• Home
  • About April
  • Portfolio
    • Directing >
      • Community-Engaged Productions
      • Devised Work
      • Theatre-in-Education
    • Teaching >
      • Classroom Instructor
      • Teaching Artist
    • Training >
      • Pre-service
      • In-service
    • Writing >
      • Articles
      • Plays
      • Poems
    • Arkansas Artist Roster
  • Press
April Gentry-Sutterfield

Lessons From *Lily*

2/28/2012

0 Comments

 
Wildwood Park for the Arts is currently touring my play *Lily and the Apple Seed.*  They've been all over the state encouraging k-5th graders to make healthy choices.  I watched the production for the first time two weeks ago at Jefferson Elementary here in Little Rock.  This was my first full-length play to write by myself, and I feel so fortunate to have seen it in production.  My major lesson is not an earth-shattering one for theatre artists.  In fact, its pretty basic--"Show, don't tell."  I primarily used narration to tell the story of this young girl faced with a food dilemma instead of using action scenes.  There were several reasons for this:  1) I based the play on a narrative story by my sister-in-law, Emily Sutterfield; 2)  I was limited to three actors, and I wasn't sure how to do action scenes involving different more than three characters and only three actors; and 3)  I was commissioned to write a play encouraging the seed to plate idea.  I didn't know how to do this without being didactic; therefore, I tried to used Brechtian techniques to embrace the didactism rather than fight it.  This, too, led me to narration.  As I revise, I will attempt to lose much of the narration as well as the strong didactic message.  Though I'm proud of what we created, I think the next version will be significantly different, and I hope those changes are for the better.  I am so thankful for everyone who worked on this project--especially director Stacy Pendergraft and set designer Cheri Devol.  They made me look good!
Picture
Picture
Picture
0 Comments

    Current Work

    About the Author:  April Gentry-Sutterfield is a director, deviser, educator, and mom who uses theatre as a tool for social justice, education, and community engagement.


    Contact April at april@aprilgentry-sutterfield.com.

    Archives

    August 2014
    October 2013
    September 2013
    August 2013
    July 2012
    June 2012
    April 2012
    February 2012
    November 2011
    October 2011
    September 2011
    August 2011
    July 2011
    May 2011
    April 2011
    March 2011
    February 2011
    December 2010
    November 2010

    Categories

    All
    Arkadelphia
    Arkansas Governor's School
    Arkansas Teen College
    Art And Science Center Of Southeast Arkansas
    Bentonville
    Bullying
    Cabot
    Choosing Sides
    Community-engagement
    Conway
    Creative Arts Playgroup
    Dawson Educational Coop
    Devising
    Eastside Elementary School
    Healthy Choices
    Hendrix College
    Horace Mann
    Horace Mann Middle School
    Improv
    Interactive Theatre
    Laman Library
    Lily And The Aple Seed
    Lily And The Apple Seed
    Little Rock
    Mosaic Templars
    North Little Rock
    Pine Bluff
    Playwrighting
    Production
    Pulaski Technical College
    Rehearsal
    Rehearsals
    Safeplaces
    Teaching
    Theatre In Education
    Theatre-in-education
    Trike Theatre
    Upcoming Project
    Wildwood

    RSS Feed

Powered by Create your own unique website with customizable templates.