Charlie backs up Sam as he sings a reggae tune with lyrics written by Chloe, Aiden, and Erica

Hansel and Gretel aren’t the only ones in the forest looking for a meal… those breadcrumbs on the path are looking pretty delicious to the birds.

“Perfect!” crows a rooster (Erica).

“I wonder what they taste like,” a hummingbird (Mackenzie) wonders.

A little sparrow (Chloe) chirps out simply, “Foooood!”

We saw birds of all kinds on the breadcrumb trail this week in playmaking, where actors moved about the space as birds of all kinds: a finch, a robin, even a penguin… we never know what we’ll see in this forest!

Every bird moves differently, and every bird sings differently. Actors got in touch with their inner birds as we worked out Hansel and Gretel’s greatest plight: the breadcrumbs have been eaten, and they’ve lost their way.  But one helpful bird, according to the original Brothers Grimm story, sings to them a song that coaxes them onward.

But they never said what kind of song it was.  Luckily, we’ve got some great songwriters in the group (and I mean everyone)!

Is it a song of warning?  Don’t go in the forest any further?  Turn back?  Or is it a song to guide them to the sweet but treacherous candy house lying a few more paces down the path?

Playmakers broke off into three groups. Each group devised lyrics to a possible song that the bird could sing to the wandering siblings.  Then, we switched it up: groups passed their songs onto the next group over, and the second group were the ones to write the melody, based on a song style we assigned them.

We saw some lyric heavy metal birds, choreographed R&B birds, even reggae birds, all trying to entice Hansel and Gretel to come with them into the forest, where they came upon the candy house.

With all those different kinds of bird songs, I know I might be inclined to follow.  We’ll see what Hansel and Gretel decide to do soon!

Brittany Cook has been working with the Children’s Museum & Theatre of Maine since 2011. She has served as Musical Director, scoring and playing the original music for our mainstage productions, and she has worn many other hats as well! Brittany will direct our fall production of Hansel & Gretel.

Mackenzie and Aiden read from a six-line script they wrote together.

Everyone knows the story.  But how is that going to happen in our version?  We don’t know yet, so we’re coming up with as many possibilities as we can.

Each of our playmaking meetings is equal parts writing and moving around.  Sometimes the moving around is to warm up, sometimes it’s composing a short dance routine, sometimes it’s acting out a six-line scene our actors have crafted.

Writing is a warm-up, too, and a very important part of the process.  It begins with writing prompts.

“I love going on trips, but I don’t really like getting there.”

This is only one actor’s response to this past Tuesday’s prompt: four sentences about a trip you didn’t want to take.  After a brief greeting and check-in, the actors dive into the prompt, which fires up brains and gets everyone on the same page for one day’s chapter of our playmaking journey.

These prompts draw from real life events—actors shared stories of not wanting to drive all the way to Florida, of being afraid of plane rides, even of not wanting to audition for a play—that could potentially help us create the fantasy world of Hansel and Gretel.

After all, those two are about to embark on a trip they really don’t want to take.

Thursday’s writing prompt: write five sentences about a time when it was you against the world.  Doesn’t that sound like two children against all odds, left alone in a forest?

It did to our playmakers!  All of our playmakers’ experiences could easily be

the same kinds of hardships that Hansel and Gretel have to face.  So, time to get writing! Here’s a peek into the process….

Actors pair up and create stories armed with wit, multicolored markers, and knowledge of the part of the story Reba has just read to them. They get down to work, furiously writing through different scenarios: all the ways Hansel and Gretel’s parents could rudely awaken them for their trip to the forest; eight lines to that justify the parents’ decision to leave the kids alone in the forest; things Hansel could do or say to comfort his sister while they are on their own against the world. Ultimately, we’ll sort through all the resulting script pages, group brainstorm sheets, tiny scrap papers of dialogue to mine for playmaking gold.

At the end of each rehearsal, we get to see the finished products the actors worked on throughout the meeting.  We see short scenes, dances and tableaux (or frozen images, like statues telling a story); we hear scared Gretels and brave Gretels, wicked stepmothers and worried stepmothers… so many different directions our story could go!

We’re tackling the play one small segment at a time, and haven’t even seen that delightful house made of candy yet!  But we still have a month to go in our playmaking process, and plenty of writing and acting ahead.

I wonder how our Hansel and Gretel will brave their journey and face the world.  Only time will tell, so let’s keep writing!

Brittany Cook has been working with the Children’s Museum & Theatre of Maine since 2011. She has served as Musical Director, scoring and playing the original music for our mainstage productions, and she has worn many other hats as well! Brittany will direct our fall production of Hansel & Gretel.

A big candy house?  A trail of breadcrumbs?  I bet you can think of all sorts of things right off the top of your head.

