Hatrack Happenings: May 2010

Sunday, May 2, 2010

HI! or I should say WOW!

Our pre-school program last Thursday night at Riverview School for pre-schoolers and parents elicited this response from all of us: " WOW" The audience just kept piling into the gymnasium and filled the whole gym! And they were the best audience! Wonderful facial reactions from both parents and kids!. We got started late because the people just kept piling in. Our thanks to Linda, Val, Lynn, and Pam for doing such a great job.

This is a quiet week for us, with rehearsals beginning at the end of the week for the next two programs: Jim Miller's program at the Lester Public Library in Two Rivers, and a mother-daughter banquet directed by me for the Grace Lutheran Church' the next day.

I really apologize to our large group of readers. Every now and then, someone will ask me, "Why haven't you called me to read?" It's not because we don't need you; it's because we use only about 4 or 5 readers per program, and with the number of readers we have, it takes a long time to fit everyone in. Please be patient. You aren't forgotten and will eventually be called again!

Happy Mother's Day to all of us gals!

\

Sally Semmes

Our Mission

Hatrack Storytellers was formed in 1967 to present programs in a Readers' Theatre for children style.

Readers' Theatre is called "Theatre of the Mind" because the audience has to provide the images for themselves. A goup of trained interpreters (readers) consisting of both adult and children, take a story off the printed page and into the realms of sound and reaction.

The Hats are a visible symbol of the goals of Readers' Theatre - stimulatin imaginations, identifying multiple characters, and representing the fun that comes from reading!

There are no space limitations - as long as the hat rack, readers, and audience are one.

We focus on children, joy of reading, growth in imagination, audience participation, and FUN!

Sally Semmes, President

First Reader by Billy Collins

I can see them standing politely on the wide pages that I was learning to turn.

Jane in a blue jumper, Dick with his crayon brown hair, playing with a ball or exploring tho cosmos of the backyard,

unaware they are the first characters - the boy and girl who begin fiction.

Beyond the simple illustration of their neighborhood the other protagonists were waiting in a huddle -

Frightening Heathcliff, frightened Pip, Nick Adams carrying a fishing rod, Emma Bovary riding into Rouen.

But I would read about the perfect boy and his sister even before I would read about Adam and Eve, garden and gate, and before I heard the name Gutenberg; the type of their simple talk was moving into my focusing eyes.

It was always Saturday and he and she were always pointing at something and shouting, "Look!"

Pointing at the dog, the bicycle, or at their father as he pushed a hand mower over the lawn, waving at the aproned mother framed in the kitchen doorway, pointing toward the sky, pointing at each other.

They wanted us to look but we had looked already

And seen the shaded lawn, the wagon, the postman.

We had seen the dog, walked and watered, and fed the animal,

and now it was time the discover the infinite, clicking

Permutations of the alphabet's small and capital letters.

Alphabetical ourselves in the rows of classroom desks,

We are forgetting how to look and learning how to read.

Hatrack Happenings

Sunday, May 2, 2010

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First Reader by Billy Collins

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