Liquid Spirit began with the idea of exploring human relationships through the four elements of earth, wind, fire, and water.  The students engaged with the four elements through observation, ritual, and visual art.  After those direct experiences with the elements, my teaching partner, Candrice Jones, facilitated students in writing prompts.  Candrice then took that text and repurposed it into a script.  The script became a loose, expressionistic narrative that fluidly moved between the personification of the four elements and the first-person stories of our students. I knew I wanted to challenge myself and the students technically through the incorporation of shadow puppetry and film in addition to costuming, music, and movement. To achieve this, each student took on both a performance role and a technical project.  Resident composer, Stefan Cwik, created original compositions for each of the four elements to underscore our production.  Below, you see photos of the fruits of our labor.  I am so proud of our dancers who didn't believe they could dance, our tireless costumers who worked in the "AGS sweatshop," and all the other self-initiators who created the visual spectacles for this show.  This was a great group of students, and I am lucky to have worked with them. 

Above "Wind" taunts "Water" until "Water" comes down to the stage in a celebration dance.

Below the expressionism of the elements' stories evolves into the realities of our students' stories accented by shadow puppetry.

Below we used film to help create mood and tone.  In these moments, we explored human connection through a simultaneous dive in towater and passion from infatuation through obsession.

I returned to Texarkana for another professional development with elementary teachers.  The teachers were fun and engaging.  After working with the teachers, I modeled the drama-based instructional strategies in their elementary classrooms.  

We used the good ol' game of Machines as a jumping off for this week's Creative Arts Playgroup.  Since we've done tableaux, I wanted to explore activating tableaux with them.  We warmed-up by playing Machines.  Machines is a game where one person will start a sound and movement they can repeat.  Other people will connect to that person, repeating their own sound and movement.  The group builds a "machine."  I then started reading the book, interrupting moments to build various "machines" including a machine in which we start as Max's bed (see above) and morph into a tree in the "world all around him" (see below).  They also created sounds to go along with their movements.  With the bed above, we began with an "Ah" and a snore, transitioned with a mechanical sound, and ended with the sound of "wind blowing through and crinkling" the leaves in our branches.  These exercises were great for practicing improvisational skills, physicalizing objects, and creating soundscapes.  These kids really stretched their abstract thinking skills today!

You can't go wrong with print-making, and this is proof.  This week, the Creative Arts Playgroup read the Sendak classic Where the Wild Things Are.  We then etched out our own monsters on pieces of styrofoam take-out containers.  We then pressed our monsters on ink pads and stamped them on paper.  I had already cut out some additional accents such as the forest motif in the book, grass, ocean waves, scales and the words "Wild Things".  After they printed their own monsters, they played around with the other stamps.  I then cut out their prints while they played, and then they arranged them how they wanted them on cardstock. I got this idea from:


http://riversideelementaryart.blogspot.com/2010/12/pop-art-wild-things.html.  


It was a lot a fun!

The Creative Arts Playgroup worked with Mo Willems' Leonardo & the Terrible Monster for the past two weeks.  We made Rorschach Monsters the first week.  Well, they began as Rorschach monsters.  I had them fold their papers and paint on one side, and then they pressed that side onto the other side to create a mirror image.  We all felt like they needed something more, though, so we added tissue paper, feathers, colored balls, pipe cleaner legs and a holding rod.  So...what began as Rorschach monsters morphed into rod puppet monsters?  The following week we explored theatre arts by creating characters for the rod puppet monsters we created the previous week.  We explored different voices and walks for them.  Watch out--below, you see one of our monsters sneaking toward you!  

This was the Creative Arts Playgroup's 2nd week with Brian Lies' Bats at the Beach.  We exercised our theatre skills today by acting as bats flying and playing in the ocean.  Then we created tableaux from Lies' beautiful illustrations.  The kids really seemed to enjoy creating the tableaux.  With this age group, the illustrations provided them with a concrete anchor of what we wanted to create.  As they become more comfortable with tableaux, perhaps we will create our own in addition to the ones in the story.

*Bats at the Beach* by Brian Lies was our story this week, but I don't think the kids were able to focus on it.  The weather was beautiful, we had the Creative Arts Playgroup outside...which distracted us from the story and our artwork.  I think the chickens in our backyard are just too novel!  It was a valuable lesson for me.  When working with the younger ages, I should either: 1)  Do the story and art first and then go outside, or 2)  use the distractions of the outdoors in our art project somehow.  For our art, I cut up an old loofah.  Laying a bat shape on a blue piece of construction paper (like the background in Lies' illustrations), the kids used the loofah to paint around the bat.  This idea came from Mom to 2 Posh Lil' Divas (http://www.momto2poshlildivas.com/2012/10/spiders-and-bats-in-preschool.html).

For our second week of *King Bidgood's in the Bathtub*, the Creative Arts Playgroup acted out the story.  The Page was the most popular part with each kid getting a turn to be The Page.  In addition to there being a King Bidgood in the Bathtub, we had a Queen Bidgood in the Bathtub.  It's always fun to act out a story in as many ways as possible.

Last week, I facilitated a professional development workshop on drama integration for secondary teachers in Texarkana.  The folks who hired me from TRAHC (the Texarkana Regional Arts and Humanities Council) wanted me to focus on facilitating the teachers through the adaptation process.  We don't want teachers to simply repeat the exercises and lessons we do.  We want the teachers to actually adapt the exercises so they are teaching THEIR content THROUGH the exercises.  I facilitated the teachers in considering the concepts underlying the exercises.  Once they were able to identify those concepts, they easily adapted the exercises to their content.  These teachers are totally invested in drama integration and absolutely enjoyed the luxury of having time to brainstorm.  

We created a "Living Rock Cycle" around the room.  These teachers are creating the "compaction and cementation of sediments."  I wish you could hear their sound effects!

The day after the professional development workshop, I modeled using drama to teach the five story elements of plot, setting, theme, characters, and conflict.  Here you see two students "writing" a story with their bodies with administrators looking on.

Here you see us learning to play the game Donkey.  Once the students understood the traditional way of playing the game, we reinforced the five story elements

This was our best playgroup yet.  We read Audrey Wood's hilarious book *King Bidgood's in the Bathtub*.  For our art, we bubble painted King Bidgoods inside castle bathrooms.  The kids absolutely LOVED bubble painting.  It was a great reminder that, at this age, the final product is absolutely secondary to the artistic process.  It was also a reminder that the kids often have the best ideas.  One of them didn't like the color scheme I suggested and did her own thing.  I liked her color choices better.  And Clem later drew a face on King Bidgood that really added some great personality to the piece.  Here you can see pictures of the kids having fun with their bubble paint and then their final products.