Now just think: any of those elements of the story could be the building blocks for a brand new script, for a brand new play.

Theatre Artistic Director Reba Short and I have both written some material for a few of the recent takes on fairy tales that have been performed here at the Children’s Museum and Theatre of Maine, but this spring, we’re doing something different.

We’ve begun meeting twice a week with a group of nine Children’s Theatre actors in a unique setting: the kids aren’t rehearsing, they’re writing, and acting out (or simply freeze-framing) their own material.  That’s right, this time, kids are writing the script!

This is playmaking.

Drawing from the original Brothers Grimm story, some real life stories from the actors in the form of writing prompts, and lots of improvisation, we’re gathering material to create our fall production of Hansel and Gretel.

“Hansel, I’m scared.  I’m scared of what’s out there.  In the forest.”

These words, written by playmaker and theatre veteran Zara Boss, were spoken during our Thursday meeting this week, and who knows?—Gretel might end up saying them in the final version of the script.

But right now, we just don’t know.  And that’s what makes playmaking so much fun.

I love this process, because anything is fair game… I never thought that the breadcrumbs on the path or the spices in the witch’s kitchen might be characters themselves, but ask any of these actors, and they’ll tell you exactly what spices and breadcrumbs are thinking about:

Actors freeze as breadcrumbs during a warm-up.

“If only I was as popular as that paprika!” laments Aiden Davenport as a spice, while Edyson Pines mopes as a breadcrumb, “Those good-for-nothing kids, they left me behind!”  Meanwhile, on the other side of the room, breadcrumb MacKenzie Jones cries out, “There are birds here!”

I’ll be blogging about our process and progress each week as we continue to discover the world of Hansel and Gretel to create our original take on the tale.  I, for one, can’t wait to see what this group comes up with next!

Brittany Cook has been working with the Children’s Museum & Theatre of Maine since 2011. She has served as Musical Director, scoring and playing the original music for our mainstage productions, and she has worn many other hats as well! Brittany will direct our fall production of Hansel & Gretel.

Bridget (second from right, with Reynaldo) and her fellow Kids on the Block puppeteers.

Bridget Fehrs, an 8^th grader at Lincoln Middle School, has been a puppeteer with Children’s Museum & Theatre of Maine’s Kids on the Block puppet troupe for nearly three years. (If you come to our theatre productions, you’ve probably seen her on stage there, too – she’s been acting with us for years, and just appeared as Country Mouse in our latest show.) The Kids on the Block puppets each live with a different disability or special need, and the young puppeteers who bring them to life are responsible for learning all about each puppet’s disability and being able to answer questions from the audience. Bridget is one of several puppeteers who got to know Reynaldo, a puppet who is visually impaired; she learned how to operate the puppet’s cane and answered dozens of questions from children curious about blindness.

Actors/volunteers Hannah and Jane received a sighted guide training from The Iris Network.

Inspired both by Reynaldo and by a friend who is blind, Bridget approached us with a thoughtful proposal for a Visual Impairment Awareness Day, an event to help kids “better understand what children who are blind encounter in their day to day activities.” To organize the event, Bridget and I worked in collaboration with The Iris Network, a Maine non-profit serving the visually impaired. With financial support from Unum (a longtime sponsor of the Kids on the Block puppet troupe), the event will take place on Saturday, April 27^th here at the Children’s Museum & Theatre of Maine.

Events will include Sighted Guide Tours, during which visitors can put on blindfolds and be guided by Kids on the Block puppeteers (trained by The Iris Network), a Braille scavenger hunt, and a Q&A with Cammy, who works for The Iris Network assisting the visually impaired.

Events will take place from 11am-4pm. Get all the details on our calendar of events. All the Visual Impairment Awareness events are free with admission!

Louisa creates a sign for the fourth annual Show and Tell Gallery.

More than 40 artists ages 5 to 17 from as far away as Caribou and Limestone submitted work for the 2013 Show and Tell Gallery, a collection of work by youth on the autism spectrum. Each April since 2009, the Children’s Museum & Theatre of Maine has collected art work by young people with autism spectrum disorder and hangs the show for Autism Awareness Month. The show will be on display in the Museum & Theatre’s Stairwell Gallery through August 2013.

Artist Olivia Frankl created this remarkable reproduction of a Monet.

This year’s gallery includes more than 60 pieces, ranging from fanciful pipe cleaner dragons to striking photographs to a remarkably faithful replica of Monet’s The Boat at Giverny. Many students submitted work with encouragement from art teachers and special education professionals who recognized both their students’ talent and the value of an opportunity to share their creativity.

