2005-06 The Fractured Fairytales by Syracuse Stage

2005-2006 EDUCATIONAL OUTREACH SPONSORS

General Operating and Multiple-Program Support In The Spotlight ($50,000 and above) Syracuse University Impresario Circle ($25,000 - $49,999) Central New York Community Foundation The Post Standard The Richard Mather Fund New York State Council on the Arts Shubert Foundation Time Warner Cable Stage Benefactor ($20,000 - $24,999) The Gifford Foundation National Endowment for the Arts Major Underwriter ($15,000 - $19,999) Onondaga County Residence Inn by Marriott

Student Matinee Program Stage Sponsor ($5,000 - $7,499) National Grid Stage Manager ($1,000 - $2,499) Bruegger's Bakeries Golub Foundation / PriceChopper Target Patron ($100 - $299) Whelan & Curry Construction Services, Inc.

Character-in-the-Classroom Program Stage Partner ($2,500 - $4,999) Time Warner Cable Stage Manager ($1,000 - $2,499) Lockheed-Martin Employees Federated Fund Patron ($100 - $299) Wood, etc.

Bank of America Childrens Tour Major Underwriter ($15,000 - $19,999) Bank of America Stage Partner ($2,500 - $4,999) Bristol-Myers Squibb Company Lockheed Martin Employees Federated Fund Stage Manager ($1,000 - $2,499) Excellus BlueCross BlueShield, Central New York Region Actors Circle ($300 - $499) Diamond & Theil Construction Co., Inc Wegmans

The JPMorgan Chase Young Playwrights Festival Stage Leader ($10,000 - $14,999) JPMorgan Chase Foundation Patron ($100 - $299) Full Cast Audio

The Nottingham Lunchtime Lecture Series Stage Partner ($2,500 - $4,999) The Nottingham Retirement Community and Skilled Nursing Facility

James A. Clark Producing Director

Robert Moss Artistic Director

PRESENT

Fractured Fairy Tales Written by A.J. Jacobs Directed By Joan Hart Willard

Composer/Musical Direction Fred Willard Choreography by Kim Hale

Set/Costume Design Lindsey Vandeveer

Sound Design Lauren Shaw

Sponsored by

Season Sponsors

Syracuse Stage 3

2005-2006 Study Guide education office: 443-1150 or syracusestage.org/education.html

Table of Contents

Table of Contents Theatre and Education

Elements of Theatre

A Message From the Director

Fairy Tale Timeline

Setting The Scene

Tackling The Text

In The Classroom

"Supporting the arts is a main priority of the Bank of America Charitable Foundation, which is why we are so excited to partner with the Syracuse Stage on this exciting project. Through innovative programs, such as this one, we can effectively encourage the children in our community to embrace the arts at an early age. Bank of America is pleased to support such an important program and hope children throughout the greater Syracuse area will take full advantage of it."

Syracuse Stage 2005-2006 Study Guide education office: 443-1150 or syracusestage.org/education.html

Theatre and Education "Theatre brings life to life." — Zelda Fichandler

world. Then artists come along and discover it the same way all over again." — Eudora Welty

Ultimately, there is a fundamental difference in the psychological responses aroused by electronic media and theatre because the former presents pictures of events whereas the latter performs the actual events in what amounts to the same space as that occupied by the audience. This difference results in one unique characteristic of theatre: its ability to offer intense sensory experience through the simultaneous presence of live actors and audience. "The sole substitute for an experience which we have not ourselves lived through is art and literature." — Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn Pedagogically, theatre can be used in a variety of ways. In many respects the teacher in the classroom is much like the actor onstage - with an audience (hopefully attentive), a script (lesson plan), props and set (classroom setting and teaching tools). The environment of the teaching experience can change day to day, and can be impacted by weather, mood, outside events - in other words, each day is a unique, active, sensory occurrence, just like a play. From this perspective all of what can be taught can be taught theatrically, whether it is having young children creating a pretend bank to learn about money, to older students acting out a scene from a play. Theatre provides an opportunity to teach, and any play provides an opportunity to teach more.

