T.I.E Process

The process for this Theatre In Education Collaboration Task lasted for 9 weeks. We created many of the scenes without a script, which made us much more aware of our stage business and our dialogue simultaneously.

We first started off by determining which fairytale to use, this was chosen by reading a synopsis of most common stories like Jack and the Beanstalk, Pinocchio, Cinderella, Hansel and Gretel and etc. When we all came to final conclusion we decided to adapt Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs to a theme suitable for a younger audience. This required research and consultation with the primary teachers in order to determine a common objective that we wanted to educate the students about. When speaking to the Year 4 teachers, our group had the spark to create our T.I.E Performance about friendship.

Once we had the common objective being friendship (to work together and resolve problems without causing conflict) we created a story timeline of the scenes that part-took in the original fairytale and adapted it to fit our group of 4. This group of 4 consisted of myself, Grace, Krish and Melissa, as we are the only IB Theatre Students. The timeline was an introduction to the dwarfs dancing to the song "Heigh Ho" in the original Snow White movie, then an introduction to the Evil Queen followed by an introduction to Snow White. Then the story progressed into the dwarfs coming back, after a tiring day at the mine, only to return to their home in a mess as Snow White didn't finish her day of chores. This led onto Snow White convincing the dwarfs to do it for her and the dwarfs kindly agree as they are all friends. After the chores were nearly done Snow White goes out to the woods to pick some apples and the dwarfs are left at home, brining them to a discussion about how Snow White was mistreating them. They then leave the house on a search to find Snow White. We then transition back into the Evil Queen's plan on capturing Snow White to be the "fairest of them all" by creating a poisonous apple to feed Snow White. She takes this plan of hers and transform herself into a Witch and follows Snow White into woods, who is so innocently picking apples and smelling flowers. The Witch captures Snow White and her scream can be heard all the way from the house which set the dwarfs on a quest to find her. As they are confused and don't know which way to go they break out into a fight scene with slapstick comedy thumb-wrestling between the dwarfs. Once they realise that fighting is not the solution to their problems they transform into a Game Show to resolve their issues. When the Game Show ends, they continue their Quest to find Snow White which a series of physical theatre that consists of jumping over blocks, crawling on the floor and climbing to make it much more exciting for the target audience. When the dwarfs finally reach the Evil Queen's castle Snow White is inside and is being held hostage. Right before the Evil Queen is about to kill Snow White, dwarfs barge in and save Snow White by throwing apples at the Witch and then shoving her off the castle. This shows that friendship can conquer all difficulties and that friends should always treat each other with kindness.

The way we assigned the rules for each character was simple because Melissa looked much like Snow White since she was the palest out of all of us with black hair and she was also Doc. I then took on the role of Dopey. Krish took on the role of Sleepy and Grace multi-rolled by being Grumpy, Doc and the Evil Queen/Witch.

The costumes we used:

Evil Queen:                                          Snow White:                        Dwarfs:                       

These are the sound links we used:

These were put together to create ambience throughout the performance to create a soundscape and overall aid the audience to inform them about the setting without creating a set. We decided to use these specific audios because they suited our scene the best. We tried many different ones especially for the Evil Queen & Quest and found that these were the most relevant.
The use of the magical harp sound derived by us creating an acrostic poem of the word "FRIENDS"
We then created this A3 Poster for the Year 4 class:

We scattered printed out letters on cards throughout the set to have them incorporated into as many scenes as possible. This was done to much more clearly explain our objective to the audience as we realised that some scenes were lacking in this aspect. The order followed the scenes and what each letter could relate to which wasn't the proper spelling of the word (EINFRDS). So this gave us the idea to get an art board and stick the letters up each time a scene revealed them and at the end we would use the students to "help" us create the word. This was done in order to make sure they understood the objective of our play.

The props list we created was:

Since this was an on-going process, we kept this as a google slides powerpoint document to keep track of what we have/need. Once we brought the assigned props we ticked it off our list. Many of our props were borrowed from the primary drama department. Such as the bed, tree, mushroom, shield, mini table and fence. We also borrowed the couch and buzzers from one of the teachers in school.
My prop responsibility was to create diamonds, buy the plastic axes and I also brought in green, fake apples. I also printed out framed pictures of the dwarfs which we used to decorate the "house"

  

 


In more consideration to our scene and character development, you can see on my last post named "Practice Videos" is how we created each scene. As I mentioned earlier we didn't use a script. Many of the lessons consisted of us devising a certain scene and perfecting it. We even spent one full lesson perfecting our vocalisation for our characters. The way we did this was each saying a line in one specific character to help each other out. For example, if I were to be playing Dopey, I'd say my line and record it and my other team members would do the same, I would then hear all their recordings and decipher what they did to manipulate their voice and do the same with mine. I then realised that I had to make it a little more deeper and slower to make it goofy.