Sunny D. Light and her henchman Cumulo Nimbus have stolen the greatest treasure in the world! Where did it go and how can Agent 007 1/2 get it back before it’s too late? Will the Mission Is Possible Force find the treasure, save the planet and reconcile Mother Nature with her favorite Sun? They will with your help as a Secret Agent! Join the M.I.P Force as a secret agent to solve this mystery. Odds are, you won’t live to see the morrow, unless the treasure is found!
Bullying: A Classica(AL) Deilemma
Ancient Greek storyteller Homer calls upon Zeus and Mount Olympus to solve a problem faced by students today: bullying. In a participatory odyssey through time that weaves poetic verse with rap, togas with football jerseys, and mythical masks with Converse sneakers, these Greeks show your students why violence gossip peer pressure and by-standing do not stop bullying.
A Spider Name Apollo
Through the dramatic performing arts, the audience is lead on a musical adventure, the journey of a spider name Apollo. In connection to literature, written and illustrated by Apollo’s Fire, participants explore the adventures of artists at the opera. This book comes to life with processional musicians, singers, actors, and dancers. Through interactive aspects, participants engage alongside the performers to help lead Apollo on his musical journey through the opera.
Inspiring Your Story” a post-show workshop for the solo performance Fa(r)ther
Inspiring Your Story” workshop uses the live performance “Fa(r)ther” as a jumping off point for students to begin writing their own narratives. Students will engage in theatre activities such as improvisation, role-playing, character building, sense memory and imagination exercises to generate setting and circumstance, characters, plot points and sensory language for their own written narratives. All writing will be done in individual student journals that can be kept as inspiration and material for future writing assignments.
Fa(r)ther is a powerful and moving solo performance that reveals the inner life and childhood memories of a young woman on the edge between self-destruction and self-actualization. Students will have viewed Fa(r)ther earlier in the day.
Fa(r)ther
Fa(r)ther is a powerful and moving solo performance that reveals the inner life and childhood memories of a young woman on the edge between self-destruction and self-actualization.
About the show: After an explosive encounter with her boss, a young woman finds her attention mysteriously captivated by an ad campaign promoting healthy fatherhood. To her surprise, this single image ignites within her a deep exploration of life and self. While remembering and examining her relationships with her father and step-father, authority figures, friends and boyfriends, she finds herself confronting life’s biggest questions: How can I overcome the challenges of my upbringing? How can I heal the pain in my past? Can I learn to trust? Can I find love? How can I live the life I want?
Big Top Physics
Big Top Physics is a workshop that will engage students in exploring the physics of performing extraordinary physical feats. Students will learn about the types of forces affecting motion, including gravitational force, tension force, frictional force, applied force, inertia, and center of mass. These concepts will be taught by a combination of performance/demonstration and active participation.
Shakespeare: The Musical
In Andrea McCormick’s Shakespeare: The Musical residency, students will take a play from Shakespeare and incorporate it with music and dance. Students will be encouraged to analyze selections from the script, find the rhythmic patterns in the writing, and work them into song as either a melody or rap, with movement or dance. As an added reinforcement of comprehension, students will be asked to rewrite selections from the script in current English to create a new, abridged musical version of the play.
Langston Hughes: Dream Keeper, Poem Maker
This assembly program shows the range of Hughes’ styles and themes through poetry, song, and movement. The students will perform the poems, helping the students discover their own dreams, how those dreams can be deferred and how, ultimately, they can be fulfilled. The principal texts are from “The Dream Keeper” and other poems, illustrated by Brian Pickney. Additional texts include poems by Gwendolyn Brooks, Sam Allen, and Eloise Greenfield, as well as song lyrics by Sam Cook and Curtis Mayfield.
A writing workshop includes two to three writing prompts based upon Langston’s poems “Dream,” “Poem,” and “Motto.” The workshop can be offered as a stand-alone workshop, or a post-assembly workshop.
Our Branches of Government: A Theatre Residency
Cultivate a deeper understanding of the three branches of government and how they interact with each other through a system of checks and balances over the course of this 4-day residency. Students draft and devise a short script which will serve as their “bill” or a new piece of legislation. The students will work in groups that represent the different roles in the creative process and these roles will correlate with a different branch. The program will culminate in a performance of the script and a mini press conference to summarize the process and experience.
Ma’at is Missing: Deciphering Manners
What happened to the Golden Rule? This one-actor performance demonstrates to children and families the important role manners and kindness play in how we relate to the people around us. Through theatrical spectacle, including magic, storytelling, music, dance, and hieroglyphics, the performer guides the audience in finding clues to the lost Temple of Ma’at, dedicated to the Egyptian goddess of truth, justice, and civility.
Complementary workshops exploring Egyptian hieroglyphics and the ancient art form, Frontalism, are available to accompany a performance. This program is best suited for children ages 4-12 and families.
Shaking Up Shakespeare
“All the Worlds a Stage” in this stimulating workshop/residency, students will perform excerpts from some of Shakespeare’s best-known works from ‘Romeo & Juliet’ to ‘A Midsummer Nights Dream’. The performance will deepen their understanding of the text by allowing students to “mashup” Shakespearian acting with dance, movement, rap, music and other current art forms.
Dancer and choreographer Lisa Yanofsky will actively engage students with Shakespeare’s text, characters and plot through a series of theater and dance activities which will help students connect with the meaning and meter of the text. Students will gain ownership of the Bard’s words as they reinterpret the plays and set them in a modern day high school context.
This workshop can be customized based on what Shakespearean work the students have read. Recommended works include: Romeo and Juliet and Midsummer Night’s Dream.
Living Portraits
Performer and choreographer Lisa Yanofsky will lead students through the creation and performance of an original scene that explores the identities of historical or literary figures. Drawing from topics the students have already studied or from works of fiction the students have already read, Lisa will guide students’ exploration of character identities using movement, dialogue, monologue, and music. Students will choose a character or historical figure and draw from their life, context, personality and actions to craft and perform as their character in a “living portrait”.
The residency begins with exercises in writing. Students will be asked to pull text from the novel, if they are playing a fictional character, or quotes from the historical figure, if they are playing a non-fiction character. From the gathered source material, students will extrapolate personality, opinions, context and emotions and use these to write from the point of view of their character. Using their writing and research as a foundation, students will work together to help each other create movement for their character. Throughout the process of creating the movement and text, Lisa will act as a director, fitting the pieces of each character’s arc together and guiding collaboration between students. Depending on student interest, the “living portraits” can be performed with music or original songs or raps that give more information on the figure.