Bringing your students to productions by Syracuse Stage and the Drama Department and utilizing this study guide in teaching about the plays, fulfills elements of the New York State core requirements. We know that as educators you are the more qualified to determine how our plays and study guides blend with your lesson plans and teaching requirements. We hope that you find lots of possibilities to cover a variety of disciplines. As you bring your students to the shows, you might want them to examine not merely the thematic elements of the written word, but also how production elements explore these themes. Everything you see on this stage has been created specifically for this production — Our designers meet with our directors months before rehearsals start, and shows are built to their specifications, which are in line with their vision of the work. In our detailed study guides for our school shows, we will try to give you some previews of this process, but you might want to explore discussing all of the design elements with your students as a way of opening the door to the production they will be seeing. You probably know all of the elements that make up a show, but to recap: Sets Props Choreography

Costumes Sound Music

Lights Painting Casting

And of course, the one thing that is vitally necessary for any piece to be theatre: AN AUDIENCE Without this last, most important element, the theatre ceases to be. Welcome to Syracuse Stage's Educational Outreach Programs.

"Children, like animals, use all their senses to discover the

Syracuse Stage 5

2005-2006 Study Guide education office: 443-1150 or syracusestage.org/education.html

Introduction

When the first cave dweller got up to tell a story, theater began. Almost every culture has some sort of live performance tradition to tell stories. Television and film may have diminished the desire for access to theater, but they have not diminished the importance. Live theater gives each audience member an opportunity to connect with the performers in a way he or she never could with Tom Cruise or Lindsay Lohan. The emotions can be more intense because the events are happening right in front of the audience.

Elements of Theatre Theatre usually engages other art disciplines including Writing, Visual/Design, Music and Dance or Movement

Introduction

Character Who? - Who are the characters in the play and what is their relationship to each other. Plot/Story What? - What is the story line - What happened before the play started? What do the characters want? What happens next? Setting Where? Where does the story take place? This influences design concepts and actor's actions. Characters move and behave according to their environment. Time When? Time consists of Historical (period in history), Time of Year/Season and Time of day, which influences design concepts and actors actions.

This column contains some possible elements for further classroom exploration when investigating a piece of theatre. Character Relationship Conflict/Resolution Action Plot/Story Setting Time Improvisation non-verbal communication Staging Realism/Naturalism Visual Composition Metaphor Language Tone Pattern Repetition Emotion Point of View Humor

Creating questions for exploration Creating an open ended question using an element for exploration, otherwise known as a “Line of Inquiry” can help students make discoveries about a piece of theater and it’s relevance to their own lives. A Line of Inquiry is also useful for Kinesthetic Activities - (On your feet exercises). Examples of Lines Of Inquiry : 1. How does an actor create a character through changing his/her body shape? 2. How does an actor create setting using physical actions? 3. How does an actor use the language of gesture to convey emotion/feelings? 4. How does the use of music convey the mood of a scene?

Syracuse Stage 2005-2006 Study Guide education office: 443-1150 or syracusestage.org/education.html

A Message From the Director Dear Teachers,

I have never forgotten those funny stories and wanted to bring them to life for today’s audience. But the primary purpose in writing this show was to spark a child’s imagination and introduce the idea that traditional stories can be recreated. Ask a room full of children to make up a new ending to Little Red Riding Hood and you may acquire twenty different stories. Grandmother, who just so happens to be a Park Ranger captures the wolf and releases him in Yosemite National Park to be with the other wolves-since they travel in packs. As a teacher, I encourage my students to explore all possibilities. . .what would happen if? Giving them permission to create freely, encouraging spontaneity and inventiveness. The fun part is asking them, what they can learn from this story? What is gained by telling this story? It just may be to make people laugh-and that’s fine. I hope you will help--motivate your students to turn off their computers, put down their Game Boys and write a story; maybe recreating one of their favorite stories. Then they must ask their friends to act it out. Or perhaps the teacher can give them a subject and they can all help write one play together, by brainstorming their ideas. If they have the physical experience of voicing their thoughts and feelings creatively, it may stimulate their imaginations and challenge their minds. If they are reminded to support each other’s ideas without judging, they will experience ensemble (or team work). The necessary component in all this is, of course to have fun!

