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| School shows
now on tour — menu |
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For
Seeing Out Loud
It's
Not Fair!
Mother Earth and Her Children
Puzzle Pieces
Spin the Globe for World Tales
Tales
to Learn By
Twice Spun
Tales
The Wheel
of the Year |
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For details about
these themed programs, scroll down or click the linked titles
listed above. Kaleidoscope Storytellers also has themed programs
that were designed especially for Summer Library Programs - they
can also work well in a school setting. For more information,
see Library shows now on tour and
past library shows. |
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| For Seeing Out Loud |
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Stories, art, music, poetry,
and crafts — they are all ways of making our imagination
"visible." These acts of creation are the grace notes
of our lives, treasured in the tales of every culture on earth.
Purpose: to celebrate the art of using the
imagination to create something new, to get students to think
about the very process of thinking, to explore ways to use the
creative arts to solve problems and make life richer.
This program supports art, music, theater,
creative writing and literature lessons. It is especially appropriate
for Young Authors' events.
Typical Stories: In Cat's Drum two best friends
are separated by their love of a new musical instrument. The
audience makes the sound of the drum as the storytellers act
out the tale.
Papa Bunting makes up a song to get Baby
Bunting to sleep, but Raven steals Baby Bunting's Lullabye.
This Russian tale makes the point that everyone needs to create
their own song. The same message is part of Fox and the Crying
Song, a story from Native America enacted by puppet partners
Mouse and Fox.
In The Animals' New Coats, a tale
from the Masai of Africa, Turtle is an artist with paint and
brush. Members of the audience act out the part of three of Turtle's
friends and even get to "paint” a new coat on trickster
Hyena. (Photo below courtesy of Shirley Dunwoody.) 
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It's
Not Fair! |
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Problems of justice and
fairness have been around a long time — and are explored
in many traditional tales, some light-hearted and some thoughtful..
Purpose: to get students thinking about issues
of justice and fair play.
This program is especially appropriate
for social studies and world history classes.
Typical Stories: In the Theft of the Smell,
a poor man is accused by a baker of stealing the smell of his
bread — what should the judge's verdict be? (A true world
tale, found in many countries)
A King (played by puppet partner Lion)
has threatened to kill his counselors for either lying or being
too truthful about his bad breath, but the tyrant meets his match
in Rabbit's Clever Nose. (A tale from Burma)
In Possum and Snake, Snake threatens
to bite kind-hearted Possum, who has just saved the life of the
ungrateful reptile. Is this fair? Once again, a clever Rabbit
saves the day.
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Mother
Earth and Her Children |
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Stories of nature, animals
and ecology.
Purpose: To develop appreciation for the natural
world by telling myths and 'pourquoi' stories from various cultures.
Respect for the environment is a subtext of many of these stories.
This program fulfills the following Florida
Sunshine State Standards: Theater and Language Arts as noted
above, also Social Studies 1.6.5 and Science 4.2, 7.1, 7.2. The
ESOL strategy objectives addressed include verbal comprehension
and context clues, along with specific instructional strategies
such as Chunking, Pantomime, Description, Participation, Demonstration.
(See page on Educational Benefits
for details.)
Typical Stories: Fox and the Dogs is a cautionary
tale in which Fox praises his eyes, feet, nose and ears for helping
him to escape from a pack of dogs, but is angry with his tail
for doing nothing.
According to a Northwest Indian legend,
the Gossiping Clams were once so talkative that they angered
all the other animals with their tattletale ways. A participatory
song makes this tale memorable.
Alligator (masterfully played by the
five-foot-long puppet pictured below) meets Trouble and
lives to repent his foolishness in this pourquoi tale that explains
why the alligator's skin is dark and bumpy.
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Puzzle
Pieces |
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These tales require thinking
caps and problem-solving skills for both the characters and the
audience.
Purpose: to encourage students to think in
new ways, using clues and their imaginations to solve the problems
that challenge characters in these stories. The problems may
require logic, common sense or even mathematical skills to unravel.
This program fulfills the following Sunshine
State Standards: Theater 4.1.1, 4.1.2; Language Arts 3.1.2, 3.2.1,
4.2.1, 5.1, 5.2; Math 3.1, 3.2. The ESOL strategy objectives
addressed include verbal comprehension and context clues, along
with specific instructional strategies such as Problem Solving,
Pantomime, Description, Participation, Demonstration. (See page
on Educational Benefits for details.)
Typical Stories: In Monkey & Crocodile the
audience members can help Monkey figure out ways to escape from
Crocodile or help Crocodile plot to capture Monkey. The main
characters are portrayed by puppet partners.
Students help solve the Farmer's Dilemma
— how can the farmer ferry his goods across the river without
the fox eating the hen or the hen eating the corn? Volunteers
enact the parts of fox, hen and corn in this creative drama.
Tangram
puzzles are used to illustrate the story of Tan Goes to
the North Wind, where Tan travels across deserts and oceans
to find the shirt his mother embroidered. Students are invited
to guess each picture as it is revealed by the shifting puzzle
pieces.
The whole audience plays the part of
the echo in Lion and Rabbit, helping Rabbit outwit a hungry
Lion. (The photo below shows some of the puppet action that enlivens
this tale.)
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Spin
the Globe for World Tales |
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In every corner of the globe
we find stories that bring us back home again, whether they tell
a Chinese variant on "Cinderella" or a riotous debate
in sign language.
