The Art of Play
The Art Of Play
Area Third-Graders Learn Playwriting Concepts Through New Program
November 6, 2014
Gavin Paterniti, Post-Journal
You can access the article at the Post-Journal website here: http://post-journal.com/page/content.detail/id/654339/The-Art-Of-Play.html)
Thanks to a new program sponsored by Chautauqua Institution, area elementary school students are learning the basic elements of playwriting from inside their own classrooms.
The Young Playwrights Program, currently in its inaugural run, spent the week inside third-grade classrooms at Chautauqua Lake Elementary School and Fletcher Elementary School teaching students the method behind writing their own plays, as well as how to apply these principles to other areas of their education.
The Young Playwrights Program was conceived by Chautauqua Institution as a way to expand its educational programming into a year-round format outside of its traditional nine-week season during the summer months. According to Deborah Sunya Moore, associate director of programming, the program exemplifies Chautauqua Institution's commitment to the surrounding community.
"This is part of a larger goal that Chautauqua Institution has," Moore said. "A year ago, we looked at our strategic plan, and part of that is to serve the CHQ community outside of the gates and grounds and outside of our nine-week season. We felt the best way to do that was to reach out to schools, and act as an arts and education resource for them.
"We really want to foster arts learning in the schools," she continued. "So, while we're not replacing the need for music or classes of any type, we can model for schools how to integrate that into the classroom for other types of learning in other subjects."
The program is also presented in conjunction with Florida Studio Theatre, a contemporary theater company based in Sarasota, Florida, with which Chautauqua Institution has partnered. Florida Studio Theatre agreed to collaborate on the Young Playwrights Program as its message aligns with that of the Florida group's own Write A Play program - an in-school outreach initiative designed to inspire students to be creative and to write plays.
The goals of the Young Playwrights Program are achieved through a three-phase process.
The first phase includes an in-class residency, which took place this week, in which members of the Florida Studio Theatre spent Monday through today alternating between Fletcher's five third-grade classes and Chautauqua Lake's three third-grade classes. The residency included: the reading and performance of two 1-3-minute plays previously written by other students who have participated in the Write A Play program; the teaching of improvisation; as well as basic elements of playwriting such as formulating a plot, setting and dialogue.
The Florida Studio Theatre members who performed in the residency included: Kate Alexander, associate director of the company; Matt Ebling; and Christianne Greiert. Alexander said the techniques employed by the actors and herself are intended to draw out the students' creativity.
"Improvisation is at the heart of (the Write A Play program)," she said. "It's how we inspire the students' imagination."
According to Maria DeJoy, principal of Fletcher Elementary School, the two days which the three Florida Studio Theatre members spent at her school have had a tremendous impact on both students and teachers in terms of finding new ways to excite and inspire learning in the classroom.
"I have never seen our third-graders so excited and motivated as I did on Monday," DeJoy said. "The actors tapped into (the students') creativity and imagination, and our kids finally understood that they can use their imagination to create something from it. They are so excited to write these plays, because seeing their own ideas come to life in these plays is what really motivates them. So, this is a wonderful experience for the students and the teachers, as well."
The second phase of the program will include a winter play-reading workshop in which the plays written during this week's in-school residency will be read and acted out by volunteers from the Chautauqua Play Readers at Chautauqua Institution on Jan. 28 and 29.
Moore said approximately 200 plays will be read during this time, and four plays, two from each school, will be selected for production and a live performance by the Chautauqua Theater Company in June - constituting the third phase of the program. The selected plays will also be published by Chautauqua Institution online. Additionally, all plays originating from the residency will also be sent to Florida Studio Theatre for submission into the company's annual Young Playwrights Festival.
For more information about the Young Playwrights Program and its participating entities, visit Chautauqua Institution online at www.ciweb.org, and Florida Studio Theatre at www.floridastudiotheatre.org.
Arts Alive
Arts Alive
Chautauqua Lake Central Hosts New Program
November 29, 2014
Robert W. Plyler, Post-Journal
You can access the article at the Post-Journal website here: http://post-journal.com/page/content.detail/id/655909/Arts-Alive.html
MAYVILLE - Scientists tell us there are many areas in which a person can be gifted.
Some people remember many facts and can organize them into useful patterns. These people tend to score high on tests. Others can look at an engine and easily understand how one element of the engine interacts with the other elements. Others, still, can think of non-traditional ways to produce tools they need if traditional tools aren't available.
For example: if a person doesn't have a hammer, he can drive in a nail with a wrench if he needs to do so. There are many more officially recognized kinds of giftedness.
Among the many challenges facing educators is recognizing the areas in which students are gifted and encouraging them, while also teaching students to learn even in the ways at which they are not most gifted, because living in a society sometimes requires us to learn what we need to know, in whatever manner of learning is available.
