Our community project was to create a performance that would appeal to the local community, in our case, Great Missenden.

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The aim of our community project was to create a performance that would appeal to the local community, in our case, Great Missenden. We decided that our piece should not only entertain but also make the audience aware of the history of their community. Great Missenden is well known for both the train robbery and the life of Roahl Dahl' considering both of these options we discussed possible venues for the performance. Due to the recent opening of the popular Roahl Dahl museum, an opportunity arose for us to us the museum as our theatre. Therefore using Roahl Dahl as our stimulus. v After deciding on the venue we did however have to take into account that in a museum the audience would be constantly moving as they walked round the museum. When looking at the venue there was also no obvious seating area. To over come these factors we made a decision, that our performance would be split into 5-minute episodes. Each completely different but relating to the same theme. This way the audience could watch a single scene that would make perfect sense as each scene tells its own story. Those audience members who decide to watch more than one scene would see a variety of performances, which they themselves could link together.

Background reading was conducted to find out more about Roahl Dahl, his life, and the books he wrote. The group then reunited for a discussion resulting in a theme that would provide a strong foundation for the construction of our episodic performance. During the discussion we discovered that Roahl Dahl was most famous for the children's books he had written. Many of these ideas originated from his own life experiences. Which he describes in his autobiography "boy". All of his books portray a strong message to his readers..../....

His books also strongly appeal to children because his writing challenges their imagination; he never undermines a child's intelligence and even uses inventive literature when describing things. These discussions lead us to think about our own ambitions and dreams, as children, and how alike they were to some of Roahl Dahl’s stories. We concluded that the theme of "children's dreams" would provide a good basis for our piece. Each episode could become a different dream and each dream could be presented using a different performance technique, to add variety.

As we could no longer remember in enough detail our child hood dreams we visited the local middle school, where we interviewed group of thirty 8-9 year olds. By playing interactive games and asking them simple questions, whilst being filmed, we were able to compile a 30-minute video about their dreams and ambitions to revisit and use as a Starting point for each 5-minute episode.

The venue, the Roahl Dahl museum, had a very strong influence on the style of our performance, as it is quite an unusual setting without seating, curtains, wings or main other performing art resources the idea that the performance would in fact take place outside was a challenge.. We discarded the idea to perform a long narrative piece, as the audience is constantly moving and would. Therefore not understand the story line. When thinking about staging we realized that we could not use complex staging or lighting due to the lack of space, resources within the venue considering the above we concluded that our performance should have an episodic structure, it should

contain short powerful scenes with both a clear beginning and end. Each scene making sense to the audience, even if they have missed the scene before'.

        

Erwin Piscator originally founded epic theatre; one of his famous performers Brecht took on Piscator s original ideas and used them in his own pieces creating a new form of episodic theatre. We used this idea of short powerful scenes as a basic structure for our piece. Brecht was in favors of, ‘Epic Theatre’, which he developed using the idea of, Alienation effects or, ‘A Effects’ as they are also known. The term itself is a translation of the German word, Verfremdungseffekt. Brecht encourages his audience to think rather than becoming over concerned with the plot. Brecht invites his audience to identify with the issues faced by the characters and not the characters themselves. By making the characters within our piece already recognizable the audience are able to focus on the other issues within the piece. Having studied a degree in psychology he also adapted Piscator s original idea to make his plays more entertaining as we remember facts we find most enjoyable, in his theatre. If the audience are to remember the play they need to be entranced, using this idea we created scenes that were very active and fast pace so that audience would be drawn in and remember those parts which excite them.

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The play is a form of debate rather than an illusion. Brecht’s concept of Alienation involved the idea of  He aimed to take emotion out of the production and persuade the audience to distance themselves from the make believe. He also encouraged the actors to disassociate themselves from their roles; all of this would make the political truth easier to comprehend. We chose to break up action with slides and music.

 Before each scene a short video clip of a child talking about their dream would warn audience members about the action occurring in the piece. ...

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