Double - Children's Theatre (FMF) - Blog 11 - 20/11/15

Today we got a lot of work done! We started off with our focus exercise and ewe then ran through, "The Race," scene so that we were all comfortable with it.

We next decided to get devising as we still had multiple scenes multiple scenes to devise. We started with, "Boggis' Chicken House Raid." This scene starts after , "Starvation Starts & Mr Fox Has A Plan." We added a great deal of movement in the transition into, "Chicken House Raid." This included ducking (under fences), dodging (bees), sneaking (past watch dogs) and stretching (to reach ledges). During this we would use the song, "Sneaky Snitch." This piece of music is perfect for this scene as it embodies its mystery and sneakiness.

After this, we'd portray a large jump up to the warehouse from below. Following this jump, the foxes look in absolute awe! They look around in complete fascination and gather the chickens. At this time, I would provide live chicken noises, calm when the foxes first arrive and frantic when the foxes start gathering them. I feel the addition of live chicken noises will amuse the audience a lot and provide a much more involved atmosphere. Also, using live sound effects is lot less risky than using recorded audio as the files may corrupt or the hardware may be unreliable. This scene then transitions into, "A Surprise For Mrs Fox."

After, "A Surprise For Mrs Fox," is "Bunce's Duck House." We decided that this scene would be exactly the same as, "Boggis' Chicken House Raid," but it would be sped up. While in the first raid the whole process is longed out to illustrate the foxes actually jumping over fences and bushes, this time the same level of descriptive action isn't need; this also furthers the narrative.

The part we spent the majority of our lesson doing was the final raid: "Bean's Cider Cellar Raid." The basic scene outline that we have so far goes like this:

• Mr Fox (Charlie) and Fox Cub (James) decide that they must raid Bean's cider cellar for drinks to go with their feast.
• In their travels, they meet Rabbit (Me), Mole (Rob), and Badger (Ollie) and all offer to help!
• They continue sneaking to the cider cellar and they all jump up, individually, to the cellar. They all look up at the countless amount of jars in awe.
• They sneak around in formation (pictured right) in order to find the best cider bottle in the entire cellar!
• They get caught by Rat (Lorna). She queries their presence.
• Mr Fox threatens Rat and she runs away.

This is all we have for now.

For, "Boggis' Chicken House Raid," Lorna has painted some chickens which will be very effective props. Also, Ollie has written up all of his narration for the scenes we went through in this lesson.