I recently made the journey from Jamestown to Mayville, where Chautauqua Lake Central is located, to observe the teaching of a day of classes in a new program called "Sing Me a Story, Play Me a Book." The classes are co-sponsored by Chautauqua Institution, by Chautauqua Lake Central and by the Erie 2 Chautauqua-Cattaraugus Board of Cooperative Educational Services. The program is provided under a contract from the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, in Washington, D.C.
This program is one of two programs currently being conducted, in our area, for bridging the gap between what students know and what they are able to express to others, conducted locally by Deborah Sunya Moore. She is associate director of Programming at CHQ and is a Kennedy Center National Workshop leader.
The other program is called the Young Playwrights Program and has been conducted by Moore, together with the Florida Studio Workshop, in third-grade classes at Fletcher Elementary School in Jamestown and at Chautauqua Lake Central. A feature article about that program, which is still moving forward, was printed in the Nov. 6 issue of The Post-Journal.
In that article, Moore reported that the programs were instituted by Chautauqua Institution as part of their commitment to expanding their outreach, outside the walls of the institution and beyond the formal nine weeks of the CHQ season.
She told me recently: "CHQ has been an asset for many people in the area, but until now, we've served mostly those whose parents had the resources, the opportunity and the inspiration to bring their children to the grounds." These programs are reaching out, through the public schools, to children all over Chautauqua County.
The music-centered program, featured in this week's column, is aimed both at regular students in elementary, middle school, high school and students with special needs. BOCES has established a program for special needs students at Chautauqua Lake Central, which brings students from many different school districts for instruction focused on their special needs.
"Sing Me a Story, Play Me a Book" began in 2013 with a pilot program taught by Moore and located in the pre-Kindergarten classes at Chautauqua Lake Central. Chautauqua Institution applied for the contract with the Kennedy Center for the use of the program and support for the residency. The residency now operates in two Chautauqua Lake Elementary classrooms and 11 BOCES classes. She meets with her students every Wednesday, meeting with several classes in similar age groups, then moving to a different room, then another, etc.
I contacted Kevin Bourgoine, supervisor of Instructional Services for Erie 2 Chautauqua-Cattaraugus BOCES, for his views on the program. He replied: "Students with disabilities get a great deal of benefit from listening to music. The program put on by Deborah Sunya Moore goes beyond just listening. The students become a part of the story and the music. I believe that we are extremely fortunate to have access to such wonderful programming."
I was impressed that in each of the classrooms we entered, students were asking: "Miss Deborah, where were you last week? We didn't get to see you."
Moore explained that she had been in Washington, D.C., meeting with officials of the Kennedy Center the previous Wednesday. The week before that, one of her daughters had fallen ill at school, and she had been required to take the child home, for fear of the ailment spreading to others. It is a frustrating element of our education system, that when she finished each class, she had to remind students, "Now remember, next Wednesday there is no school because of Thanksgiving vacation, so I'll see you all in two weeks."
Considering that the day I got to listen in on her program was the day of the biggest snowfall of the recent storm system, a number of students were absent because their home school system was closed due to the weather emergency. If those students are present when the classes resume, they will have gone five weeks since their last participation. While the program is designed so that students can participate, even if they missed one or more classes, it is less than ideal to need to bridge such a large gap in time.
It is important to remember, the Chautauqua-BOCES program is not a substitute for regular music instruction. Rather, it teaches connections between narrative, music and other means of learning.
Let me give you some background information about Deborah Sunya Moore, largely garnered from her website, and then tell you about what I saw and heard in her classes.
MISS DEBORAH
Deborah Sunya Moore is an arts educator and performing musician, with a long history as an advocate for performing arts programs, for children and youth.
She recently moved to CHQ from the Island of Trinidad, where she served as the arts education and community engagement specialist for the University of Trinidad and Tobago. She was also an associate professor at that university. She performs regularly as a percussionist with the Chautauqua Symphony Orchestra.
She served as the director of education and community engagement for the Louisville Orchestra from 2004 to 2009. She often serves as an educator and consultant, having conducted Artist Training Workshops for the Boston Symphony Orchestra, Florida State University, Oberlin Conservatory, the Eastman School of Music, the Cleveland Institute of Music, the Boise Symphony, the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra and the U.S. Marine Band.
She has been a workshop leader for the Kennedy Center since 2008. She holds a bachelor's degree in percussion performance from Oberlin Conservatory and an individual major, performance and education in related arts, also from Oberlin.
