You’re invited to the 5th Annual Summer Pageant in the Park

Theatre Action Project presents its 5th annual Summer Pageant in the Park celebrating How our Food Grows on Saturday, June 23rd at Republic Square Park. Students will gather at the Sustainable Food Center Farmers’ Market Downtown to march in a grand procession of the year’s seasons, bringing all their puppets together culminating in a visual and aural spectacle. The public is invited to join the parade. The FREE family event will be followed by fun watermelon-eating and seed-spitting contests hosted by the Farmer’s Market as part of the Watermelon Festival.

The Summer Pageant in the Park event is the culmination of work with students from nine Central Texas schools who are learning effects of the changing seasons on food harvest, native Texas farming, and the benefits of healthy eating. Participating elementary schools include Barrington, Brown, Harris, Hart, Maplewood, Pickle, Widen, Winn, and Wooten.

Caroline Reck, Programming Specialist with Theatre Action Project, shared her excitement about this year’s pageant. “Summer Pageant is an extraordinary opportunity for our community to connect to world traditions of puppetry and parade while celebrating healthy and sustainable eating habits. It is truly inspiring to see the quality and quantity of parade materials being created by students all over Austin coalesce into a harmonious spectacle of sight and sound right in the Downtown Farmer’s Market.”

Students will gather at 10 a.m. to march in the Grand Procession of the Seasons. The Downtown Farmer’s Market is located at Republic Square Park, 422 W. Guadalupe, Austin, TX 78701. The public is invited to join in the procession, celebrating food, farming and the four seasons. FREE! For more information, call Theatre Action Project: (512) 442-8773.

PS: For a look back at last year’s fun Summer Pageant procession, enjoy this video.

A Paint-ful Volunteer!

By: Chelsea Gilman, Business and Development Associate
When I think about all of our volunteers, I am so thankful for their hard work and how much we are able to accomplish because of them.

Every week we have volunteers at the office, at school programs, and at events.  They create props, organize and input data, help with our Teaching Artists and so much more. They are helping us accomplish a higher capacity of projects with kids and families at a level we would otherwise not be able to reach.

This past Friday, May 13, several TAP employees, including myself, got the chance to participate in our own volunteer project. The Entrepreneurs Foundation of Central Texas set up a spring service day benefiting Winn Elementary School. Over 200 volunteers, whom came from several organizations around Austin, worked on many projects that ranged from creating a mosaic in front of the school, landscaping around the school, and painting 3 murals inside the school.

Kelly (left) and I with one of the finished murals

Theatre Action Project was in charge of helping volunteers with the painting of the murals. We painted two in the gym and one in the hallway. The paintings were fully of color and active volunteers more than ready to help spruce up.

I had a wonderful time helping paint and listening to the comments kids would make as they walked by. The staff and kids at Winn were so excited for the new murals, many times throughout the day you would hear the kids say “thank you” or just “whoa!” The school is already full of fun murals, but I know we added much needed vibrancy to the gym and hallway.

It feels good to be a volunteer and makes you appreciate so much more about people that come and volunteer here. In addition, it feels good to get a yummy box lunch and Amy’s Ice Cream.

What a great Friday!  To top it all off, I headed back to the office to send off a grant application that afternoon.  Fingers crossed!

Inspiring with Classic Stories

By Freddy Carnes Artistic Associate, Theatre Action Project My kids and I, at Pecan Springs Elementary and Winn Elementary, were discussing how we could show the final scene of The Odyssey where Odysseus strings the bow and all the suitors are killed with bow and arrow before he can reunite with his wife Penelope. I had made the bow with a PVC pipe that was curved like a piece of a hula hoop. I had spray painted it gold and it had worked for the stringing of the bow scene. But we were trying to find a way to show the arrows flying. Of course all of the boys wanted real arrows. I explained the safety problems and we kept brainstorming. I told them that we could probably make a cardboard arrow, but it couldn’t be aimed and shot at a real person on stage(even cardboard hurts!).

We looked at the illustrations in a wonderful children’s book based on “The Odyssey.” They knew from one of those vivid pictures that the evil suitor Antinoos was the first killed and the arrow went through his neck. Finally one boy joked that we could do the old arrow in the head bit with a wire holding the fake arrow onto the head. We agreed that he was onto something. I told them that we could make two arrows that look alike. One would be the “real” arrow that was shot from the bow offstage where no one could get hit. Then the other “dummy” arrow could be the one that Antinoos holds to his neck to show him staggering onstage and die. Today, we test it in the classroom.

The best part of this project called The Golden Apple isn’t just to teach children a classic story such as The Odyssey. Actually it is three classic stories about the Trojan War: The Golden Apple the beauty contest between the goddesses that started the Trojan War, Iphigenia to show how a fathers’ sacrifice of his daughter could lead to his death and the death of his wife, and finally The Odyssey, the story of a husband and fathers journey home to his family. The real value of doing TAP After School theater classes is to bring to life such a deep and moving story that speaks to the children of tragedy and loss as well as family and hope.

When Agamemnon had to choose between sacrificing his daughter and going to war or choosing to save his family, one student said, “That ain’t right! Why would a father choose war over his daughter! That ain’t right!” Indeed. Such choices in life are best illuminated by a good story that will stay with these children for the rest of their lives.

Birthday Party Planning

TAP’s Elementary School Program Director, Sarah Rinner, retells a story from Winn Elementary’s first day of programming…

Yesterday I went to our first day of programming at Winn Elementary. During homework time I got a chance to speak with Michiah, a very bright young 2nd grader. She had finished her work, and we got to talking about siblings, about fighting and getting along, about being older or younger, you know how it is. After learning that I had a younger sister, we had a very insightful conversation about birthdays and the best way to celebrate them. I have tried my best to recreate some of our conversation here:

Michiah: When is your sister’s birthday?
Me: December.
Michiah: You should invite her over and have a party. Surprise her! Don’t tell her about it!
Me: Okay, what should I do?
Michiah: First you gotta have a cake.
Me: What kind of cake?
Michiah: Vanilla. With vanilla frosting.
Me: Sounds good. Then what should we do?

Michiah: You need balloons. What is your sister’s favorite color?
Me: Black.
Michiah: Okay, get some black balloons. And red ones, too.
Me: Got it.
Michiah: You need to go for a hike. Do you live downtown?
Me: No. But I live near the river where people take their dogs to play.
Michiah: [Excited] Okay okay that’s a good place for a hike.
Me: What should we have for dinner?
Michiah: Pizza.

Me: What kind of pizza?
Michiah: Pepperoni.
Me & Michiah: With extra cheese! [Great minds think alike.]

Well, the conversation went on from there, but let’s just say that Michiah has saved me hours of fretting over what to plan for my sister’s birthday. I’ve got to have presents and a card (she suggested pictures of my family) and plenty of blankets (as it is a sleepover) and we are going to watch a scary movie. All after going for a hike, of course. My final instruction was to cook my sister breakfast in bed (“Does she like tea?” “No, coffee.” “Ooh, coffee, that’s fine.”), a feast of bacon and breakfast tacos. This young child has a promising career of organization or event planning. I can’t wait for December.