A Fall Celebration

Fall is my favorite season. After the long, dry and hot summer of Southern California, the fall is crisp and full of color. It's a quiet time for reflection after the bustling summer season in the studio where we have 18 spirited children creating and talking for full days. Fall is a time to exhale. Before that though my teachers and I thought it would be fun to have a celebration telling a story of the seasons.
We thought telling the story of Persephone and her mother, Demeter would be a wonderful way to celebrate the coming of fall and to show appreciation to our supportive families. If you do not know this Ancient Greek myth, please look it up. It's such great story of mother and daughter.

I take great pleasure in shadow puppets. The mysteriousness of the dark shadows allows for some great story telling and traditionally shadow plays are of folklore and myths. I also like how they are also slow with information. The lack of detail on the puppets allows the viewer to use their imagination to fill in the details. 

My own children, who are now eight and twelve, helped in making the puppets and performing the telling of Persephone's tale. My daughter created the upper world and my son created the underworld. Although the spider webs were my daughter's idea and add so much to the scenery. My children drew the sets individually on large pieces of card board and I cut them out. I the taped the upper world and underworld together. 

The kids waited anxiously but patiently for the show to start while the translucent scrim displayed the set stage for our story. 

Here is an image of Demeter and her reunification with her daughter, Persephone while Hade's empty throne sits below in the underworld.  

After the puppet show and some refreshment that included pomegranates from our tree, we offered a workshop for the kids to make their own shadow puppets. It's not so easy for kids to just create s a silhouette and not add detail of facial features and clothes. 

 And parents loved getting involved. I think the parents enjoyed it as much if not more than their children, which is one of the reasons why we do family workshops. Parents so enjoy the creative outlet but sometimes need the excuse of their children to be creative.

We had all kinds of puppets join the theatre and play in the shadows, alligators, turtles, super heros, cats and snakes.  Happy Fall to everyone.