by Kevin Ray

I had a great time planning and facilitating the first week of Our Play’s the Thing at Young Israel of Forest Hills Senior League with my collaborator Sherry Teitelbaum. Our Play’s the Thing is a two-week Creative Aging project designed to support seniors in creating and performing an original play. We met with our group members at Young Israel after lunch for two hours each day of the week.

Sherry and I worked hard to create engaging theater sessions to foster positive group dynamics and to develop our group members’ theater skills. As is always the case in this work, not every activity went as planned and Sherry and I made a few on-the-spot decisions to fit the needs and interests of the group by adapting, dropping, or replacing activities. However, both our planning and our responsiveness overwhelmingly paid off in spades and the results were group members who laughed, fearlessly played theater games, and began developing original scenes derived from our object of inspiration: shoes.

In the middle of the week, I was surprised by an unexpected outcome of the project. At the end of that day’s session, Sherry and I sat with the group members to reflect on how things went. During the reflection, one group member said she enjoyed getting to know the other members of the group. I was surprised to hear this comment because I had assumed everyone at Young Israel already knew each other. It is a relatively small center that offers a discounted lunch to members five days a week. I thought that the seniors who came to lunch regularly, including our participants, all knew each other. However, this group member explained that many people come every day for lunch but don’t always socialize; they sit in the same seats day after day without talking to people they don’t know. For me, this comment spoke to the power of Creative Aging to develop new relationships. While it has always been clear to me that Creative Aging fosters socialization, I wasn’t expecting it to manifest in our group in this particular way. I thought the theater sessions would enhance existing relationships by offering opportunities to socialize, but I did not expect that during the sessions we would be planting the seeds for new relationships between our group members. What a wonderful surprise!

I’m looking forward to week two.

Tags: creative aging | theater | senior center | seniors | playbuilding | devised theater | socialization

Written by Kevin Ray

“Welcome home!” That was the first thing Susan Rabinowicz, director of the Young Israel of Forest Hills Senior League, said to us when we arrived for our recruitment event on Tuesday. The center will be our second home starting next Monday as Sherry Teitlebaum and I will be co-facilitating a two-week theater project with older adults, culminating in a free performance at the center on Thursday, August 9th at 1 p.m. The project is called Our Play’s the Thing.

Sherry and I were at the center on Tuesday to personally introduce the project to prospective participants. First, we visited an exercise class to give a short presentation about what the project would entail. We explained that people in the project would be creating and performing an original play inspired by a physical object such as keys, flowers, or shoes. Then we went to the lunch room to speak about the class to other members at the center. Next we showed our crowd funding campaign video to a few small groups of seniors. They smiled and laughed when they saw our interviews with Susan and other members from the center. Finally we sat down and chatted about the programs with individual folks over lunch served by the center: baked tilapia.

I had a wonderful time meeting and talking with older adults from the center. I sat in on a card game, heard a wonderful love song about a rooster, and caught up with some of the women we interviewed for our video.

I am very excited about the start of Our Play’s the Thing. If you want to follow the project, check back to this blog for updates. On with the show!

This project is made possible in part with funds from the Decentralization Program, a regrant program of the New York State Council on the Arts, administered by the Queens Council on the Arts. Funded under contract with the New York City Department for the Aging. Additional support provided by Everybody Act! Theater in Education & Communities.

Tags: older adults | senior center | seniors | devised theater | devising

Written by Sherry Teitelbaum

Susan Rabinowicz has been running the Young Israel of Forest Hills Senior League for twenty-three years. A spunky, down to earth, practical woman with an infectious laugh, she has steered her senior center through the ups and downs of funding crises and managed a major renovation that increased accessibility to its services. She has been there for her constituents as they negotiated the daily challenges of living on a fixed income in a changing neighborhood.

But next week, Susan is embracing a new challenge. She is partnering with Everybody Act! to offer Our Play’s the Thing to Queens’s older adults, age sixty and up, who want to create an original play through storytelling, improvisation and theater games.

