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WEEK of May 14, 2007 |
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Puppet Theater Enthralls Preschool Audience by Karen Luks The preschool years have been called “the magic years”—what better way to tap into the creativity and imagination of our youngest students than through an interactive puppet show? Our Preschool did just that on April 17 with a visit from Anna Sobel and her Talking Hands Theatre. Anna, a trained maggidah (Jewish storyteller), has been a professional puppeteer for ten years. After attending Nightingale Bamford School in Manhattan and earning her BA at Wesleyan University, she won a Fulbright scholarship in 2003 that allowed her to study puppetry in India. A skilled performer, Anna took out her guitar and soon had the children singing along to “Old MacDonald Had a Farm.” Then the puppets appeared: the Little Red Hen and her friends, Mittens the cat, Bowser the dog, and Chicken Little. When each friend made up excuses for not helping Little Red Hen harvest, mill and cook grain, the preschoolers laughed effusively. Clearly they understood how ridiculous the excuses were. The second puppet presentation was based on a fairy tale from India, with Chicken Little making another appearance. Once again, Anna led off the program with a song: “Down by the Bay” by Raffi. In “Monkey See, Monkey Don’t,” Tiger and Elephant compete to scare Monkey out of a tree. Elephant loses and is about to be eaten by Tiger when Chicken Little offers help. In the end, all three animals learn how to get along, and Elephant discovers how the most unlikely and different character can be a friend and help him out. “I have friends on the ground and friends in the trees,” states Elephant proudly. The point Elephant was making to the children’s audience was that friends and helpers come in different shapes, sizes, and colors, and with different skills, abilities, and talents—a powerful lesson in diversity. Who would have thought that a little chicken (with a lot of smarts and ingenuity) could help an enormous elephant. A highlight of the program was the question and answer session. Children asked….How did you make the puppets talk? How did you make them move? How can you have so many puppets on the stage at one time? How did Little Red Hen grow the wheat?
In answering, Anna showed the children how the puppets were attached to rods, which fit into holes in the stage. She also demonstrated some of her stage voices that ran the gamut from diminutive and soft to loud and commanding. The children were fascinated and obviously involved with both the stories and the mechanism for activating the puppets. It was amazing to watch as they helped call out each animal’s response, then waited eagerly for the hen’s next question: “Who will help me?” The puppet theater performance, which was funded by a PAT mini-grant, was a successful experience for the entire preschool division. Anna’s presentation was compelling, well-paced, and meaningful. From our youngest family center children sitting in the front row of the meeting house, to our four year olds in the rear, everyone was engaged in these timeless stories of friendship, collaboration, and solving problems together. It was a five-star experience that we hope to enjoy once again in the near future. Karen Luks is Head of the Preschool |
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