The gray clouds blocked out the sun, but the exuberance of the occasion made it a welcoming day. A white tent was set up on the playing fields of the Flood Brook School to serve as a stage. Students marched eagerly out of their classrooms and took their appointed seats outside on metal bleachers and up closer on green grass.
Let the show begin.
For two weeks, two Vermont artists took up residence at the Flood Brook School teaching their craft to students with the goal of staging a school wide performance on the final day. “We redesigned our schedule to create 40 minutes daily for each grade to focus on their art residency project in a way that took limited time away from our core curriculum subjects,” said Flood Brook Counselor Brooke Paxton. “Students, staff, everyone was motivated to pitch-in to pull off the show.”
The art residency at Flood Brook divided the school into two groups with each providing a separate show. Kindergarten through grade four worked with puppeteer Jana Zeller from Putney’s Sandglass Theater. The older students in grades 5-8 explored the roots of moving picture entertainment with Brattleboro artist and musician Brendan Taaffe.
For Zeller, puppetry is personal and her enthusiasm for the art form infectious. “My parents are puppeteers,” said Zeller. “It’s been my life. The inventiveness in a puppet design … the cutting, snipping, and gluing to make the puppet come alive … and the creative storytelling all result in an exciting way to learn.”
Zeller assigned a different type of puppet for each class. Her kindergartners painted cereal boxes to create hand held box puppets to cover their faces. They opened the morning program and were followed by performances from grades 1-4 featuring bottle puppets, tube puppets, rod puppets and hand puppets. Second graders, for example, synchronized their custom-made magical creatures to dance along to the tune of “Puff the Magic Dragon.”
For the afternoon matinee, Taaffe’s grade 5-8 performers delighted the audience with a presentation of an old storytelling art form: crankies. In case you are wondering, a “crankie” starts with a long illustrated scroll that is wound-up onto two spools. The spools are loaded, one on each side, into a box which has a viewing window. The scroll is then hand-cranked to move the illustration while the story is told, a song is sung or a tune is played. “Crankies date back to the 1840’s,” said Taaffe. “They serve as an analog remedy to our age of digital saturation. A story must be depicted artistically over a 25 foot scroll to match up with the lyrics of the song or narration of the story. The kids worked hard and were wonderful designers and artists. They did a marvelous job.”
Four crankies were produced for the Flood Brook audience: two songs and two tales. Taaffe frailed on a banjo, for example, as 6th graders sang the folk song “Gum Tree Canoe '' as its story was scrolled on the box screen. The show closed with a crankie depicting the Greek myth of the star-crossed lovers Orpheus and Eurydice narrated by 7th and 8th graders.
“The art residency introduces our students to performance entertainment,” said one Flood Brook Teacher. “The puppeteers make their own costumes, the crankies are hand-made mini-movies, and everyone gets up on stage in front of a live audience.”
Flood Brook Principal Johanna Liskowsky-Doak could not have been happier. “This program allows for a different type of learning,” said Liskowsky-Doak. “Students who normally hold back, blossom in this environment. The level of student engagement showed up in the audience response. They listened intently, laughed appropriately, and applauded loudly.”
As Zeller exclaimed to the assembled at the end of the show, “Bravo Flood Brook!”
Flood Brook staff hand out student hand made puppets prior to the show.
Puppeteer Jana Zeller lines up the kindergartners with their "box puppets" to open the show.
Artist and musician Brendan Taaffe leads the 5th grade in their crankie presentation.
Sixth graders scroll through the "Gum Tree Canoe."