Columbia Explorers: Creepy, Crazy, Magical

Posted by Tai on February 8, 2009

School Shows School Residencies

The Columbia Explorers show is tomorrow morning, and today our dedicated cast is reviewing their lines and practicing their dance moves. Yesterday was the last of our six rehearsals. The BOM adaptation and rehearsal process is fast and furious, and can leave us feeling a little crazy at times:

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As I mentioned previously, the teaching team for this residency tried out some new additions to the usual BOM curriculum. Week 3, normally True Story Day, became a day to explore characters and settings that the kids were most familiar with: those around their school and homes. We brainstormed people, places, and things that the kids encountered on a daily basis in their neighborhood: teachers, friends, family members; Pete’s Market, Dulcelandia, McKinley Park; trains, trees, and graffiti. We brainstormed “what if” scenarios: what if aliens landed in McKinley Park? What if the Kedzie stop on the Orange Line was overrun with zoo animals? Then, in the usual fashion, the kids wrote and performed group stories utilizing these elements, and had time for individual writing.

This exercise inspired stories such as “The Magical Place,” by Dulce H., where she finds a hidden room inside the local McDonald’s, full of “all the things a girl could want.”

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Another experiment in the curriculum was Week 6, which is traditionally a “round robin” day, in which the kids get to explore various forms of writing such as poems, epistolary stories, or superhero stories. We changed this day into an exploration of Chicago landmarks, by way of mythology and fairy tales. We talked about how myths are written to explain something, often an origin story. The kids wrote magical, mythical stories about how certain Chicago landmarks or places in their neighborhood came to be. This led to some really wonderful stories, about the creation of the Picasso statue (made from elephant bones by a maniacal stuffed animal) and Pete’s Market (built by red ants).

Picture Day, Dialogue Day, and Persuasive Argument Day were left in the curriculum, and given a bit of a localized spin, to fit our goal of using the local neighborhood as a springboard for imagination. Plenty of picture-inspired stories, dialogues, and arguments will be featured in tomorrow morning’s show, including an argument about bugs that was inspired by the appearance of a real bug in the classroom:

I can’t wait. This show is going to be completely crazy and truly magical.