Scarecrow by Mike Kenny

http://www.ajtctheatre.co.uk/plays/scarecrow.html

When entering the performance space I noticed the scenery that had been laid out was quite dark in colour and felt at first that this might seem a bit dark for a children’s production but having not heard anything about the play I thought this might develop and change throughout the play. The children sat at the front so they were in a position to be able to see the performance closely, one of the performers began to interact with the children’s, drawing their attention to the other performer already on stage. He asked them who they thought he might be and what his part might be, I felt this was a good technique to get the children’s attention and to engage them in the action, the performer then joined the other on the stage and the play started.
I noticed that a variety of things can be used but I noticed that in this production they used a few devices to be able to grab the attention of the audience. From the beginning they used a violin to create music for different parts of the play. This allows the audience to connect with the elements of the play and to understand them.
Along with this I noticed they made the noises of the birds this grabs the attention of the audience because it pinpoints the action to one actor. I noticed that they also made sure than there wasn’t a lot of action going on at once so as not to confuse the audience or draw to much attention away from the other characters.
Props that were used were very simple and again only used one at a time so the audience had to focus on them when the actor wanted you to; puppets were used to demonstrate the crows.

This production used very simple language as it was performed in front of a young audience; it was also performed in the style of a poem so the story had repeating lines allowing the children to understand the action. However I felt that this play had no moral story within it for the children to take away and learn from, there were stories that the children could engage with such as the development of the scarecrow and how it befriended the crows and also the story of the farmers working but felt they didn’t have a moral lesson.
Throughout the play the seasons were said to change but I was expecting the scenery to change in some way as well as the scarecrow and costumes, at the beginning the farmers had planted seeds and the reason they had built the scarecrow was to protect them but they never grew and this was something that I expected to develop in the performance.

I also found that the children would have believed in a certain amount of ‘magic’ within the performance, believing that the puppets and props used were really the crows, but after the performance had finished the actor explained how they had made the puppets and effects. I felt that, although this may be interesting to find out how to make the puppets, it could have been something that some of the children may not have wanted to know so therefore destroying the ‘magic’.