One library system lists a number of movies based on books: http://www.mymcpl.org/cfapps/botb/movie.cfm

We tried to think up what movies weren't based on books and for the most part we couldn't come up with too many. It's interesting that some of the best movies were books first--The Help, Sherlock Holmes, Hugo, The Three Musketeers. And how many times has the BBC put out another Jane Austen movie?

Many of our children's plays are based on stories. Tomorrow, we perform one of the first interactive children's show we came up with--Princess on a Pea. We used Chris's class of third graders to test it on. The next day one of his students found the story in the basal reader and the wide-eyed girl asked if she could read it. Chris was happy to let her. When we perform for children, we like to show them books that go along with the show.

We love this Einstein quote: “If you want your children to be intelligent, read them fairy tales. If you want them to be more intelligent, read them more fairy tales.” Would it work for us adults as well; could we get more intelligent, too? Nice!

The Salem Public Library starts their No Screen Week challenge starting tomorrow. It may be to encourage kids to read more but adults could have a great week by joining in. (http://www.cityofsalem.net/Departments/Library/EventsAndPrograms/children/Pages/childrensactivities.aspx)

So, as we like to tell our young audiences at the beginning of our shows: we encourage you to read and "play."

For the past month and a half, our calendar has been full of performing Paul Bunyan in the area schools (thanks to the sponsorship of the Assistance League of Salem). You can't have as many shows as we've had and not come away with at least one incredible story.

At the beginning of a show, Chris picked a young man to play Babe the Blue Ox. Throughout the play, Babe came to the front and helped Paul (Chris) move the buildings, straighten a road, carry trees, and make the six Mississippi Rivers one "big, powerful river." After each feat, Val Do-It (Marian) led the audience in a cheer for Babe the Blue Ox.

After the show, two teachers let us know that the young man is in foster care, that he is bullied sometimes at school. But that day he was in front of everyone being cheered; and those around him would pat his back in congratulations every time he went back to his spot to sit down. "Life-changing" is how one of the teachers put it. A forty-five minute show. Life changing. It's the simple things that make a difference. It makes our struggles as a  small for-profit theatre company worth it.

Has there been that moment in time in which a simple thing made a difference for you?

Because we just realized an error we made concerning our upcoming Double Play Saturday, we can't help but think about making mistakes.

It's not quite as deadly as one might think--Embarrassing, Costly, Time consuming but not deadly.

In live theatre, something ALWAYS goes...well, maybe it's just not right. You could say that something went wrong but sometimes it isn't as bad as "wrong" more than it's not quite "right," or at least not what was expected.

When I direct kids, I always warn them, "Something will go wrong. Deal with it and KEEP GOING." One year, part of the scenery fell over. The kids picked it up, and picked up their lines and kept going. Another year, we had a cast member not show up, so the other kids divided her lines among them and kept going. At an outdoor performance, the scenery started blowing away and my 9 year old actress leaned over and caught it while she was saying her lines. It was brilliant.

So rather than not doing something because you might get it wrong, just take the blunder (apologize where needed) and keep going.

By the way, our Double Play Saturday for December is on the 17th not what was previously posted on Cwerks stuff.

If you teach theatre at a middle school and you tell people you teach "Middle School Drama," would they think you're being redundant?

(quote from a theatre friend)

Since speculation on Shakespeare is all the rage (case in point, the movie Anonymous), we'd like to join in the fun of speculation. We'd like to put out there that Shakespeare cut Shakespeare, and we don't mean he cut his body. We mean he cut his own plays.

His plays are loooong. Directing a full production takes forever; children could be born during such a process. Sitting through the uncut versions also takes forever (we're exaggerating ever so slightly). Did people during Shakespeare's time actually have better attention spans? Maybe they just had better seats and could nap during the soliloquies that just go on and on and on...and on. Well, people with box seats had better seats, but many others were just standing on the main floor. Surely, William would not want to be upstaged by someone dropping to the floor during his shows.

Our dear Will was a performer-director, too. If it's one thing directors and performers don't want, it's to put their audience to sleep. Audiences who don't like what you're doing don't return to the next production. That could mean a serious loss of money. So, perhaps Willie, to keep the masses happy, cut his own shows. In fact, (here's a tiny bit of research coming; not sure about the reliability of the source) according to Wikipedia "The "two hours' traffic" mentioned in the prologue to Romeo and Juliet was not fanciful; the city government's hostility meant that performances were officially limited to that length of time. Though it is not known how seriously companies took such injunctions, it seems likely either that plays were performed at near-breakneck speed or that the play-texts now extant were cut for performance, or both."

