Working Freelance - Week 8

Mind –

This week in MIND we had a brilliant idea of doing a quiz, which meant that we worked in a group; we needed a group name and we chose “Simple Vision”. Ellie went through the alphabet in her head and someone told her to stop, then she called out the letter that she landed on and we had to find a boy’s name, girl’s name, food, animal or film; we did this for 4 rounds and everyone was really engaged and contributing to the game,

I felt I got a little over excited and I was not too good at letting people speak, but after the second round I moved to the other end of the table, so the clients felt more part of the group. This was a strength and a weakness at the same time because I created, but then identified the problem (which was myself) and fixed it in order to be more inclusive.

So I feel that next week we should come up with some more questions, so we can play it again but have different rounds. For example, we could have one round which requires the players to name 5 fruits that are green, orange, yellow, red and pink. This may seem easy, but this level of difficulty is the right level for our client group. The game should have some elements of challenge, but not too many, so the individuals can get some sense of achievement and enjoy the activity.

Panto –

This week was our final rehearsal before our dress rehearsal on Sunday, so I felt that there was pressure on the children to do well and for me to show them that I have brought something new to the table, as well as being proud of the skills I have learnt at the BRIT School. The final rehearsal went really well and they did me proud, so it will be good to see them doing the dress rehearsal on Sunday.

The dress rehearsal on Sunday was very long as the children had to wait for an hour and a half before the Panto even started, so having worked with them for the last 10 weeks I know that they don’t cope very well with waiting around, so I started going over lines and songs with them to keep them in the zone, but there is only a number of times you can go over things with children before it starts to become boring for them and you.

When we finally began, the children were ready to go and their costumes were looking great (I’ve put a picture of the rattling and child costumes on here.)

They did their scenes and I had to make a note for them to be louder when they sing because the music was a little too loud and they couldn’t hear themselves over the music, so I feel that this was one of the reasons the performance wasn’t perfect, but their dance was really good, they remembered every sequence and performed the movement elements so well and I was really proud of them.