The book ‘The Tiger Who Came To Tea’ is a very popular children's book and a complete original which was first published in 1968. For our performance we had to recreate this book to suit our audience and tell the story using our voice, bodies and movements to get the story across and still keep our audience of little people fully focused, engaged and entertained.

In the performance I think that a lot went well, the first being that the performance was performed in the right style which was children's theatre I believe that children's theatre is any play, musical or type of performance that has been especially written or devised for children and has been adapted to suit them. The language and movements are a lot less complex and the performance is very energised with childlike themes. I think that the performance was very childlike and energetic throughout - an example of this is at the beginning when we first come on stage and we are exploring playing the objective to explore or to search, when on stage the energy  levels differ between high and low which is good as it keeps the children entertained and and helps them to not get distracted this also meant that we were able to successfully keep their attention. Our performance did consist of childlike themes especially towards the beginning when fenton was alone on stage and he was surrounded by tigers and asking the audience were the tigers were which was giving them an open opportunity to participate and make them feel included, this moment of the performance had a little bit of a pantomime feel to it as all movements were exaggerated for the audience's amusement and there was direct interaction with the audience - I think that this was a good idea as they are so young so if they feel included in the performance they are more likely to enjoy themselves and participate, to improve the performance in this sense maybe towards the latter of the performance we could have included some more interactions with the audience because towards the end it was as engaging as the beginning due to the lack of energy and the majority of us being un-confident towards the song we were to sing. Even though this was successfully a children's performance for little people their was some things that could have made it more fun for the children, one of these things was the song. The song was not at all for children one of the reasons is the fact that it was written in a previous English dialect that even i found hard to understand this means that the children would find it even harder, and watching something that you don't understand isn't entertaining because at some points they may have felt lost. With that feeling we could lose their focus however to improve this we changed the tune of the song to something more upbeat and less depressing, i think this helped us in the performance because even though they didn't understand what we were trying to say in the lyrics of the song, the tune and our movements kept them occupied and engaged enough to not lose focus. However even changing the tune of the song it still wasn’t suitable for children's theatre as it being written in 1794 it isn’t directed for modern day children's theatre performances and also the tune wasn't very catchy concluding to the fact i don't think that the audience will think of the song after the performance is finished.

In the performance you had to use certain skills to to suit the audience of little people and to make sure that the performance was very successful, one of the skills needed is to don't try to be cool or care what you look like because the performance is for children and if you are to care what you look like then you won’t be giving it 100% and giving the performance anything less then 100% will cause it and you as a performer to fail. In the performance i believe that we all gave it our best shot and put 100% into the performance because we were able to see and understand from previous rehearsals that doing anything less than committing 100% allows the performance to show weaknesses - this means that that the people watching the performances could notice the signs of weaknesses and immediately be uninterested so we had to put 100% and give the performance our all, we made the performance look like we were having fun so the little people would enjoy it too. Another we had to use to perform was a little improvisation, even though we had thoroughly rehearsed our performance we still had to have some elements of improvisation in the piece to keep the performance interesting and not make it look too scripted or unrealistic, an unnatural play is an uninteresting play so we made sure to do things at our own pace e.g. towards the beginning when we all come as explorers for the first time we don't know where we are going 100%, a little improvisation had been embedded to make the performance look less rehearsed it kept the little children eager to know what would happen next. However in the future we could add a little bit more of improvisation as the show was clearly rehearsed, this improvisation could be something to do with the idea i previously had with more interaction with the audience e.g. the explorers could go up the children and ask questions for example” have you seen the plant I'm looking for?” . This could give them the illusion they are really their.

When rehearsing for the final performance  think that myself and my fellow classmates responded to feedback very well an example of a change in my performance after feedback is energy. In the beginning my energy was usually kept at a constant pace I usually didn't change my energy level however now i constantly change my energy between high and low, this is vital because the energy change s what will draw the children in at the beginning of the performance - so a lack of this energy change would defeat the purpose of drawing them in as they won’t stay focused. Another way i have improved is the song in some ways i strongly believed that the song was going to be too difficult for little children to understand and i believed that the pace should have been faster and there was a number of rhetorical questions that may have been confusing for little kids - all these doubts reduced my confidence in the song which meant when performing it i wasn't giving it 100% to overcome my doubts i listened to my feedback and soon realised that the song was in some ways a hymn and is about the creation of greatness, an animal and heaven (did he who make the lamb make thee) I soon realised the pace at which we sung the song reminded me of a tiger walking and in term of pitch the structure was the same for each stanza; even though the repetitiveness could be seen as annoying it also could be catchy and the children would leave remembering our song.

In The Tiger Who Came To Tea I participated by becoming an explorer and playing the objective to search whilst playing this character, I was also apart of the human pyramid becoming successful. Each character being their own explorer with improvised and devised lines helped the creating and setting the scene for the piece - making the piece more believable.

In the performance you had to be an excellent children's performer and to do this you need to be a total performer and to be able to create a script and perform in different spaces e.g. rehearsal room or new theatre (play the space). You have to be energetic and have a positive attitude and be free to connect with your inner child, be able to adapt to the audience. Adapting to the audience is important because performing to children s not the same as performing to adults or people your own age as you will have difficulty connecting with them as  an audience that why you have to connect with your ‘inner child’ to be able to successfully give them what they want and allowing them to enjoy themselves. In the performance many things went well, we successfully built the pyramid which is something we had previous problems with, as we included the torches, it caught the little peoples attention and kept them engaged which is the top priority in children's theatre. We all used bold, bright movements and voice and body was in unison making sure we waited to feel the words instead of saying them for the sake of it (I am a slimy frog) in rehearsal was used to improve on this technique.

Things that didn't go too well was the song as we were still un-confident about it which then made the whole performance go downhill, also the tiger using the butterfly nets wasn't very reliable as the nets began to snap however we were able to pick up the performance even due to these things that didn't go too well on the performance day.Overall the performance went well overall but it also could have gone a lot better it did appeal to young children overall but certain aspects such as the song and they it was performed could have been improved but  enjoyed myself and the making of The Tiger Who Came To Tea.