We must digress: watching Shakespeare at breakneck speed is hilarious. Probably shouldn't be done with the tragedies.

To summarize the reasons we conclude Shakespeare cut his own plays:
1. He would not want his audiences sleeping, and therefore not returning.
2. Nor would he want to be upstaged by anyone in the audience snoring.
3. Wikipedia says the plays had to be kept at two hours.
4. Performers could seriously mess up the lines for such long and rhythmical productions.

Disclaimer: This article had almost no official research. It, like many of the other articles found on the web, might have a bit of truth to it. Maybe not. And just for the record, we enjoy Shakespeare.

P.S.
If you're looking for shortened Shakespeare, Learning Links has them in various cuts for children grades 1-12 to perform. If you or your children just want to know what the heck the story lines are in Shakespeare plays, head over to Amazon and look up "Tales from Shakespeare." There are numerous books that create stories out of the plays. Once you look up the titles of the books, you can head over to your local bookstore and get those or similar books--you know, keep the local economy growing.

Face painting dangerous? Could it be the ink? Maybe it's because the marker is pointed? Not at all. It's dangerous when you let a group of Clown students loose to color designs on each others' arms!

Read more about it in On the Child Side: Theatre Anecdotes involving Children.

A speech, monologue, oral book report, PowerPoint presentation, the constitution or any other long, one-person performance is one of the most difficult things to memorize. Even shorter speeches can be hard to memorize. But not impossible. Here are nine tips to getting the task done:

1) Depending on the length of the piece, give yourself several WEEKS to get memorized. If you don't have weeks then you'll have to cram. Better memorization comes over a length of time.
2) Work on it EVERYDAY, or almost everyday. It doesn't need to be long work sessions, just a bit everyday.
3) Write or type up and print out, then highlight the speech (monologue, presentation, etc.) in different colors. First, writing it out helps with the brain catch on. Second, highlighting sections of your piece in different colors gives you a visual indication of the words--again, helping your brain to catch on.
4) Record it. Use whatever portable device you have handy and record your presentation. Now play it back as you are in the midst of physical labor that doesn't require you to think much--cooking, yard work, cutting firewood, walking, feeding the birds, driving (but do stop for the red lights).
5) Take it sentence by sentence. Read sentence one. Now read sentence one and two. Now read sentence one, two and three...keep going. You can also take it paragraph by paragraph.
6) Give yourself cues. A PowerPoint already has your bullet points of ideas or pictures to let you know what's next. If you have a speech you can make pictures for, do it. If you're won't have pictures for what you're doing, draw reminder doodles on the sides of your paper to use as you memorize.
7) Come up with gestures to go along with your piece. Always do the same gestures at the same places during your monologue. It's just another cue to get your brain to grasp the words.
8) Get a helper. Let them hold your script and correct you as you flub. At some point, you've got to put your paper down or that will turn into a physical cue for your speech. That's why so many people can recite something they've memorized as long as they can hold the paper in their hand. So put down the paper often, too.
9) Repeat. Any of these steps can be used over again as you get your speech memorized. Use them constantly and you will get it!

Take heart. Memorizing is possible. And you might find other ways to memorize than what's on this list.

After a week of classes, our young clowns put on a performance for their families. First was the face painting. The kids decorated parents, grandparents, siblings and cousins, using designs they created themselves. Second, there was balloon twisting. It didn't matter some of them couldn't tie their own balloons; it only mattered that they could twist those balloons into dogs, giraffes, mice and hats. Then they demonstrated juggling--first with one ball, then with two, finally with three. None of the kids caught the balls when there were three in their hands but it's the process that counts on this one. The point is--they tried! After that, they performed skits with objects, noises and no words. Those skits lasted all of 30 seconds each. And to finish off the 30-minute program, the young clowns used jokes as more skit material (this time they got to talk). They did great for their demonstration/performance. That's the ticket sometimes--a shorter show, with simpler activities allows the kids to be successful. And our clowns were. (A big thank you to the family members who enthusiastically let their clowns draw on their faces and arms.)

Perhaps to many, a how-to theatre book for elementary school teachers seems a bit much. Shouldn't the teachers teach the basics? Why, yes. And theatre is that other art form that will help do just that.

Theatre teaches Reading, Writing, Innovation and Communication (among other things). But no one mentions that; it's just lumped under "Theatre."

The great thing about our new book is it's designed for non-theatre teachers. Through simple activities--that take only about 15 minutes to do--children start learning applicable-to-life theatre skills. It's do-able! for both teachers and students.

We're excited it's finally here and we have a venue to get it out. We're excited that it will soon be followed by the home version for parents, grandparents, homeschoolers and anyone else with a few children in their group of beginner thespians.