IT WAS SO AMAZING!!!!!!!
stagewrite has worked with the kids at starr king for four years, starting with drama games and working up to being playwrights and producers in fifth grade. they do all kinds of great stuff like taking the kids to the de young to be inspired by visual art, taking them to the zeum to make claymation introductions to their plays. then they assemble an amazing cast of actors, a live band, a fantastic sound effects person, and the actors perform the kids' plays live, while the kids sit one at a time on the stage at a desk labeled "the playwright". then one by one there was a sweet little claymation intro with the kids voices saying who they were. and then the awesome, awesome plays, introduced by a very cool fifth grade girl. i didn't know these kids but i feel like i do now, and their plays were deeper and realer than pretty much any adult plays i have seen. the kids even wrote the lyrics to songs that were in many of the shows. each play was inspired by a piece of art which was shown on a screen behind the stage. then the background scenes were pictures the kids drew, projected onto the screen.
i can't remember them all but every single play was so good.
a sculpture of a church made of bullets: inspired in one playwright's mind an eerie funny story about a misguided soldier with a bad sense of direction. it took me a while to get it, but i realized the soldier was being taught by a wicked haunted mansion in the bermuda triangle to be anti war.
a painting of a woman picking picking cotton: became a play called "go north" about a girl picking cotton on a plantation who thinks her life is good until a talking four leaf clover which was her mother until she was killed trying to escape slavery tells her to go north. she follows stars and ends up escaping and planting four leaf clovers up north.
a sculpture of a fist with two eyes becomes a story about an angry boy living in a tree house in a future world ravaged by meteors who feels his father does not care about him. he goes to kill a panther for his family to eat but when he fights the panther the panther scratches out his eye. he throws the eye at his father in his hut and leaves home.
a painting of superman becomes a hilarious story about a man who is bored sitting around his house reading comics and watching cartoons. his bored and frustrated cell phone comes to life and they go into the world to fight crime but fail miserably. they go home and back to their existence as "total morons".
a sculpture i couldn't quite see became a story about a litterbug girl growing up in a part of new york full of people littering and fighting. when mother nature comes down to earth to teach her a lesson by raining cats and dogs on her, making her shower burn and freeze her, and directing a flower up her nose, the girl gets mad that she is being targeted while everyone litters. then she and mother nature sing an amazing duet about how she can be good to the earth and teach her friends to follow her. they have a party and stop throwing hot chips wrappers on the ground and learn to recycle and the overly serious mother nature becomes a member of an all girl rock band.
and a painting of a woman with a necklace becomes a story of a diamond necklace with a french accent who falls in love with his owner. he is dropped in a sewer accidentally and travels around the world. when he finds his owner does not love him but just wants to use him for her prom, he decides to stay in canada and finds true love.
anyhow, i was excited about this performance, because it was to me real art which is voices and visions which give the audience a new perspective. and i'm tellin' ya', for 90 minutes, really, i laughed and cried. i was pretty much in awe of these awesome playwrights, and got a little insight into their lives.
thank you art and those who think it is important.
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