Thursday, November 17, 2011

Come See a Play About Youth Literacy (and support Meg Lippert)

WORDS FLY: A play about youth literacy developed by Amy Rider King and Meg Lippert

When: Friday, November 18 at 11 a.m.
Saturday, November 19 at 2 p.m.

Where: Seattle Central Library, Meeting Room 2, 4th floor
1000 Fourth Ave.
Seattle, WA 98104
206-386-4636

Parking: There is a parking garage under the library

WORDS FLY is the culmination of our current project, "Read With Me," which was focused on soliciting from high school students the challenges, and successes, they have faced in their personal lives with respect to learning to read and learning from reading. Student actors from Interagency Academy (the Seattle Public Alternative School program) and from Franklin High School will be performing along with professional actors and musicians. Although Amy and I have been working together with high school students in Seattle for over 10 years, this is our first project focused on literacy.

The play script was developed based on improvisations by the actors inspired by the words of over 100 students we worked with beginning last February, selected from their written assignments or recorded during our interactive workshops in their classrooms. The play uses the interesting architectural structure of the Seattle Public Library as the stage set. Each performance is an hour long, begins promptly, and ends with a "talkback" when the audience will be able to share their impressions of the play and ask questions of the actors.

This is an opportunity to hear directly from local youth about what specifically they love, and hate, about reading. The play was written for a high school audience, and uses elements of scenes we developed for their workshops that particularly engaged and delighted them, since high school students will be attending both performances and they are our primary focus. The performances are free and everyone is welcome.

The "Read With Me" blog at umoensemble.wordpress.com has more information about the actors and the "behind the scenes" team of teaching artists, as well as a post about brief excerpts from the play that several students presented to the Seattle School Board on November 2.

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