Susan has a close relationship of three years’ standing with the Master’s program in Applied Theatre at The CUNY School of Professional Studies. So when CUNY graduates Kevin Ray, founder of Everybody Act!, and Sherry Teitelbaum approached Susan about piloting their theater project at the Senior League, Susan didn’t hesitate a minute: she enthusiastically said, “Yes!” As Susan co-planned the project with Kevin and Sherry, she clearly stated her main goal: “Some of the seniors that come to this center are isolated, without someone to talk to at home. It’s important to give them a voice. And that’s what I hope this project will do.”

Up to fifteen older adults may register for the free playbuilding program, which runs from July 30 through August 10 at the Young Israel of Forest Hills Senior League, located at 68-07 Burns Street in Forest Hills. Workshops take place from 12:45 to 2:45 PM, Mondays through Thursdays and on Fridays from 12 – 1:30 PM. On Thursday, August 9 at 1:00 PM, the group will perform the short play they created in the Senior League’s multi-purpose common room. The performance is open to the public and free of charge. No reservations are necessary.
With Susan’s strong hand at the engine throttle, the Young Israel of Forest Hills Senior League has become the little senior center that could. It is chug-a-lugging into a future where its constituents will become active creators of culture. For more information or to register, contact Susan Rabinowicz, 718-520-2305, foresthillsseniorctr@nyc.rr.com.

The project is made possible in part with funds from the Decentralization Program, a regrant program of the New York State Council on the Arts, administered by the Queens Council on the Arts. Funded under contract with the New York City Department for the Aging. Additional support provided by Everybody Act! Theater in Education & Communities.

Tags: creative aging | seniors | older adults | senior center | devising | devised theater | playbuilding

Everybody Act!’s debut year was a hit! The company provided arts-in-education programs at two schools in New York City: PS 34 in Greenpoint, Brooklyn and PS 144 in Forest Hills, Queens. Both programs culminated in a final performance of original plays performed by the students for parents and faculty. Here are some snapshots of what each school worked on and some discoveries I made as a result of the work.

PS 34 Oliver H. Perry Elementary School | Brooklyn, NY

Project Description
At PS 34, I worked with second grade students and teachers on a theater program I developed called Character Counts! On Stage and Off. I collaborated with the teachers to develop and facilitate an arts integrated program in Theater, English Language Arts, and Character Education for three classes. The program expanded on the school’s existing “Reader’s Theater” and “Character Counts!” Programs by adapting three books by Brooklyn based children’s author Michelle Knudsen into three short plays. Each of Knudsen’s books highlighted a character education concept: Carl the Complainer – citizenship; Library Lion – responsibility; Argus - respect.

The program was designed to:

• Increase language acquisition in English language learners
• Stimulate interest among second grade students in independent reading
• Reinforce NYS Learning Standards for ELA and the Arts
• Deepen students’ understanding of character education concepts (e.g. citizenship, respect, responsibility, caring, fairness, trustworthiness) and the ways in which students can employ these concepts in their real lives
  • Increase students’ self-confidence as a result of participating in a successful performance
  

The program was made possible with funds from the Local Capacity Building Initiative, a regrant program of the Arts in Education Program of the New York State Council on the Arts, administered by BRIC Arts | Media | Bklyn and the Brooklyn Arts Council (BAC).

