Directing for Children's Theatre Guidelines PDF

# Directing for Children's Theatre ## Guidelines for Directing for Children: ### 1. Emotional Truths - Greatest error is emotional condescension (simplifying life for the childlike mind) - A child learns from emotion long before his reasoning power starts to function - Removing emotional response...

# Directing for Children's Theatre ## Guidelines for Directing for Children: ### 1. Emotional Truths - Greatest error is emotional condescension (simplifying life for the childlike mind) - A child learns from emotion long before his reasoning power starts to function - Removing emotional response from children's play is to cheat the children - Children are receptive to emotions, therefore, the need to control irrelevant emotions in their play ### 2. Visualization - The child is helpless in the areas of rich vocabulary, inferring from words and judging ideological conflicts. - Children rely heavily on what they see. Therefore, visual language of children's must be emphasized through visual actions. - The visual effects shouldn't carry away the depth of content or attention to the language or idea(s) of the play. ### 3. Variety - His shorter attention span, expanding curiosity and continual seeking for new wonders, make him crave for variety. - One solution is the staging of a play which includes a variety of unified activities. ### 4. Age Consideration - The Director should aim at creating a production for age at the same time. - It is necessary to cover the artistic interest of each age level. ### 5. Casting and Identification - Casting stereotype roles is important for instant identification if characters. - Except to teach children to look beyond externals in their future judgement of others. ### 6. Audience Participation - Perform a good play - Make sure the children are comfortable. - Note the difference between 'noise' and 'participation'. ### 7. Effect and Spectacle - Scenery and costumes should be elaborate - But care must be taken not to over excite and dampen the imagination of the children. - Give them a framework which the children using their own minds, can fill in. ## Acting for Children's Theatre - In acting for children, one must play for the adult level for the success of the performance. The actor must also into take into consideration the following: - **Role:** - Characters in children's play should be played as real as the actors can. If the character fails to achieve believable human characteristics, the children/ audience will turn off. ## Audience Response - Recognizing the difference kinds of response from the audience is a skill required to be a successful child actor. - The child audience response differently from the adult audience. They also response differently from a mixed audience, this is because children are used to referring to adults model of behavior. - The positive response can be identified by the audience's participation - Negative response can be identified from the audience's restlessness and physical discomfort. This may be caused by insincere and poor characterization by actors or too much talk and little action on stage. ## Designing: Children's Theatre - Design contributes the in setting the atmosphere, conveying visual images for the action of the play and also contributes to the story of the play. These narrative and graphic functions of design in theater can be appreciated by children, they are capable of appreciating and enjoying the elements the elements of visual art: form, color, mass, line and balance. This can be identified in their early stages of through: - Imagination of creation fantasies of their own (mother and father using pieces of sticks to create toys of pieces of paper to create birds and aeroplane) - Love for spectacle (magical transformation of fantastic scenery, bizarre and original custom. Special effect, lighting tricks) ## Children's Theatre Management - Management in children's theater is more complicated. This is because children rarely control their own time and finances. Therefore, anything meant for the children must be sold to both the children and the adults who control them namely parents and teachers. The theatre manager must always bear in mind the following goals of children's theatre: - Development of personality. - Aesthetic education. - Teaching social skills and psychology self. - Teaching arts and - Entertainment The above guarantees the children theatre to become a force for education and development. Some factors to take into consideration to ensure this is the facilities and means for publicity. ## Exercise Suggest at least 25 MCQs about the content above.