She holds a master's degree in education curriculum and instruction from the University of Cincinnati. She lives on the CHQ grounds with her husband, Brian Kushmaul, who is the principal percussionist for the Chautauqua Symphony Orchestra. The couple has two daughters who attend Chautauqua Lake Central School.
THE CLASSES
Miss Deborah's classes begin informally as students are brought into the classroom one class at a time. As I mentioned, the class sizes were small because many students from the classes lived in districts which had closed due to the weather emergency.
Each of the classes began with the teacher taking out a large, brightly colored, plastic microphone, which contained its own small amplifier and speaker. She explained that the microphone gave each of the students the opportunity to be the focus and the center of the class' attention.
Holding the microphone well in front of her, she sang, "Hello, Class." The words were sung in a repeating pattern, representing a major third.
The students sang on the same notes, "Hello, Miss Deborah."
She then took the microphone around to each individual and sang "What's your name?" in the same two-note alternating patters.
The students replied individually, "My name's Michael ..." or Mary, or Beth, etc. Some students matched the two notes perfectly. Others repeated a single pitch, or sang five or six notes above or below her pitch. A few seemed shy, but no one seemed embarrassed, an important difference, I'm sure you'd agree. She cheerfully accepted whatever they offered, occasionally giving a slight correction if she thought they could do better, but there was never a suggestion, "No! That's Wrong!"
As the students entered, they interacted informally with one another and with her. At her first class, she passed out simple rhythm instruments to the students, such as small tambourines, maracas and hand-held drums. I was impressed that, for the most part, students held their instruments quietly while she began instruction. Indeed, I have seen adult classes where it was difficult to get students holding instruments not to rattle, scrape or otherwise make noise.
She reminded the class that they had previously read the story, "The First Music," a 2006 book by Dylan Pritchett. The book describes animals in the jungle who each make their own natural sounds. The elephant, for example, walks with big, heavy steps. Students with hand drums were encouraged to call out "Puh-duh BUM," with their voices, and to give the drum a good blow with their hand on the third syllable.
The monkeys jumped from branch to branch, causing the leaves to make a sound, which students recreated by going "shhh-shhh," with their voices and shaking the tambourine. The frogs complained that their legs were too short to dance and their arms were not suited to climb from branch to branch, but finally they learned that they could make their own kind of music with their voices. By the time the story reached its end, all the instruments were being used and there was indeed music in the classroom. No student was left out. None seemed pushed away by the others. No one was asked to do something he couldn't do.
While en route to the next classroom, she explained that the lesson had included instruction on what an echo was, what constituted a rhyme between two words, a call-and-response pattern of music, making a steady rhythm and much more.
The next class was younger than the first and it began exactly the same. When everyone had gotten a chance to sing his name into the microphone, she introduced a different book which they also had read in previous classes. This one was "I Ain't Gonna Paint No More," by Karen Beaumont.
In this book, a mischievous young narrator - the illustrations looked male to me, but many students insisted it was a girl - got into some paint in a closet in his home and painted his own body. The paint was red, so he painted his head. He decided that it could do no harm if he painted one arm. The story continued until he was completely covered with bright colors. Mother came across the artistic mess, locked away the paint and deposited her young artist in the bathtub. Now, he ain't gonna paint no more, as the title says.
Lessons with this book included what constituted a rhyme, drawing logical conclusions from facts already known and a list of similar important skills. Several students got an opportunity to conduct the pitch and the loudness of their classmates' singing.
"When John opens his hand, we'll start to sing. If he closes it, we'll stop. When he raises it toward the ceiling, we'll sing higher, and when he lowers it, we'll sing lower," Miss Deborah suggested. Even in the hands of a young child, the power of a conductor to bring many sound-makers together was most impressive.
When time is up, most students seemed truly reluctant to stop the activity.
I was impressed by Moore's easy interaction with the students, and with the way she interacted with the regular classroom teachers. In my many decades in the classroom, I have participated in seemingly innumerable workshops in which drop-in workshop leaders displayed open contempt for the regular material and activities with which we were required to deal, which in turn, made us eager to get them out of the classroom, so we could try to undo the negative attitudes they had taught our students.
I saw absolutely none of that in this program, and I looked for it,carefully.
Three cheers are in order for Deborah Sunya Moore, for the students and staff of Chautauqua Central Schools, for the forward thinking of Erie 2 Chautauqua-Cattaraugus BOCES, and for Chautauqua Institution.
In January, the plays written by students in the Jamestown-Chautauqua Central program with the Florida Studio Workshop will be read and performed by volunteers from the Chautauqua Play Readers organization so that each junior writer can have the experience of having his work performed.
Also in January, Moore and her husband, Brian Kushmaul, will lead a program on drumming and life skills for BOCES students at Chautauqua Lake Central.
What do you know. Arts Alive!
