THE 3 MAGICAL SISTERS
Based on Strega Nona by Tomie dePaola
CHARACTERS
Narrator
3 Magical Sisters:
Young Money
Alicia
Candace
Dragon
Town’s King
Bird
Rabbit
Goat
Big Anthony
Dinner
Magic
Three Little Kisses
Townspeople
NARRATOR
Once upon a time, in a land far, far away...
(EVERYBODY makes a FROZEN PICTURE.)
NARRATOR
There were 3 Magical Sisters: Young Money, Alicia, and Candace.
And a dragon burned their house down.
(The DRAGON burns down the HOUSE. Everybody leaves except for the 3 SISTERS.)
YOUNG MONEY
This place is a mess.
ALICIA
We can’t fix it on our own.
CANDACE
We need to find someone to help us.
(The 3 SISTERS use MAGIC to put up a “Help Wanted” sign.)
(EVERYBODY gets in line to look at the sign.)
(The KING doesn’t want to help.)
(The BIRD doesn’t want to help.)
(The RABBIT doesn’t want to help.)
(The DRAGON doesn’t want to help.)
(The GOAT doesn’t want to help.)
(BIG ANTHONY wants to help!)
BIG ANTHONY
Sure, I’ve got nothing better to do.
NARRATOR
So Big Anthony went to meet the 3 Sisters.
BIG ANTHONY
I’m Big Anthony.
YOUNG MONEY
Here are your jobs:
Fix the roof.
ALICIA
Feed the goat.
CANDACE
Sweep up the ashes.
NARRATOR
But they told him there was one thing he Must Not Do.
EVERYBODY
You must never touch the pasta pot.
(EVERYBODY goes to sleep except 3 SISTERS and BIG ANTHONY.)
NARRATOR
One night, Big Anthony was giving the Goat his bedtime snack, when he heard something strange.
(The 3 SISTERS chant at the pot. DINNER and MAGIC make pasta come out of the pot. BIG ANTHONY watches.)
BIG ANTHONY
Oh wow! It’s a magic pasta pot! It’s filling itself up!
CANDACE
That’s enough!
(The 3 SISTERS chant to make the pot stop.)
NARRATOR
Big Anthony was so excited that he did not see the 3 Sisters blow 3 Little Kisses.
(3 LITTLE KISSES is blown at the pot.)
NARRATOR
The next morning...
YOUNG MONEY
Big Anthony, we need a new refrigerator.
ALICIA
And we have to go to the store to get it.
CANDACE
Take care of the house while we’re gone.
(The 3 SISTERS leave.)
BIG ANTHONY
I’m gonna have a pasta party tonight!
(BIG ANTHONY posts a sign that says “Pasta Party 6:00 Tonight!”)
(The KING, GOAT, BIRD, RABBIT, and DRAGON are all excited for the party. They go to the 3 SISTERS’ house.)
KING
Well, we don’t see any pasta.
DRAGON
Yeah! Where’s the pasta?
(BIG ANTHONY brings out the pasta pot and chants. MAGIC and DINNER make pasta come out.)
EVERYONE
Oooh! Wow!
BIG ANTHONY
Everyone eat! Eat!
NARRATOR
They ate until they were stuffed.
And the pot was never empty.
BIG ANTHONY
Okay, that’s enough pasta.
(BIG ANTHONY chants.)
NARRATOR
But he didn’t blow 3 Little Kisses.
And the pasta kept coming.
KING
Make it stop!
DRAGON
I’ll stop it! I’ll burn it up!
BIRD
That’s not working!
BIG ANTHONY
Stop! Stop!
(MAGIC and DINNER cover EVERYBODY with pasta.)
NARRATOR
Just when the pasta had covered the whole town, the 3 Sisters came home.
YOUNG MONEY
What is this mess?
ALICIA
Where is Big Anthony?
CANDACE
We have to stop this!
(The 3 SISTERS chant to make the pasta stop and blow 3 LITTLE KISSES.)
NARRATOR
And the pasta stopped coming.
(The 3 SISTERS uncover EVERYONE who is buried.)
YOUNG MONEY
Is everyone okay?
ALICIA
Who did this?
BIRD
Big Anthony!
GOAT
He almost killed us.
KING
Beat him up!
DRAGON
Burn him up!
CANDACE
I have a better idea.