Discovery In Practice
As part of the program, I worked with teachers and students to develop an ongoing rubric to track the students’ success after each session. Each of the three classes had their own rubric which included assessments based on areas such as “Using Expression”, “Using Kind Words”, and “Fluency”. Both students and teachers created the make up of their own class rubric. At the end of each in-class session, I asked the students to evaluate themselves by a show of hands. I asked them a question like, “As a whole group, how do you think you did today with using expression?” Then they raised their hands for “1: No Expression, 2: Some expression, 3: A good amount of expression, or 4: The best expression we could do.” Each time, I allowed the majority to rule and I wrote up the number in the class chart. By the second session I noticed something interesting. The students where overwhelmingly giving themselves a “4” in each category, which initially disappointed me because it seemed to defeat the purpose of having the students self-evaluate. I thought, “If they’re just going to give themselves a 4 every time, what’s the use of doing this?” However, I began to notice that there was always one or two students who disagreed with the majority of “4” givers. So one day I asked a dissenting student, “Why do you say 3?” Her response was incredibly accurate and truthful. So much so that she swayed the majority into understanding why they all should give themselves a more appropriate evaluation. I continued this practice of calling on the dissenters in each class and found that they were always able to clearly articulate their reasoning. It really showed me the power of truthfulness, bravery and the ability of an individual to influence a group.

PS 144 Col Jeromus Remsen | Forest Hills, NY

Project Description
At PS 144, I worked with first grade students and teachers on a playbuilding program called Insects & Spiders On Stage! While I had initially proposed working on classic fairy tales, the teachers suggested incorporating a science curriculum tie in at our planning meeting. I’m always excited when teachers come to a planning meeting with interesting ideas; and while I had done A LOT of homework to be ready to work on fairy tales, I was more than willing to go in a new direction. To paraphrase director Peter Brook, “you do the preparation to throw it out!”

The first grade students were doing a unit on insects so we decided to use Eric Carle’s books such as The Grouchy Ladybug and The Very Busy Spider as our starting points. Each class of the five first grade classes focused on a different book by Carle and through playbuilding techniques such as tableaux, thought-tracking, and creative sound and movement activities, we devised five original performances, each about five to seven minutes in length. The plays incorporated different music elements. In our adaptation of The Honeybee and the Robber, the students, in role as bees, created a dance to Perez Prado’s Cuban arrangement of “The Flight of the Bumble Bee.” As part of The Very Lonely Firefly, first grade teacher Ms. Devine played guitar and wrote an original firefly song with the students. Finally, our version of The Very Busy Spider incorporated a processional style spider puppet operated by nine students!
The program was made possible by the generosity of the Parents’ Association of PS 144.

Discovery in Practice
As I was watching the students perform for their parents and teachers during the culminating event, I was struck by how tickled the audience was whenever the students used sound and movement to bring their insect and animal characters to life on stage. When six students playing mosquitoes entered the stage making high-pitched noises and flapping their arms as wings, the audience laughed raucously. As part of our improvisation during an in-class session, the students performing The Grouchy Ladybug came up with the idea to have the snake (played by five students joined together with their hands on their shoulders) enter singing and dancing “Conga-Line” style. This also received a great reaction form the audience. These sounds and movements created by the students helped me see that theatricality is just as important as dialogue - for elementary students, maybe even more so because projecting their voices in a cavernous auditorium is very challenging – even for adults! The insect and animal sounds and movements they created were so vividly executed that they told the story in a way that enhanced the dialogue. It made me wonder about using less dialogue in the future and finding more ways for young students to tell stories on stage through sounds and movements.

Conclusion

So that’s the year in review. I hope that it gave you a little insight into the work going on at Everybody Act! I also hope that my discoveries in practice will support you in your own work as you begin to plan for the 2012-13 school year.

Have a great summer!

Kevin

Tags: playbuilding | youth | arts-in-education | theater | character education | discovery | students | teachers | schools | reflection

Hello!
My name is Kevin Ray and I am the Executive Director and Founder of Everybody Act! Theater in Education & Communities.

I am thrilled to announce that Everybody Act! is a new face on the arts services provider scene and I look forward to developing creative opportunities with new partners. I chose the name Everybody Act! because it perfectly frames the dual purposes of my core beliefs when using theater with youth and community members: I believe that everybody can learn performance skills to act on stage and that everybody can take action in their daily lives in response to what they have created on stage. Read More...

Tags: theater | theatre | applied theatre | process drama | theater in education | TIE | devised theater | devised theatre | Boal | Augusto Boal | playbuilding | playmaking | acting | improvisation