Double - Children's Theatre (FMF) - Blog 12 - 23/11/15

Today we went through how we would perform, "The Great Feast," scene. At first, we made a plan for what we wanted to have done with this scene. We wanted to have a lot of physical theatre including lifts, Round-By-Through and paired jump work (leap frogs) then followed by some dialogue and end on a song. We started work on the physical theatre first.

We initially thought of having characters enter individually or in small groups of 2 or 3 to make the scene very fast paced and create a great deal of excitement for the audience. This included running, Round-By-Through, and jumps. We then changed it to this:

• Rabbit, Badger, Mole (Me/Ollie/Rob) enter with tables (little stools). Rob centre, Lewis right, Ollie left.
• Mrs Fox and a Fox Cub (Rhiannon/Lorna) enter with trays and place them on the stools (Lorna goes to Lewis, Rhiannon goes to Ollie)
• Ollie/Lewis steps through Rhiannon/Lorna and then spins them around to face the front.
• Ollie gets on all fours and Lewis leapfrogs him, then Lorna and Rhiannon spin round him.
• Mr Fox and a Fox Cub (Charlie/James) enter. Charlie steps on the last stool in the centre and Ollie and I flank the stage to get behind him and lift him from under his arms forwards. Meanwhile James runs to Lorna and Rhiannon (his character's mum and sister.)
• Rob and Lewis go off to side as a pair. Charlie shakes badgers hand.

This then leads onto the dialogue. We hadn't spent much time on this but we imagined everyone cheering and celebrating, Mr Fox proposing  a toast and then a smooth transition into a song (e.g. "And you can't have a feast without a good old sing song!")

For a while we debated which song we'd use for, "The Great Feast." At first we thought, "Food Glorius Food," from the musical Oliver! but we decided that instead we'd use, "You've Got A Friend In Me," by Randy Newman which was in Toy Story. We felt that more children would've seen Toy Story than Oliver! so the chances of them knowing the words and joining in were much higher.

We also included a lot of movement to the song too:

• During the first verse, Mr Foxs sing in an attempt to get Badger in the mood to dance and sing but at first fails. But after laying across him, Badger gets up and gets more energetic.
• During the second verse, The Fox Cubs share a moment to display their strong sibling bond by singing together.
• During the third verse, Rabbit sings, "Some other folks might be a little bit smarter than I am," while pointing to Moles head. Then Mole sings, "Bigger and Stronger too, maybe," and points to Rabbits flexed biceps. Mrs Fox proceeds to Mr Fox whilst singing the rest of the verse and when she sings, "It's me and you," she kisses him on the cheek followed by some jeering and wolf-whistles from the other animals.
• For the last verse,  Mr Fox continues singing whilst walking to the front. On, "And as the years go by," his wife and the cubs join him in a line. On, "Our friendship will never die," the rest of the animals join in the line. On the first, "You've got a friend in me," afterwards, Rabbit, Mole and Badger walk to the back. On the second. The Fox Cubs run to the back. On the third, Mr and Mrs Fox walk to the back. The song shall fade out with waves and goodbyes from the animals.