Let the punishment fit the crime.
(CANDACE hands BIG ANTHONY a fork.)
3 SISTERS
Start eating!
EVERYONE
Yeah!
NARRATOR
So Big Anthony ate, and ate, and ate, until he had eaten all of the pasta.
EVERYONE
Poor Big Anthony.
THE END.
Wednesday, February 27
Tuesday, February 26
Too many things in one room
Today we had a relatively full contingent of kids. We started later than usual -- I think they had more homework than usual. Because Human Machine was successful last time with the few kids that we had, we started with that, and it went all right, though their conception of it seemed to deteriorate somewhat: they were less controlled, lost the ability to repeat motion, and instead of keeping the motion contained tended to want to march around the room with it.
We then tried to move on to blocking our final performance. We created a frozen picture for the beginning of the play, and that was about as far as we got. The kids were unable to focus. A big part of the problem, we think, was the presence of many people in the room who were not engaged..............
MORE TO COME.
We then tried to move on to blocking our final performance. We created a frozen picture for the beginning of the play, and that was about as far as we got. The kids were unable to focus. A big part of the problem, we think, was the presence of many people in the room who were not engaged..............
MORE TO COME.
Thursday, February 21
Field trip losses
Today we arrived to find, without warning, that most of the kids had gone on a field trip to SportsWorks (or been picked up early). So we had about six kids to work with.
We didn't attempt to do costumes. We started out with Human Machine, which they really seemed to enjoy and get the hang of well. We used that to springboard into a type of "character machine," having the kids pick a sound/word/sentence that their characters would make, and a movement, and having them build the town out of it. This morphed into a kind of game of make-believe. We paused to (re)name the characters as the kids desired. (One of the Strega Nonas became "Young Money," for example.) They wanted to keep playing the make-believe game, so we modified it: one of the things Strega Nona does in the book is help the townspeople when they have problems/complaints, so we had the kids come up with a problem their character might have. They then went to the Stregas with their problems and the Stregas figured out how to fix them.
We didn't attempt to do costumes. We started out with Human Machine, which they really seemed to enjoy and get the hang of well. We used that to springboard into a type of "character machine," having the kids pick a sound/word/sentence that their characters would make, and a movement, and having them build the town out of it. This morphed into a kind of game of make-believe. We paused to (re)name the characters as the kids desired. (One of the Strega Nonas became "Young Money," for example.) They wanted to keep playing the make-believe game, so we modified it: one of the things Strega Nona does in the book is help the townspeople when they have problems/complaints, so we had the kids come up with a problem their character might have. They then went to the Stregas with their problems and the Stregas figured out how to fix them.
Tuesday, February 19
Casting!
To make sure that the kids all had the story of Strega Nona in their heads, we broke it down into beginning, middle, and end, and had everyone agree on the events that happened in each section. Then, in three groups (originally), we chose "something that happened" in the section of the story assigned to a group, and made a frozen picture that showed that chosen "something."
We were worried about this exercise, but the kids took to it fairly well. They had to guess what the thing that was happening in each frozen picture was. They were inventive. We had a group that showed the final picture in the story, for instance: Big Anthony with a giant belly full of pasta...Andreas sat with his arms in a circle in front of him, representing his big belly, and Victor and Donald stood inside, the pasta in the belly. And the kids guessed it, too.
One of the tricky things is that America Reads is volunteering at CHSC on the same days that we are, and so they're always taking kids out to tutor them one-on-one. What with already patchy attendance, this means we rarely have all of the kids in the room at once. Kids come back mid-exercise, and we have to reintegrate them. For frozen pictures we ended up, therefore, with a fourth group, which worked out okay.
We then moved to casting: another thing we were worried about. Would it be a madhouse? It turned out -- no. We worked together to make a list of all of the characters in the story, and came up with a pretty lengthy one, with some surprising additions -- i.e.:
Strega Nona
Goat
Blue bird
Big Anthony
Dinner
The town's king
Magic
Three little kisses
Pasta pot
Moon and stars
Rabbit
...and so on. Moreover, though we did end up with three Strega Nonas, there was no fighting over roles. We ended up with a lot of variety and some of the first ones chosen were some of the least glorious. Little kids don't even need the phrase "no small roles, only small actors."
