Engaging, educational interactivity for teenage performers and audiences.
In this debut collection, a current secondary schoolteacher offers original theater pieces, suitable for adolescents to perform and discuss.
Nielsen (Serendipity & the Dream Catcher, 2003, etc.) shares 10 original, short plays that may be produced “sans royalty fees.” Some have already been tested with audiences “in two middle schools and in one high school and were met with outstanding reviews.” She devotes a chapter to each play, complete with discussions of general themes (morality, grief, etc.) and specific staging suggestions. The plays are: Allegorical Chairs, which features Good and Evil among its characters; Chain Link, focused on eating disorders and including flashlights as props; To Be—or Not to Be—One of Us, about peer pressure, with a dream sequence featuring twirling umbrellas; Cup of Random Joes, in which a girl finds a perfect date just under her nose; Two Guys and a Guillotine, based on an “injustice” that Nielsen witnessed; Trilogy of Rude Behavior, showcasing impolite actions in a store, subway, and movie theater; Hold the Phone, a dramatization of miscommunication; Baseball: America’s Pastime, inspired by sexism that Nielsen’s daughter experienced playing the sport; Within and Without Magic, in which magic tricks help a boy deal with his grandfather’s death; and Rainbow Blue, a lesson in tolerance. Performer, writer, and teacher Nielsen, who’s also written children’s books, provides teens (and teachers of teens) with a charming, diverse collection to play out the learning benefits of drama. Her effective use of props, audience-participation prompts, and expressionistic staging (such as the couples physically linked together during parts of Chain Link) create plenty of opportunities for hands-on fun that will involve teens in the performances. Although teens will find some of the author’s plays more naturally entertaining than others, the collection as a whole offers them a good array of subjects and styles to choose from.
Engaging, educational interactivity for teenage performers and audiences.Pub Date: June 4, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-4575-3962-6
Page Count: 250
Publisher: Dog Ear
Review Posted Online: Nov. 4, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with...
Talk-show queen takes tumble as millions jeer.
Nora Bridges is a wildly popular radio spokesperson for family-first virtues, but her loyal listeners don't know that she walked out on her husband and teenaged daughters years ago and didn't look back. Now that a former lover has sold racy pix of naked Nora and horny himself to a national tabloid, her estranged daughter Ruby, an unsuccessful stand-up comic in Los Angeles, has been approached to pen a tell-all. Greedy for the fat fee she's been promised, Ruby agrees and heads for the San Juan Islands, eager to get reacquainted with the mom she plans to betray. Once in the family homestead, nasty Ruby alternately sulks and glares at her mother, who is temporarily wheelchair-bound as a result of a post-scandal car crash. Uncaring, Ruby begins writing her side of the story when she's not strolling on the beach with former sweetheart Dean Sloan, the son of wealthy socialites who basically ignored him and his gay brother Eric. Eric, now dying of cancer and also in a wheelchair, has returned to the island. This dismal threesome catch up on old times, recalling their childhood idylls on the island. After Ruby's perfect big sister Caroline shows up, there's another round of heartfelt talk. Nora gradually reveals the truth about her unloving husband and her late father's alcoholism, which led her to seek the approval of others at the cost of her own peace of mind. And so on. Ruby is aghast to discover that she doesn't know everything after all, but Dean offers her subdued comfort. Happy endings await almost everyone—except for readers of this nobly preachy snifflefest.
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with syrupy platitudes about life and love.Pub Date: March 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-609-60737-5
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2001
A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.
Pub Date: July 11, 1960
ISBN: 0060935464
Page Count: 323
Publisher: Lippincott
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960
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SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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