27sPRING 2013

We need to work with more teachers and encourage the teachers who have had a successful experience with an artist to mentor other teachers. I strongly believe that it is important to allow the artists to remain primarily artists and not turn them into art teachers. It is a significant difference. there is a fine line to walk and a tricky balancing act in becoming a successful teaching artist. unfortunately, simply giving lesson plans to a teacher does not create arts integration. It is important for teachers to observe artists in the classroom and experience working with artists. We must offer, maybe even require, arts integration classes to education students in college.”

Dossett passionately shares what sustain-ability looks like to her. “I am of the belief that every teacher can teach through the arts, and I believe that every teacher can

teach through the arts well with training. If we can create spaces where teachers feel supported to understand the peda-gogical and practical nature of the work, then I think that sustainability looks like classroom teachers who take our work and make it work for their context. that’s one of the reasons I believe in arts-based instruction and arts integration, I think anyone that really wants to can own a piece of this work for themselves.”

thinking about follow-through after a residency is over, Dossett says, “you never want to leave them entirely, its always really important to ‘leave the door wide open, call me anytime you need, email, we will make time.’ you and I now have a professional and personal relationship, I want this to be something that is useful and meaningful and something that you are going to use in your practice for a long time.”

Hansel and Gretel

Number the Stars Jackie and Me

by Moses Goldberg directed by Ann Wakefield

by Dr. Douglas W. Larche with Susan Elliott Larche based on the novel by Lois Lowry directed by Ernie Nolan

by Steven Dietz directed by John Jenkins

at DePaul’s historic Merle Reskin Theatre 60 E Balbo Dr, Chicago | 312 922 1999 | theatre.depaul.edu

OCT 15 - NOV 16, 2013

JAN 18 – FEB 22, 2014

APRIL 8–MAY 10, 2014

Chicago Playworks for Families & Young Audiences Presents:

While different residency programs approach, view, and accept the chal-lenging quest of leaping from service to sustainability in various ways, they joyfully hold the continual sharing and practice of arts integration in the classroom in the highest regard. While arts administrators, teaching artists, and teachers may not know exactly where they will land in the residency process and beyond, they continue to leap again and again.

Karen Weberman is the education director at Metro Theater Company in Saint Louis, Missouri. She holds an MFA in Theatre for Young Audiences from the University of Central Florida.

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tochIlDsplAy sun serpent

Photo (L–R) Andres Alcala, Andrea Morales, and Ricky Araiza in The Sun Serpent by José Cruz González. Childsplay, Tempe, AZ. Photo by Heather Hill Photography.

PerformanceChildsplay’s Sun Serpent by José Cruz González

with music by Daniel Valdez

29sPRING 2013

José Cruz González’s the Sun Serpent, produced by Childsplay, relates the brutal conquest of Mexico as seen through the eyes of a young boy.

“This scene is titled ‘Lament for the Dead,’ one of the most beautiful and haunting moments in the play. The massacre has just happened.”

plAywrIght José cruz gonzález

Night. A blood red moon. Xochitl, a young pregnant woman, sits near a lifeless body covered in a shroud. Lifeless masks appear onstage. Xochitl sings a song in Nahuatl.

Young Anáhuac enters and stands, quietly watching and listening.

scrIpt

“During a two-year devising process, one of our central questions was how to convey the epic nature of the Conquest with multiple characters and only three actors. Early on, this

image came to me: a woman wearing a dress of masks. The masks represent all the people who were massacred and each mask tells a different story. I drew a rough

sketch of my idea – and Connie took it from there.”

DIrector rAchel bowDItch

“Rachel went wild when she saw the masks in my collection. The actors’ personal masks are made of plaster bandage and paper clay to fit perfectly, a process I developed after studying masks in

Japan. I call them “invisible masks” because they tend to disappear on the face. The dangling translucent masks are made of vacuform plastic over a collection of wooden Noh masks

I had carved in Kyoto. Their translucence produced an other-worldly effect.”

mAsk DesIgner AnD buIlDer zArco guerrero

“We needed thirty masks for one costume – on time and budget. I work with a costume wizard named Daniel Hollingshead who researched making a vacuform machine from a hotplate and common hardware store items. It worked beautifully; we knocked out thirty masks in a day.

With a bit of trial and error – and hooks and wire, we secured the masks to live through a fast change without the sound of Velcro.”

costume DesIgner connIe Furr-solomon

“The textilene projection walls erupt into flames with a dramatic Spanish guitar and the sound of shouts and cries. Xochitl appears in the dress of masks and we hear a drum

beat. She sings a lament in Nahuatl as the masks are placed on the trees.”

DIrector rAchel bowDItch

sPRING 2013

the BusIness oF PuPPetRy

Guess How Much I Love You by Sam McBratney and illustrations by Anita Jeram, adapted, directed and designed by Jim Morrow, music by Steven Naylor, and narrated by Beau Bridges. Mermaid Theatre of Nova Scotia, Windsor, Nova Scotia. Photo by Margo Ellen Gesser.

By emma halpern

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