Some of the kids (Aochen, Jose, Ivan, Maru), the ones who have been constantly hard to engage, didn't pick roles. Maybe they'll get interested in participating once we start making costumes. At this point, Patrick and I really don't know how to get them involved when they just don't want to be.
We passed out paper and markers and had the kids draw their characters, letting them know that we would be making costumes and that this would be preparation. At the end, we invited kids to show their pictures, if they wanted to -- a few did.
We were worried about this exercise, but the kids took to it fairly well. They had to guess what the thing that was happening in each frozen picture was. They were inventive. We had a group that showed the final picture in the story, for instance: Big Anthony with a giant belly full of pasta...Andreas sat with his arms in a circle in front of him, representing his big belly, and Victor and Donald stood inside, the pasta in the belly. And the kids guessed it, too.
One of the tricky things is that America Reads is volunteering at CHSC on the same days that we are, and so they're always taking kids out to tutor them one-on-one. What with already patchy attendance, this means we rarely have all of the kids in the room at once. Kids come back mid-exercise, and we have to reintegrate them. For frozen pictures we ended up, therefore, with a fourth group, which worked out okay.
We then moved to casting: another thing we were worried about. Would it be a madhouse? It turned out -- no. We worked together to make a list of all of the characters in the story, and came up with a pretty lengthy one, with some surprising additions -- i.e.:
Strega Nona
Goat
Blue bird
Big Anthony
Dinner
The town's king
Magic
Three little kisses
Pasta pot
Moon and stars
Rabbit
...and so on. Moreover, though we did end up with three Strega Nonas, there was no fighting over roles. We ended up with a lot of variety and some of the first ones chosen were some of the least glorious. Little kids don't even need the phrase "no small roles, only small actors."
Some of the kids (Aochen, Jose, Ivan, Maru), the ones who have been constantly hard to engage, didn't pick roles. Maybe they'll get interested in participating once we start making costumes. At this point, Patrick and I really don't know how to get them involved when they just don't want to be.
We passed out paper and markers and had the kids draw their characters, letting them know that we would be making costumes and that this would be preparation. At the end, we invited kids to show their pictures, if they wanted to -- a few did.
Sunday, February 17
Strega Nona in one paragraph
Strega Nona, an old woman who is good at helping people, but also really strange, needs help around the house. She hires a young man, Big Anthony, and gives him jobs to do, telling him there is only one thing he must never do: touch her pasta pot. One night Big Anthony finds out that the pasta pot is magic. He sees Strega Nona chant a rhyme over it, and it cooks unlimited pasta on its own. She chants another rhyme to make it stop. However, Big Anthony doesn't see the last thing she does to stop the pot: blow three kisses at it. Big Anthony tells everybody he knows that the pot is magic, but they don't believe him. When Strega Nona goes on a trip, Big Anthony decides to prove that the pot is magic. He chants the first rhyme and it works. He feeds all of his neighbors pasta and he is a hero. But when he chants the second rhyme to stop it, the pot doesn't stop cooking pasta. Pasta fills the streets and almost smothers everyone. Then Strega Nona comes home and saves the day by blowing three kisses at the pot. All the neighbors are furious with Big Anthony and want to punish him. Strega Nona comes up with a fitting punishment: Big Anthony must eat all of the pasta until the streets are clear. And he does. The End.
Saturday, February 16
Valentine's Day
Before heading in to CHSC today, Nick asked if we should bring some candy for the kids. You know, for Valentine's Day.
When we got started, it was immediately clear that the last thing the kids needed today was more candy. They'd been eating it all day and were still sucking away at lollipops, mouths sticky and rainbowed. They were a little, well, hyper.
We sang the Austrian song again, this time changing it so that the verses were cumulative. They remembered the song well from last week, and caught on quickly to the cumulative bit. They like coming up with new things to interrupt the yodel. I couldn't understand Victor's suggestion ("Surf's Up game!") even after he repeated it several times. How do you wade through the little-kid-mumble to get at meaning?
We then had the kids sit at their tables and gave each table a task: one had to listen for characters, one for places, and one for the trouble/solution. We also explained that we were reading these stories so that we could vote between them for something to base our final performance on. Nobody had read The Talking Eggs, the first book, before, although Chloe later said she has a version of it in Chinese, with different pictures.