Fractured Fairy Tales includes: Princess and The Pea Slurping Beauty The Absentminded King Meets the Goblins Rupunzul - The Opera The Witch’s Broom Pinocchio Cutie and The Beast Prince Hyacinth

Yours truly, Joan Hart Willard, director of Fractured Fairy Tales

Syracuse Stage 7

2005-2006 Study Guide education office: 443-1150 or syracusestage.org/education.html

Introduction

Once upon a time there was a little girl who loved watching the Rocky and Bullwinkle Show on Television. The Program included a segment called, Fractured Fairy Tales, that was her favorite part of the show. She enjoyed hearing her mother read fairy tales and knew them all. But The Fractured Fairy Tales turned the traditional stories upside down and twisted them into contemporary skits; tales that the little girl could more easily relate.

Setting The Scene

Fairy Tale Timeline 1812 & 1815 Germany Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm publish Kinder und Hausmarchen (Childhood and Household Tales). Popular tales from the collection include The Frog King, Hansel and Gretel, Rumpelstiltskin and Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. 1835 Denmark Hans Christian Andersen's Fairy Tales Told for Children is published. Including The Wild Swans and The Princess on the Pea.

1989 United States The Disney version of the Hans Christian Andersen tale, The Little Mermaid is released. Ed Young's picture book, Lon Po Po: A Red-Riding Hood Story from China , is published and later wins the Caldecott Medal (1990). 1991 Disney's Beauty and the Beast is released. It is the first feature length animated film to be nominated for an Academy Award.

1845 Norway The first illustrated edition, featuring the work of Erik Werenskiold and Theodor Kittelsen, appears in 1879. Two of the most famous tales from this collection are East of the Sun and West of the Moon and The Three Billy Goats Gruff.

2001 United States David Wiesner wins the Caldecott Medal (2002) for his fractured fairy tale picture book, The Three Pigs.

1893 Great Britain Marian Roalfe Cox publishes her book, Cinderella: Three Hundred and Forty-five Variants of Cinderella from around the world

2004 United States The film Shrek 2, the sequel to Shrek, is one of the highest grossing movies of the year.

The Film Shrek is released. It revisits fairy tale themes while parodying popular culture

1937 United States Walt Disney's first feature length animated film is released, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. 1950 United States Walt Disney's Cinderella is released. 1954 United States Marcia Brown's picture book, Cinderella, or the Little Glass Slipper, wins the Caldecott Medal (1955). 1959 Walt Disney's Sleeping Beauty is released. 1959-1964 United States Jay Ward's "Rocky and His Friends" premieres on ABC. One of its popular "shows within a show" is the Fractured Fairy Tales segment.

Sleeping Beauty by Henry Meynell Rheam

Syracuse Stage 2005-2006 Study Guide education office: 443-1150 or syracusestage.org/education.html

Setting the Scene SOURCES

Although in the late nineteenth and twentieth century the fairy tale came to be associated with children's literature, adults were originally as likely as children to be the audience of the fairy tale. The fairy tale was part of an oral tradition: tales were narrated orally, rather than written down, and handed down from generation to generation.

http://teacher.scholastic.com/products/instr uctor/fairytale.html

The tales often had sad endings; such was the penalty for dealing with the fairy folk. Later fairy tales were about princes and princesses, combat, adventure, society, and romance. Fairies had a secondary role. Moral lessons and happy endings were more common, and the villain was usually punished. In the modern era, fairy tales were altered, usually with violence removed, so they could be read to children (who according to a common modern sentiment should not hear about violence). Sometimes fairy tales are simply miraculous entertainments, but often they are disguised morality tales. This is true for the Brothers Grimm Kinder-und Hausmärchen, and much of the witty, dead-pan, social criticism beneath the surface of Hans Christian Andersen's tales, which influenced Roald Dahl.

http://scoop.diamondgalleries.com/scoop_ar ticle.asp?ai=4160&si=126

http://www.brownielocks.com/fracturedfairytales.html

http://www.dailywriting.net/Fractured_fairy story.html

http://artsedge.kennedy-center.org/content/2175/

The fairy tale has ancient roots, older than the "Arabian Nights" collection of magical tales, in antiquity: Cupid and Psyche, Bel and the Dragon. Fairy tales resurfaced in literature in the 17th century, with the Neapolitan tales of Giambattista Basile and the later Contes of Charles Perrault, who fixed the forms of Sleeping Beauty and Cinderella.

1915, illustration by Arthur Rackham.

