| Workshops/Residencies
> Teachers Workshop
| Family Fun Night
| School Residency
 Children’s
Voices Theatre residencies begin with a performance of Who
Am I or It’s
Fun to Write. Inspired by Michael Zerphy and Marv Klassen-Landis’
performance of other children’s work, students and teachers
eagerly participate when Michael and Marv visit their classrooms
to lead them through the process of writing original poems and stories,
developing theatre skills, and creating a theatrical version of
something they’ve written. Residency activities can focus
on themes explored in the opening performance, on a current unit
of study, or on specific skills a teacher requests.
“I received rave reviews of your week with us! There
are lots of “Who Am I” bulletin boards that went up
after you left with great art projects attached. We’re having
a Curriculum Night here in a few weeks, and lots of classes are
doing their own “Who Am I” performances, with new
ones being made up each day. You were a smashing success.”
—Melanie Everard, enrichment coordinator, Benjamin Franklin
Elementary School, Keene, New Hampshire
Sometimes residencies culminate with a public performance. When
students come up on stage in a vibrant celebration of their imagination,
their literacy skills, and their abilities to cooperate, parents
and community members are deeply moved by what they see and hear.
Many residencies also include a Family Fun Night and a teacher workshop.
“(At) Woodstock Elementary’s presentation of
“Children’s Voices,” a program of charming performances
based on students’ original writings and movements urged
into being by artists-in-residence Marv Klassen-Landis and Michael
Zerphy, ... the evening was a stage collage of images, sounds,
and movement... There were comic visual stories called “Truth
and Treatment” when a moment of life was done realistically,
and then re-run and given a clever twist to turn the same experience
into comedy central deluxe: a face in a cake in a restaurant,
a ridiculous pocket-emptying at the airport, and a madcap surgery.
There was poetic action at the amusement park and on the ranch...
(Students) wrote and performed roosters, angry hurricanes, and
sculptures at a museum. They spoke of being a treasure chest “dull
on the outside and valuable on the inside....” With a change
of pace, gesture, story line, or word, the children and their
teachers found beautiful language and physical theatre in the
mesh of the imaginative and very real worlds of 200 Woodstock
children. Congratulations to the young artists of Woodstock Elementary
School and their guides.”
—Harriet Worrell, The Vermont Standard
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