Purpose: to show students the similarity of
experience from culture to culture, while celebrating each culture's
unique heritage of stories.
This program supports geography and multicultural
curricula.
Typical Stories: The armadillos are being terrorized
by storms (especially the Lightning) in a tale from South America,
until they learn to make the Lightnings laugh. Audience participation
and a puppet Armadillo bring this story to life.
Did you ever wonder Why There Are
No Tigers in Borneo? A threatening puppet Tiger is talked
out of invading Borneo by a small, but clever, trickster.
The cracks in turtles' shells are explained
by a Cherokee story about Turtle and Wolf. Turtle thinks
up a clever plan to keep a greedy Wolf from stealing his food,
but the plan backfires and lands Turtle in the cooking pot! Turtle
uses the oldest trick in the book to escape, but still doesn't
get off entirely scot-free.
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Tales
to Learn By |
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These stories support self-esteem
and making the right choices.
Purpose: to offer subtle reinforcement of appropriate
behavior choices by showing the consequences of thoughtless actions.
Greed, pride and temper get their comeuppance in these humorous
tales that demonstrate what not to do.
This program fulfills the following Florida
Sunshine State Standards: Theater 4.1.1, 4.1.2; Language Arts
3.1.2, 3.2.1, 3.2.1, 5.1, 5.2. The ESOL strategy objectives addressed
include verbal comprehension and context clues, along with specific
instructional strategies such as Pantomime, Description, Participation,
Demonstration. (See page on Educational
Benefits for details.)
Typical Stories: The poor woman in It Could Always
Be Worse is driven to distraction by her family’s foibles,
but are things really as bad as she believes? Audience participation
enlivens this dramatized East European story. (Storytellers Terry
and Suzie are acting out two of the parts in the photo below.)
A stubborn unwillingness to compromise
pits a couple against each other in Who Will Shut the Door
— and it almost costs them everything.
Puppet partners dramatize How to Break
a Bad Habit. Rabbit’s twitching and Monkey’s scratching
are easy habits to break, or so they think. However, they soon
discover that it’s easier to spot a bad habit in others
than it is to correct your own.
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Twice
Spun Tales |
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From Anansi the Spider to
Grandmother Spider, tricksters and legends from many cultures
come to mischievous life.
Purpose: To share stories from a number of
world cultures, increasing the audience’s awareness of the
rich diversity of folklore. Many of these tales feature traditional
trickster figures whose cunning often — though not always
— helps them outwit their neighbors.
Stories and follow-up activities address
Florida Sunshine State Standards: Theater 1.1, 2.1, 3.1.3, 4.1.1
and Language Arts 1.1.2, 2.1.2, 2.2, 3.1, 3.3, 4.1, 4.2, 5.1,
5.2. The ESOL strategy objectives addressed include verbal comprehension
and context clues, along with specific instructional strategies
such as Chunking, Pantomime, Description, Participation, Demonstration.
(See page on Educational Benefits
for details.)
Typical Stories: The Big Race offers a new twist
on a classic fable, as audience members help Frog win a race
against Rabbit.
Greedy Anansi relies on Good Manners
to wriggle out of sharing his supper with Turtle. However, the
tables are turned when Turtle invites Anansi to an underwater
feast.
In Fox and Tiger, Fox finds a
way to save herself and win the respect of a hungry tiger. In
addition to the storytellers and volunteers from the audience,
the two furry puppet partners shown below dramatize this story.
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The
Wheel of the Year |
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An ever-changing palette
of seasonal and holiday tales.
Purpose: To celebrate the annual cycle with
a variety of holiday and seasonal stories.
These programs fulfill the following
Florida Sunshine State Standards: Theater and Language Arts as
noted above, plus a number of others, depending on the stories
used. The ESOL strategy objectives addressed include verbal comprehension
and context clues. (See page on Educational
Benefits for details.)
Typical Programs: Fall Stories can represent
Hallowe’en or, if preferred, harvest or Thanksgiving stories.
Examples include The Dancing Skeleton, a seriocomic tale
about Aaron Kelly, who returns from the grave to spoil his widow’s
new romance; The Four Sisters or the myth of Persephone,
stories that tell how the seasons came to be; a tall tale in
which a farmer and his wife disagree about the merits of Squash
Pie.
Winter Tales can include secular Christmas stories,
such as Christmas Friendship Soup, a variant on Stone
Soup, and The Christmas Visitors (in which a polar
bear puts an end to a plague of trolls), or more general tales
of cold weather, friendship and celebrations. Such seasonal stories
might include Jack goes to the North Wind and King
Frost, traditional tales from northern cultures.
Spring Stories may touch on Valentine’s Day,
with stories about friendship, or on new beginnings. Sample stories:
Drakestail, in which Drakestail’s friends save him
from the king’s anger; A Place to Live, a traditional
Jewish tale of how the cat found its proper home; a young Chinese
girl who wishes for her Wings to grow so she can celebrate
spring.
Summer Yarns can cover a wide range of topics,
from travel to seaside tales to Born in the U.S.A.,
stories which celebrate the merging of cultural tales from Africa,
Europe, Latin America, Native America, and Asia into new cultural
traditions that are authentically American.
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Copyright ©1999,
2001 Terry Deer & Suzie Shaeffer
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