a brainchild of the same Eugene Lang whose name graces our school.)This year the 4th graders are doing fairy tales, and yesterday it was Hansel and Gretel. We began with the volunteers (including me) performing a little skit of Hansel and Gretel, and then we broke up into groups, each including 5-6 kids and 2 students. After some warm-up (which these kids hardly needed, several were bouncing off the walls!) each of the five groups did some acting games and then worked out their own version of the story and then performed it for the reconvened group.
I hadn't realized that part of the exercise was to adapt or even update the story in question, and thought the group I was in (replacing a Lang student who couldn't come) was pushing it by having two Gretels (nobody wanted to be Hansel, and in fact the two girls instead wanted to Vanessa and Myla - not their own names, incidentally) and no mom (I was dad and sadly explained that mom had died of starvation), and both a witch and a rapping warlock living in a house made of Snickers bars (the rapping warlock had initially demanded "can I be a celebrity? I want to be a celebrity!").
The other versions varied even more, and quite ingeniously. In one, Hansel (with two sisters) called on his cell phone when they got lost in the woods, and left a message for his parents ending with "And if you see George Bush, tell him he sucks!" to which Gretel added "Obama!" But of course there was no cell phone reception in the woods. By some miracle I don't quite remember, there was reception in the cage into which the witch locked all three, so someone let them out and they snuck out and baked a poison cake which they brought back to the witch. (Somehow mom and dad reappeared and ate it too!) In another, Hansel and Gretel's mother becomes the witch, and leads Hansel and Gretel away in handcuffs. A bow and arrow-wielding hunter shot the two witches in a third, setting the children free.
The kids' adaptations of the story are at once illuminating and disturbing; in their versions, as in their interactions with each other, you get a window to the world of their homes and families. Are these kids too young to believe that Hansel and Gretel could actually save themselves - aren't kids in America supposed to believe they can do anything? - or is the story of more complicated (or just a coincidence)?
It is clear the kids love the program and are in some measure getting it - relating your experience to things outside it is good, performing for others and watching others' performances is valuable, learning can be fun! (And our students are learning lots too about the value of education and the precious lives being short-changed by too many schools, and not a small number have discovered vocations involving children.) It's a pretty neat thing C is doing here - and fits with the appreciation of the powers of theater I have been learning about from her. I think I'll try to visit the class a few more times and learn more about some other fairy tales!
