THE COLLECTED PLAYS: 2010-2015 by PORTLAND PRESCHOOLERS
THE COLLECTED PLAYS: 2010-2015 by PORTLAND PRESCHOOLERS
THE COLLECTED PLAYS, 2010-2015 by Portland Preschoolers
From the introduction by editor Andrew Barton: The early plays were very simple, but with each passing week they grew more and more interesting. We jumped from plays composed of a few action-packed sentences (see "In A Cave, On An Island") to madcap social satire of the students' own universe (a play about the school itself and all the teachers and their lives). The script for the latter is now sadly lost, but included this memorable line about the school's owner: "She sits in the office and talks to parents and sells e-mails."
By my second month of teaching the class, "THE PLAY" (as it would be called, in all caps to show how loudly it was often spoken of) became the event of the week. Every Friday the entire preschool would gather into one classroom, along with parents and grandparents of the cast, to view the week's work, presented as a fully produced performance. Students, parents, and other teachers alike all became fanatically enthusiastic about THE PLAY. By the second year, we were producing 5-act extravaganzas, exploring such topics as "the beginning of everything." This arena-rock level of excitement around THE PLAY continued for the remainder of my career at that school, five full years!
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excerpt:
THE HARVEST THIEF
Cast:
Farmer
Apple fairy
Queen of the fall fruit fairies
A grape fairy
A fall flower fairy
The fruit thief
A walnut fairy
A Quiet Horse
PART ONE:: It was a dark morning. On one of the shortest days of the year. The year sun had not come up yet.
A worker comes out from behind a barn, on the farm, in the fall. The main farmer is at home in the farmhouse, eating cereal and milk for breakfast.
He opens the door to go out to the barn and sees the worker standing right there. He doesn't know this worker. The worker says "I will help you harvest all your fruit."
And so- they go harvest all the autumn fruit.
end of PART ONE
PART TWO
The next night, when the farmer is sleeping, the worker sneaks into the barn and steals all the fruit and even some of the farmer's money!
Because he is not a real worker, but...a thief!
The Queen of the Fall Fruit Fairies gets up wayyyy before the sun comes up. As the thief passes she is peeking out of her little home.
She rushes off to tell the fruit fairies. The apple fairy, the grape fairy, the fall flower fairy, and the walnut fairy.
There is also a horse who was awake and saw the thief. He follows the them with a quiet gallop, so the thief doesn't know!
When the thief gets tired he climbs up a tree and this nearly tricks the horse. During the time he is resting, the fairy queen and fruit fairies catch up to him and take the fruit back.
They ride in the horse back to the farm and give the fruit back to the farmer.
The theif had $5 left of the money he stole, so he kept on going, off into the morning. He stays bad and doesn't learn his lesson.
But the farmer DOES have a successful harvest.
THE END