April 17, 2012
Hello Everyone!
Happy Spring! It’s taken a little
while longer than planned, but I finally have photos from last month’s
production of “Martian Mayhem:The Musical” to share!!
The show was absolutely brilliant. Every student brought in costume
pieces (some much more than just suggestions!) that helped with their
characters. All of our Martians decked out in red, which created an
amazing visual against the red of the stage accents. And everyone got a
chance to shine as they told the story of a group of astronauts crash
landed on an unknown part of Mars, in conflict with the royal family,
but working together to put aside differences for what’s best for both
planets. It was a hysterical and heart warming script, written entirely
by the participants in our workshop with the Cooke Center Academy SKILLS
Program and the CCA Alumni Association.
Check out the pictures:
Nagisa, Geraldine, Carrie and Emily as the Astronauts preparing for takeoff
Christina as Jasmine, Princess of Mars
Jake and Alexis as Koba and Soray, King and Queen of Mars
The whole cast with Michelle, Ken and I celebrating their amazing achievement!
In other exciting updates, our spring extracurricular program, Stars
of the Stage, kicked off on March 17th with our biggest group yet! Every
Saturday we have 9 participants ages 11-15, plus our volunteers,
Meredith, Michelle and I. We also are thrilled to welcome back
Meredith’s favorite partner in crime, CCA intern Nagisa Mikami, for her
third time as assistant playwright. The group is hugely varied, with so
many exciting and creative personality types. We spent the first few
days playing theatre games and doing creative improv exercises, getting
to know each other and getting comfortable in the group. Here, you can
see Teddy take us on an interactive imaginative tour of his favorite
place to go. Come join us!
Teddy took the group to Coney Island:
After the second class, it was clear that our group was passionate
about exploring, and a lot of their games had to do with treasure
hunting and exploring unknown islands. What an exciting premise for a
play! When we began working with the group to craft characters, we found
even more excitement–a man who lives in an underground gold castle and
lives for finding treasure, a werewolf king who sends his wolf subjects
out to canvas the town looking for his lost treasure, a crazy witch who
concocts secret potions and spells to help people, and a cranky old sea
captain were among the characters our group came up with without any
prompts from us, just an old box of costume and prop pieces! Needless to
say, Meredith and Nagisa have had tons of raw material to work with.
We don’t have our final script yet, but armed with this premise,
we’ve begun doing more character exercises and improvised scenes. As we
started developing characters, our actors came up with inventions that
their character would need on the magic island. Here, Alex and Shachi
share Alex’s magic pen that can bring to life anything it draws:
By class on the 21st, we should have a final script, and I can’t wait
to share the story with you! Stay tuned, there are lots more exciting
stories to come!
Cheers,
Jenna
Jenna
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