Today Maren picked Theater.
You know, the kid loves Shakespeare.
Why? I can't figure. I'm not that big a fan.
At any rate, I thought she'd be super excited about picking Theater today. But, being the constant skeptic and being like my other children who have tended to be slow to inherit my love of learning, she wasn't so sure today's theater lesson was going to be as exciting as she wanted it to be.
And it wasn't. But it was her fault.
I pulled out a copy of one of MY favorite plays--Cyrano de Bergerac. I told her about the play, what it was about, how the storyline went (leaving out the big finish, of course) and we chose a scene to read. She played Cyrano, I played Roxanne, and my son played Christian. We read through the amazingly sweet and funny scene in which Christian fails at wooing Roxanne in the garden because his in-person speech doesn't compare to his beautiful written words and she can't understand why. Christian then meets up with Cyrano and Cyrano comes up with the plan to coach Christian from beneath Roxanne's balcony, which doesn't work very well either, because Christian is too slow-witted to keep up with Cyrano's whispered words; at which point Cyrano tells Christian to shut his mouth and he delivers (in Christian's voice) a beautiful speech in which his (Cyrano's) true feelings for Roxanne are expressed.
It's enough to make one weep for poor Cyrano. I LOVE this play!!
Try as I might to get Maren to 'act,' she refused. Apparently it's just too embarrassing.
*sigh*
For this activity, smaller children could be coached in saying and delivering simple lines. I'd avoid Shakespeare for small children. Find something they can understand. There should be books of plays for children at your local library, or you can spend time with your child making up one of your own--maybe a short adaptation of an Aesop Fable or a Grimm Fairy Tale. This site, Lazybeescripts.com, has quite a lot of scripts for simple plays, including some Aesop.
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