Scene One - Introduction of James and Aunt Spiker and Sponge

The introduction of James is simple; Ryan (narrator one) exclaim to the audience "Ryan: Can you believe that?", reinforce that the parents have been eaten and James is now an orphan. He enters from the Fire exit down stage right.

I bring on James from upstage left, from behind the curtain and introduce him as "Me:...our hero". James remains frozen.

Aunt Spiker and Sponge are brought on one after another (Becky and Sarah added their lines "Urgh! Kids!" and "I hate children!" of their own accord to quickly enforce their characters) from Fire Exit downstage right.

For this scene, we the narrators are addressing the audiance straight on. The stage is set for the rest of the scene with James slaving over cutting logs, and the two aunts lazing about. I exit behind the curtain upstage left

Apart from splitting the narrators monologue up for three narrators, we cut only  "if he looked..." to "...of the sky". This bit seemed unnecessary and overly descriptive. 

• We decided on who would take each line quite early on, however their were still a few chops and changes even up till about a week before the show!
• We struggled quite a lot with working out how the stage props would be on stage. Once the stage management crew had taped out the size of the stage and where the screens would be we realised how small an area we had to work with. This meant we had to move all our blocking forward, and realise the front row would be an arms width away from where we would be standing. 
• After realising this, us three narrators thought it was important to learn to speak in an unintimidating way of speaking. Being so close to children means we need to do this, and also be able to speak loudly enough that the kids at the back could hear... this was all very hard! I'm still not sure if I spoke loud enough at times.
• I also decided to hold Ryan M hand as I bought him on stage to reinforce him as a child

Ongoing targets!

• To bring James on and the right time by listening carefully for my cue
• Get the puppet of Mrs Trotter off quickly by handing it to Thea (Stage Management)
• To breathe carefully with my long bit of text as I have a tendency to breathe from my upper chest which makes me strain