“Some children on the spectrum struggle with communication and may not speak to peers or

"Worry Not Dolls" by artist Kayla Campbell illustrates the creative use of mixed media you'll see throughout the gallery.

teachers about their achievements,” says Louisa Donelson, the educator at the Children’s Museum & Theatre of Maine who founded the gallery and responsible for its curation. “The Show and Tell Gallery gives them an opportunity to take pride in their work. Their teachers, families and even classmates come to see it. It helps the whole community recognize how much kids on the spectrum are capable of, and how many Maine families are affected by spectrum disorders.”

Support from Ronald McDonald House Charities of Maine and Walmart funds both the Show and Tell Gallery and Play Our Way, a series of free,

Louisa (bottom center) accepts Maine Autism Alliance's Step Up! for Autism Award on behalf of the Children's Museum & Theatre of Maine.

private playtimes for children on the autism spectrum and their families. This funding also supports a series of small art workshops led by Donelson for youth on the autism spectrum. (Space is still available in spring workshops; interested families can email louisa@kitetails.org for information.)

Last Wednesday (April 3^rd), the Maine Autism Alliance awarded the Museum & Theatre one of its first Step Up for Autism awards, recognizing the Show and Tell Gallery, Donelson’s art workshops, and the Play Our Way Playtimes as vital resources for Maine’s autism community.

If you know a child or teen diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder who is 5-18 years old (or in grades K-12), and might like to see their art hanging at the Museum & Theatre, please share this opportunity with him/her! Having curated this gallery for several years, I can tell you that the experience of seeing a child’s artwork on display here at the Museum & Theatre is a special opportunity that has a big impact on the artists and their families. We’ll have a special friends and family reception to open the show, and the work will hang in our front stairwell gallery throughout the spring and summer.  (Don’t worry about handing over your masterpiece – all pieces of art will be returned.)

If you have any questions at all, don’t hesitate to contact me at Louisa@kitetails.org or 207-828-1234 x227.

For detailed guidelines and the official submission form, click here.

About Reba:

BA Theatre Arts, Mount Holyoke College (South Hadley, MA)
MA Theatre Education, Emerson College (Boston, MA) (expected 2013)
Reba spent two years as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Morocco, where she facilitated a clowning troupe and helped them teach theatre workshops for youth all over the south-west region of the country. Aside from directing five mainstage productions per year at the Children’s Museum & Theatre of Maine, Reba is an active member of Portland’s thriving theatre community. Reba uses theatre to teach anything and anything to teach theatre, loves making art with young actors, and loves watching young people find their spark!

Here’s what Reba has to say about her 2013 summer camps:

Parents approach me all the time asking what opportunities we have for younger actors. Our theatre productions are for ages eight and up, and they have seven-year-olds, six-year-olds, even four-year-olds chomping at the bit to act on our stage. Aside from Teensy Weensy Acting classes for three- to five-year-olds, we offer theatre camps for ages four to eight.

• Once Upon a Time (7/8-7/12) •

For four- to six-year-olds, we believe that inspiring a love of storytelling and a spark of imagination is key. This year,  Once Upon a Time camp will focus on five different fairy tales: Jack and the Beanstalk; Rapunzel; The Magic Fish; Hansel and Gretel; and the Frog Prince. We’ll be telling tales and creating interdisciplinary opportunities to bring the fairy tales to life.  Young children will have a chance to listen, respond and live each tale. On Friday, we’ll put on a performance for our friends and family – a special presentation of our favorite fairytale moments during the week.

• Story in a Bottle (8/19-8/23) •

Later in the summer, we’ll use our imaginations, theatre improvisation and some basic writing skills to develop a story. In the beginning of camp, we’ll discover a cryptic message that washed up on the shore after a hurricane. As a group, we’ll create the backstory.  This camp is based on the Waldorf principal of writing before reading. We believe that by writing the script, the actors will have more control over the story and have a better understanding of the subtext behind their words. This camp will offer chances for mystery, code-breaking, and interpersonal development as we work together to create the play.

A children’s theatre for kids, by kids requires a special kind of actor. Even in our camps, we’re offering concepts and curricula that will develop future actors for our stage! Actors that have experienced our camps come to auditions familiar with the expectations and confident in themselves as actors.

Talk to Reba:

Curious about Reba’s camps? Contact Reba at 828-1234 x247 or email her at reba@kitetails.org.

Ready to register? You can do it online here or call Shana at 828-1234 x232.

About Jamie:

BFA Painting, Maryland Institute, College of Art (Baltimore, MD)
MA Cultural Sustainability, Goucher College (Towson, MD) (expected 2013)
Combining her love of world cultures, art and imagination is one of Jamie’s favorite things about working at the Children’s Museum & Theatre. In her career as an educator, Jamie incorporates the lens of an artist into facilitating creative, play-based learning across disciplines. Previously she has worked as an educator privately and at various organizations, including Interlochen Center for the Arts.

