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
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.
Sisters work together to solve a child-abandonment case.
Ellie and Julia Cates have never been close. Julia is shy and brainy; Ellie gets by on charm and looks. Their differences must be tossed aside when a traumatized young girl wanders in from the forest into their hometown in Washington. The sisters’ professional skills are put to the test. Julia is a world-renowned child psychologist who has lost her edge. She is reeling from a case that went publicly sour. Though she was cleared of all wrongdoing, Julia’s name was tarnished, forcing her to shutter her Beverly Hills practice. Ellie Barton is the local police chief in Rain Valley, who’s never faced a tougher case. This is her chance to prove she is more than just a fading homecoming queen, but a scarcity of clues and a reluctant victim make locating the girl’s parents nearly impossible. Ellie places an SOS call to her sister; she needs an expert to rehabilitate this wild-child who has been living outside of civilization for years. Confronted with her professional demons, Julia once again has the opportunity to display her talents and salvage her reputation. Hannah (The Things We Do for Love, 2004, etc.) is at her best when writing from the girl’s perspective. The feral wolf-child keeps the reader interested long after the other, transparent characters have grown tiresome. Hannah’s torturously over-written romance passages are stale, but there are surprises in store as the sisters set about unearthing Alice’s past and creating a home for her.
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.Pub Date: March 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-345-46752-3
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2005
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.
A violent surfacing of adolescence (which has little in common with Tarkington's earlier, broadly comic, Seventeen) has a compulsive impact.
"Nobody big except me" is the dream world of Holden Caulfield and his first person story is down to the basic, drab English of the pre-collegiate. For Holden is now being bounced from fancy prep, and, after a vicious evening with hall- and roommates, heads for New York to try to keep his latest failure from his parents. He tries to have a wild evening (all he does is pay the check), is terrorized by the hotel elevator man and his on-call whore, has a date with a girl he likes—and hates, sees his 10 year old sister, Phoebe. He also visits a sympathetic English teacher after trying on a drunken session, and when he keeps his date with Phoebe, who turns up with her suitcase to join him on his flight, he heads home to a hospital siege. This is tender and true, and impossible, in its picture of the old hells of young boys, the lonesomeness and tentative attempts to be mature and secure, the awful block between youth and being grown-up, the fright and sickness that humans and their behavior cause the challenging, the dramatization of the big bang. It is a sorry little worm's view of the off-beat of adult pressure, of contemporary strictures and conformity, of sentiment….
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.Pub Date: June 15, 1951
ISBN: 0316769177
Page Count: -
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1951
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