Today I’ve got another book review for you: Performing from the Creative Activities …Program series! I assure you: This book is on par with the last when it comes to “creative” “activities.” Yes, I need to put quotes around everything; it’s all that confounding. Let’s get into it!
#4 Performing
The full title is Performing: The Power of Pretending. Perhaps Performing: The Development of Delusions was already taken. The “word to Parents” at the beginning of the book assures the reader that “all of the activities in this book have been successfully performed by children.” The foreword also informs us that “this is not a book to read—it is a book to do.” This disclaimer will become clear, I suppose, as we read do on.
The contents are divided into the following sections:
- Acting
- Shadow Plays
- Move It
- All Mime
- Variety Show
- Puppets
- Circus
Are you sufficiently curious yet, budding thespians?
Acting
Below are some of the book’s activities that will turn you into the next Meryl Streep:
- Stand before the mirror and pretend you’re a witch, Red Riding Hood, Red Riding Hood’s least favorite wolf, and “a very sad baby”
- Pretend to be a foreigner and buy “birdseed, gloves, and film” from a store
- Get in groups of twos or threes and act as “circus ponies” or “a pack of lonely coyotes”
- Be someone’s echo/shadow—repeat everything that they say and do (Younger siblings of the world, the book has elevated your game into an art form.)
- Get in the “silly situation” of pretending you’re teaching a swim class of nervous nellies
- “Act out an animal parade” where a truck of feathers dumps its load all over the lot of you
- Scream the contents of the telephone book at your friend
- Workshop Sylvester and the Magic Pebble in your basement
Get yourself red-carpet-ready, honey, ’cause you goin’ to the Oscars with tips like these!
Shadow Plays
Time to discover all the fun things you can do in the dark with just yourself and a flashlight!
- Make animal shadow puppets, obvs
- Wear wacky props and gesticulate behind a backlit sheet (That’s the essence of five pages of directions right there)
- Wave homemade cardboard puppets inside a cardboard “TV”
- Act out the shadow play Dr. Din’s Disaster (which was also released by Children’s Press and available on Amazon India!)
Move It
Reel 2 Real’s got nothing on the following activities:
- “Get loose” by pretending you’re a wooden board (Can’t make this stuff up.)
- “Get your gang together for a creeping race”
- Wiggle around like a “very upset” puppet that “got on the wrong plane and flew to Alaska” (::swills from the flask::)
- Walk around the room like your mom in the morning or the meanest person you know (What if they’re one and the same?)
- Pull a prop out of a box of random stuff and incorporate it into some improv
- Dance to music with friends, then turn off the music and make them dance to the sound of you clapping
- Wear a hat as you perform an interpretive dance to Peter and the Wolf
- Take drugs and see what happens
I mean, basically! There’s really no better description than that for the activities and illustrations that follow. Observe:
- “Pretend you are seaweed floating around in the water. Some floats in place. Some floats away.”
- “Pretend you are giant clams opening and closing.”
- “Pretend you are bread in the toaster. Count to ten slowly and pop up! With a friend, make enough toast to go with six cups of cocoa.”
- “Pretend you are the potato masher.”
- “Get lots of kids sitting down together on the floor. Pretend you are popcorn being popped.”
- “Go out of doors and spring around the house.”
- “Pretend you are something in your mom’s washing machine.”
- “You are a snake charmer. Your hands can make a graceful snake. Is there any other kind?”
And in conclusion:
Amazing.
All Mime
“This is the world of imagination. This is the world of pantomime.”
For-real quote from this book
Let’s dive into the miming exercises, shall we?
- Imagine smelling onions and rotten garbage
- Listen to a clock, but only with your mind (It’s a cuckoo clock. Of course it is.)
- Pantomime BIG FEELINGS in front of the mirror
- LIP SYNC! FOR…YOUR…LIFE!!!!
- Acknowledge that “change is strange” and “be a caterpillar, all fuzzy and lumpy”
- Play some different variations of what is more or less Charades
- Act out a slew of characters primping before a group photoshoot
- Pretend to go on a disappointing fishing trip
- Put a pillowcase over your head, call yourself a “Mubbler,” and terrorize someone named Prudence (I’m just stating the facts.)
Variety Show
“Talent isn’t necessary.”
Another for-real quote that should make anyone scared to attend a variety show
Now’s the part where you’ll pull together the skills you’ve learned thus far and inflict them all on an unwitting audience! Here’s what you’ll do:
- Plan the show by creating committees in charge of tickets and publicity, lighting and props, stage managing, producing and directing, and clean up (This seems awfully advanced for kids who were just taught to daydream about smelling decomposing trash.)
- Act out the “mellow drama” of a slumlord threatening to kidnap a bedridden man’s daughter if he can’t pay the rent
- Paint your hand up like Cartman did in the South Park episode “Fat Butt and Pancake Head”
- Make your friend wear dog ears on his hat and try to coerce him to jump through a hula hoop
- Tango with a dance partner you built out of old pantyhose
- Stick your arms and legs through your own homemade stand-in cutout photo op painting (Is it clear I don’t know what these things are called?)
- Perform some magic tricks
Wow, talent really wasn’t necessary.
Puppets
After putting on a variety show (with a stage manager and committees and everything!), “puppets” seems like a tepid follow-up. Nevertheless, we go on to read about (er, do about) how to do the following:
- Make boy, girl, and gender-nonspecific sock and glove puppets
- Create props (i.e., just a slapstick and a crown, the only props you’ll apparently ever need)
- Establish a stage backdrop, scenery, and the stage itself
- Sew a working curtain
- Perform a puppet play titled A Fine Mess that involves “a sometimes fierce animal” named Gorp (I’m going to treat myself to not reading it.)
This section was so serious and no-nonsense (read: boring) in comparison to the others—especially on the topic of sock puppets. These kids are going to be on the board of directors for the performing arts center downtown by the end of third grade. Let me remind you of their humble roots: Just three sections ago, the same kids were dropping acid and pretending they were seaweed, floating adrift in the tumultuous sea.
Circus
And for the finale, you’ll learn all about how to plan a circus, which, like the variety show, sounds awfully involved for eight- to twelve-year-olds. But what do I know? Perhaps these children are more than capable of finding “a place big enough for the ring area, a sideshow, an offstage area, and the audience” and collecting chairs and benches. And maybe they are beyond adept when it comes to making and implementing decisions about admission, promotions, music, and the order of the acts. It’s perfectly conceivable they’ll be totally on top of building animals cages and wagons out of cardboard!
Then again, there is the bit about the circus manager, the person who “needs to make sure everything goes well and solves any problems that come up”: “Maybe you can find an adult who will do this for you.”
Once all the logistics are in place, it’s time to get circusing, and you’ll learn how your circus won’t be the same without the following:
- An opening parade, in which “maybe you will want a centipede creature and certainly some clowns” (I will not want, thanks.)
- A ringmaster with a “microphone” made from a small sieve hooked to the top of a stick
- An animal trainer with a whip who oversees animals that look like this:
- Tumblers from gym class masquerading as circus acrobats
- Clowns being clownish
- Bareback riders
- A strong man using balloon weights
- A super tall lady, a super fat lady, a two-headed woman, and “Muchnik the Midget”
- This nightmarish creature:
Remember: “All of the activities in this book have been successfully performed by children.”
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