I think they used fresnel throughout most the performance especially when outside the house this is used for a softer edged effect. But when inside the room especially when both Jamie and Ste were inside they used Spotlighting a little to focus the audience's attention.
Ste lives his alcoholic father and is one day beaten so badly that Sandra take pity on him and lets him sleep over however throughout the performance the character of Ste’s father is never actually seen and I think that this is effective because we all have a stereotype of that character in out head and i believe that once again it allows our imagination to run wild and the sound effects to go with the drunken father, the breaking of things in their house and the laughing and/ or shouting of the football match and due to this we simply don’t need to see the father, these simple sound effects tell us all we need to know about the fathers character and the relationship he has with with Ste.
They spoke very informally the younger children spoke sometimes in slang using subtle code - switching an example of this is the continuous use of the word ‘queer’ instead of ‘gay’, their regional accents and dialect shows where they really come from and how the way the younger children talk is different from the way that the adults talk. It is effective because it shows how times have changed and how the adults speech is different to the kids speech and that it could be due to the way they are currently brought up differently. This technique sells the characters even more.
Overall I think that this was a very interesting play and i found myself not being able to stop watching it, it touch on issues that are very serious in the world we live in today and this means that they had to be very careful when devising the piece and I think they did just that. I found myself really empathising towards the characters and I found that they impacted me and made me feel and understand how they feel in this situation. The main moment of impact was when Ste and Jaimie first kissed i think that this was a moment of impact because throughout act 1 it was the moment that had been building up and even though a part of me knew that it was coming it was still a shock however knowing the background of Ste’s life we immediately feel happy for him and for Jaimie finding comfort in one - another and we can see how hard it was for the both of them to come to terms with what was happening between them. Especially due to the fact that when Jonathan Harvey play first came out 20 years ago the age of homosexuality consent was 18 and knowing that these boys are 15 makes it even harder for them.
In this piece the characters were Jaimie, Ste, Leah,Tony and Sandra and the main characters were Jamie and Ste and even though the main story was of love there was still the not - so - subtle conflict between Jamie and his mother and the fact he has no idea who his father is. Most of the characters were very believable especially Jamie and Ste who were tenderly naturalistic and believable however the characters of Sandra and Tony began to pursue those of a soap opera always emitting a sort of edgy flirtation and whose characters were more stereotypes and less believable because unlike Sandra and Tony the teenagers were touchingly vulnerable as they slowly found their way to love.

Lesson 1

What Is Children's Theatre?
Children's Theatre is any play, musical or performance that has been specifically written or devised for children and has been adapted to be suitable for children, the language and movements are less complex so that the children are always able to understand what is going on and always be fully engaged because if at any point the children lack understanding of the performance they immediately loose interest - and children who have lost interest in something are restless. Also the performance is very energised and moves along very quickly because having a slowly paced performance with little energy not only would children but any types of audiences will loose interest and become bored.

What Skills Does It Take To Be Good

• Don't try and be cool and care about what you look like because in doing so you will only think of things that will prevent you from working at your full potential, so when performing just do it right and don't care about what you look like, or if you are being judged, its the audiences privilege to judge.
• Commit and give it 100%, once you have started do not stop, give it everything you have got and put everything into it because if you put half and half it will come out a ball of rubbish, to be successful you start at 100% and you end on the same way, if you go down hill then so will the performance but if you stay 100% committed then your performance will be successful.
• Don't think, feel, just feel what's right and if it goes it will flow, the more you think about what you do, it will be over analysed and won't be natural, and a performance or exercise that doesn't look natural isn't a good performance.
• Use sounds in exercises, it doesn't have to be words, don;t concentrate on saying the words of the performance concentrate on the sound and making different noises, and experimenting to see which sounds best or most interesting as you are never going to learn anything new if you don't experiment a few time and things wrong and right, learn from yourself.
• Improvise don't repeat the same thing again because like previously mentioned there is nothing worse than looking unnatural or looking as if you are forcing something on - be in the moment.

To be an excellent children's performer you need to be a total performer and be able to successfully create a script that is suited for and will entertain young children otherwise in defeats the whole purpose of the script., be able to devise a piece that is set to be performed in the new theatre and can be seen on all three sides. You have to be extremely energetic to keep the children focused and entertained at all time during the whole performance. One really important factor is that you need to be positive and have a positive attitude towards who your working with and children, you need to be able to make big, bold and clear movements that could be exaggerated throughout because that may be seen as funny and silly to a child and could keep them entertained for longer. Be controlled and engaging and have a lot of eye contact with the audience to make them feel really apart of the performance and the experience.

Voice and Body in unison is very important in theatre because they are not two separate things, they are one both controlled by each other and when say something or acting something it is always best and most effective for your body to be in total sync with your voice so both are giving if the correct messages to the audience and that everyone is able to understand the performance properly, if your voice and body is not in unison, especially for little kids they could not get confused which leads to restlessness.