The kids were very rowdy, running between tables, refusing to sit still. The book is a long one for a picture book, and it took much longer than we expected it would to read, in large part because I kept having to stop to get everyone to calm down, go back to their seats, and listen. Finally Liz, one of the staff, suggested that we move the kids over to sit on the carpet. We did, and it worked much better: we realized later that it was probably because when they were sitting at their tables, I was showing the pictures to the tables individually, and the kids would get antsy and want to come over to see the pictures before it was their table's turn.
The kids had done a pretty good job of listening for the things we asked them to listen for. Reading Strega Nona (which Patrick did) went much more quickly/smoothly, but we were still running very close on time. It was 5:00 when we closed the book. Obviously, we didn't get to the third book (our least favorite of the three, anyway). We voted quickly; it was Strega Nona by a landslide -- probably had a lot to do with the fact that many of them had read it before.
This is a day in particular where we really misjudged how long things were going to take, and a very bad day to have the kids trying to sit and listen to a story...their sugar highs were at a peaking point, after all. I wish we hadn't been so rushed on a day that's relatively crucial to the process: choosing what our final performance is going to consist of. However, I think the kids are all happy with the choice of story, and I think there are a lot of things we can do with it that will be fun.
The next task is for us to come up with a really thorough plan of action for the next three weeks, which is a quite limited amount of time (fingers crossed for no more snow days). We still want to accomplish having the kids come at this story from the perspective of character, so we want them to be able to get to know who their character is as well as possible, make costumes/props, etc., while still having a cohesive final product that will be fun for them to perform and their parents to watch.
When we got started, it was immediately clear that the last thing the kids needed today was more candy. They'd been eating it all day and were still sucking away at lollipops, mouths sticky and rainbowed. They were a little, well, hyper.
We sang the Austrian song again, this time changing it so that the verses were cumulative. They remembered the song well from last week, and caught on quickly to the cumulative bit. They like coming up with new things to interrupt the yodel. I couldn't understand Victor's suggestion ("Surf's Up game!") even after he repeated it several times. How do you wade through the little-kid-mumble to get at meaning?
We then had the kids sit at their tables and gave each table a task: one had to listen for characters, one for places, and one for the trouble/solution. We also explained that we were reading these stories so that we could vote between them for something to base our final performance on. Nobody had read The Talking Eggs, the first book, before, although Chloe later said she has a version of it in Chinese, with different pictures.
The kids were very rowdy, running between tables, refusing to sit still. The book is a long one for a picture book, and it took much longer than we expected it would to read, in large part because I kept having to stop to get everyone to calm down, go back to their seats, and listen. Finally Liz, one of the staff, suggested that we move the kids over to sit on the carpet. We did, and it worked much better: we realized later that it was probably because when they were sitting at their tables, I was showing the pictures to the tables individually, and the kids would get antsy and want to come over to see the pictures before it was their table's turn.
The kids had done a pretty good job of listening for the things we asked them to listen for. Reading Strega Nona (which Patrick did) went much more quickly/smoothly, but we were still running very close on time. It was 5:00 when we closed the book. Obviously, we didn't get to the third book (our least favorite of the three, anyway). We voted quickly; it was Strega Nona by a landslide -- probably had a lot to do with the fact that many of them had read it before.
This is a day in particular where we really misjudged how long things were going to take, and a very bad day to have the kids trying to sit and listen to a story...their sugar highs were at a peaking point, after all. I wish we hadn't been so rushed on a day that's relatively crucial to the process: choosing what our final performance is going to consist of. However, I think the kids are all happy with the choice of story, and I think there are a lot of things we can do with it that will be fun.
The next task is for us to come up with a really thorough plan of action for the next three weeks, which is a quite limited amount of time (fingers crossed for no more snow days). We still want to accomplish having the kids come at this story from the perspective of character, so we want them to be able to get to know who their character is as well as possible, make costumes/props, etc., while still having a cohesive final product that will be fun for them to perform and their parents to watch.
Tuesday, February 12
Snow day #2
Today we were planning, primarily, to read books to the kids and have them vote on one to use for their final performance, books under consideration being The Talking Eggs, The Runaway Bunny, and Strega Nona (thanks, Carnegie Library).
But I knew as soon as I looked out of my window this morning that it was going to be another snow day. We'll have to have storytime on Thursday.
But I knew as soon as I looked out of my window this morning that it was going to be another snow day. We'll have to have storytime on Thursday.
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