Here’s what Jamie has to say about her 2013 summer camps:

Just as I love planning my summer vegetable garden in the winter, I love spending January afternoons thinking about summer camps. This year I’ve got animals, movies and storytelling on the brain – three things little ones and I both can’t get enough of.

• Act Like an Animal (7/15-7/19) •

We’ll spend the week pretending, playing, and learning about all different kinds of crazy creatures that we share the earth with. We’ll combine storytelling with costume making, creative play with face paint, and learn about some pretty amazing animal adaptations in the process. As we work as a group to create and act out our own animal stories, we’ll also see animal-themed star shows and read stories like Frog and Toad and If You Give a Pig a Pancake. We’ll make sure to spend some time with our resident yellow-bellied slider turtles, honeybee hive, and touch tank full of Casco Bay sea creatures. In this camp, I’m focusing on getting young children excited about and inspired by the many different creatures we share the planet with. We’ll build our literacy skills through group reading, storytelling and dramatic role play; we’ll also practice fine and gross motor skills through costume creation and animal games. And of course, we’ll exercise our imaginations nonstop. This camp is developmentally appropriate for 4- to 6-year-olds. If your child is fascinated by animals and loves playing pretend, stories, and costume-making, this is the camp for them.

• Multimedia Movies (8/5-8/9) •

This camp is also about storytelling, but in a different format – moving pictures! We’ll rediscover the first types of moving images by exploring zoetropes, fancy flip books, thaumatropes, praxinoscopes, shadow puppets, and much more. We’ll also use the museum’s Camera Obscura to learn all about optics, light, and how our eyes process information – and how movies were eventually invented out of this incredible device. Through creative projects like making zoetropes and creating puppet shows, we’ll learn the art of composition, framing, sequencing, and narrative. By learning about the similarities between cameras and our eyes, we’ll explore properties of light and moving images. Teamwork, creative expression and storytelling will all be a part of our final movie, set to premiere on Friday morning at the end of camp. This camp is designed for 6- to 8-year-olds. This is a fantastic camp for any young film enthusiast, storyteller, or artist!

Talk to Jamie:

Curious about Jamie’s camps? Contact Jamie at 828-1234 x241 or email her at jamie@kitetails.org.

Ready to register? You can do it online here or call Shana at 828-1234 x232.

About Louisa:

BFA Rhode Island School of Design (Providence, RI)
A schooled painter and active member of Portland’s art community, Louisa instills a sense of aesthetics and creativity into all of her work as an educator. Her previous education work spans the country and includes the Children’s Creativity Museum in San Francisco as well as work with at-risk youth in California, New Hampshire and Maine. Louisa’s deep curiosity about the world – from modern art to rocks and gems – informs her interdisciplinary approach to education with children of all ages.

Here’s what Louisa has to say about her 2013 summer camps:

• Ooey Gooey Art (7/29-8/2) •

Art making encourages….

• Respect for self, others and nature
• Self-evaluation
• How to learn from our mistakes
• How to see another point of view
• Fine motor skills (lots of gross motor, too!)
• Development of aesthetic taste or opinion
• How to clean up
• Cause and effect, chemical reactions
• Connection-making

I’m excited to harness campers’ physical energy with some great, process-based art making. This is camp all about experimentation in an open-ended way. It’s messy and silly. We’ll have a subtle focus on shape, color, form, scale, materials and line, while keeping it flexible and driven by the children’s interests. A simple project like making our own colorful play dough creates so many developmental opportunities. For example, the malleable nature of play dough makes it a perfect material for investigation and exploration, while it also builds strength in our hand muscles, preparing us for more complex materials that require control. Not to mention, we’ll make it ourselves and learn about chemical reactions, ratios and measuring, and color mixing. Come to Ooey Gooey Art camp to get messy and (secretly) learn a whole lot.

• Wearable Art (6/24-6/28) •

A popular subject matter for art since the beginning of time has been the human. Its beauty and complexity has been pondered and appreciated for millions of years. I feel this is likely because of its convenience – the human body is always present (even if it is only yourself!). We’re going to use our bodies as the inspiration for this art camp. How can we make art that attaches to our bodies and works with our unique form and movement? Can we paint our hands and turn them into animal heads? How silly can we make a hat, and what shapes best fit for our heads? What type of design would look really great on a t-shirt? And what kind of necklace best represents you? The camp, designed for 6- to 8-year-olds, is focused on craft versus art and will introduce new materials and techniques to budding designers.

Talk to Louisa:

Curious about Louisa’s camps? Contact Louisa at 828-1234 x227 or email her at louisa@kitetails.org.

Ready to register? You can do it online here or call Shana at 828-1234 x232.