Syracuse Stage 9

2005-2006 Study Guide education office: 443-1150 or syracusestage.org/education.html

Setting The Scene

HISTORY

Tackling The Text Tackling The Text

A.J. Jacobs’ Fractured Fairy Tales The standard formula used throughout the Fractured Fairy Tales, twenty-five of which are collected in his book, was to take a standard fairy tale and put a twist on it, frequently involving bad puns. The stories were written in a folksy style, as if they were being told by a favorite uncle who was aware of any misunderstandings his story might cause and be ready to take advantage of those misunderstandings in telling the story. This tone comes across exceedingly well throughout Fractured Fairy Tales. Ward Productions, who produced the original shows, created 91 Fractured Fairy Tales, frequently revisiting stories when they came up with a new slant. While this book has just under a third of those stories, Jacobs elected to include some of those revisitations by providing the reader with both "Beauty and the Beast" and "Cutie and the Beast" as well as multiple tales based on Rumpelstiltskin and King Midas. Although the tales were meant to be topical when they were first aired in the 1960s, they remain topical today, although with references to "Faraway Hamlet 90210" at the end of "Pinocchio," it seems that Jacobs did take the liberty to update some of the references to make them more understandable to today's readers who may not have been alive when the cartoons first aired.

Did you Know...? Who doesn't love a good spoof--especially when the spoof takes on some of your favorite and most time-honored memories? In 1959, Jay Ward introduced his famous Fractured Fairy Tales series, as 4.5-minute cartoon segments for Rocky & His Friends. A total of 91 episodes were made, tackling such tales as The Brave Little Tailor, The Princess and the Pea, Goldilocks and Sleeping Beauty. While the tongue-in-cheek twists offered in each segment were a big hit with adult and kid viewers alike, Fractured Fairy Tales was never able to pick up an independent fanbase and thus, it never experienced the multimedia success of other potential spinoff series. One comic book was published in 1962, adapted from actual episodes by cartoonist Mel Crawford. But Fractured Fairy Tales ended its regular televised run in 1969, as part of the short-lived Dudley Do-Right series.

http://scoop.diamondgalleries.com/scoop_article.a sp?ai=4160&si=126

Syracuse Stage 2005-2006 Study Guide education office: 443-1150 or

In The Classroom questions and activities 1. How are the fairy tales in Fractured Fairy Tales different from the original stories we know? 2. The Actors play different characters in Fractured Fairy Tales, what are some of the things that you notice about how they change characters? (Think about how they use their voices and bodies)

3. What do you notice about the music and sound in the play? Does the music help with the mood of each story? How can we create mood with just our voices? 4. How are the characters in Fractured Fairy Tales like us? Do They make mistakes? How do they solve problems? 5. How would you change Sleeping Beauty, or Princess and the Pea? What if these stories took place in a different setting? How would that change the story?

Creating Mood and Setting Through Vocalization

Creating Characters - The Artist and The Piece of Clay

How is it possible to create mood or the feeling of a story with our own voices?

How does an actor change the shape of their body to reflect a character other than themselves?

Have the kids brainstorm different emotions, anger happiness sadness, etc. With their eyes closed let them make the sounds they associate with that feeling.

Have the kids brainstorm things they notice about different characters such as an old man, a body builder, a doctor, etc. paying special attention to the shapes formed by their bodies.

What are some of the things they notice? What happens to their voices when they are angry? Are they low and loud or high and shrill?

With kids in pairs give one child the role of an artist and the other child the role of a piece of clay.

Split the class into pairs or groups of four and have them listen to each other. Now try this activity with a Nursery Rhyme. What happens to the words of Jack and Jill if you are angry, or if you’re happy. You can expand this to setting as well. What if Jack and Jill takes place in a haunted house, what would that sound like? What if it were the mall?

Using animal characters as a jumping off point, have the artists mold their clay into the shape of the character. Making sure they are gentle when moving the clay. They can also give verbal instructions to shape the clay. Now let the artists take a gallery walk noticing the different shapes. The kids can then switch so that every one gets a chance to be an artist or a piece of clay. You can then experiment with other character possibilities.

Syracuse Stage 11

2005-2006 Study Guide education office: 443-1150 or syracusestage.org/education.html

In The Classroom

3. The characters in each story show different kinds of emotions, what do you notice about the different ways the characters show emotion/feelings? When we are happy what happens to our bodies? When we are sad what happens?