Using Play to Teach Story, and Story to Teach Play, with a Doomed Egyptian Prince

Kids are hard-wired for good stories. And their nature is to play. In this session you will learn some stupefyingly simple techniques to get them more than involved in stories - to get them telling stories together, on their feet, using their outdoors - appropriate expression levels. Session attendees, with guidance of Theatre Prospero’s seasoned performers, will get to act out a 15-minute play based on an incomplete Egyptian Myth of a Prince Doomed to die by snake, dog, or crocodile. Attendees will play all the parts: the Pharaoh and Queen who pray for a child, the Goddess who grants their wish, but tells them of their little Prince’s doom; the Prince who grows up in a doom-proof tower, the dog he insists on raising from a puppy, the Princess he rescues from a tower when he finally leaves him, the snake she dispatches when it comes after her sleeping Prince, and finally the Crocodile he ends up face to face with after jumping into the river to escape his Prince- betraying dog. What happens after the Crocodile says he will spare the Prince if he does ONE THING for him, up to you… Narrator/Guides will guide your actions, and prompt you line-by line, as you do what people have done for millenia: get together, put on costumes, and act out a fun, engaging mythic tale. After the introduction, the briefest rehearsal, and the performance, we will engage in casual talkback between educators and performers about the process. It will be fun.