Taking as inspiration the world of puppeteers for the play “War Horse” this activity teaches students how to use gesture to make animal characters more realistic. This 23-minute TED Talk is about how the puppet horse in the play War Horse is made to feel alive. Animals are common characters in stories written by kids, horses especially. Different authors of stories about animals bring their characters to life in different ways, but one very common way to make an animal character believable as the animal it is declared to be is to have it display behaviors that are characteristic of that animal. In this video we see that the puppeteers who created the horse for War Horse enabled their huge puppet to display several very typical horse behaviors. First, all horses (all animals) breathe. So they gave their puppet the ability to look like it was breathing. Horses can breathe very loudly! When writing a story with a horse character, it can be helpful to remember that at some point the horse may breathe out through loose lips, making that distinctive horsey brrrrrrr sound. Second, anyone who has spent time around a horse knows its ears move in multiple directions and the horse may cup its ears towards a sound to listen, even before it moves its head. In fact, a horse may divide its attention between looking and listening. The puppeteers who created the wooden horse made sure it was able to move its ears in a horse-like way. In writing a story about a horse, the cocking of an ear, the letting out of a loud breath, the flicking of a tail, a pawing gesture of a front leg — these are the kinds of horse-like behaviors that can imbue a horse character with the sense of reality that strengthens the character in the story, making it more believable. Yes! It really is a stallion! The ideas for making puppets explained in this video can be applied to any animal — dogs, cats, parakeets, rabbits, chickens. A writing project based on the video could be as simple as writing a paragraph in which an animal character moves a short distance — a cat across a room, a horse to the edge of a paddock — but in the process uses one or two movements that are characteristic of that animal. The discussion inspired by the video could expand to include a discussion of gesture as a way to delineate human characters. The nervous laugh, the unconscious brushing back of the hair, a voice that goes up (or down) under stress — these are the gestures that help define each of our personalities. The characters in a story become more believable, more real, when given the occasional dimensionality of real life.
Introduction to Child Composers
“Lillian” composed by Benjamin Britten in 1929 at age 16. One of the most extraordinary things about the world we live in today is that is possible for people who would have had no way to be heard or discovered to find a large audience. We are all familiar with child writers but much less so with child composers. This is an exciting time in the history of music. For the first time, we are beginning to see a real body of work by child composers. If you are a parent or a teacher please introduce your students to these composers. If, by chance, you are a music teacher and already do some composing with your students, then please get in touch with us. We’d love to hear what your students are doing. We are always looking for music by kids to be included in digital editions of Stone Soup. You may write to me, William Rubel, at william@stonesoup.com. If you have an interest in child composers and would like to help develop this page, please contact me. Alma Deutscher is a British composer born in 2005. I include here a violin concerto and a short orchestral piece, “Dance of the Solent Mermaids”, composed when she was nine years old. If you go to Alma Deutcher’s YouTube channel you will find more work by her. As of this writing, early 2015, she is writing an opera version of Cinderella. Jay Greenberg was born in 1991. A “Sixty Minutes” television episode featured Jay and his music. Jay began studying at Julliard, the music school in New York, when he was ten. By age fourteen he had written five symphonies. Jay records with Sony. There are a few of his pieces available at YouTube, but his earliest works do not seem to be publicly available. Jay Greenberg’s Symphony Number 5 & Quartet for Strings is available from Amazon.com. You can listen to a portion of Jay’s Symphony Number 5 at Youtube. Emily Bear, born 2001, is a young American composer. As is clear from the Wikipedia entry (click on the link under her name), Emily was discovered early and has lived a very public life as a composer. This 22 minute 2014 documentary covers Emily’s early years as a pianist and composer. Emily has an active web site that I refer you to for performance information and also samples of her music. She writes both classical music and Jazz and is a composer who I think most children will find appealing. Her Jazz Album, Diversity, is available from Amazon.com. She has a large channel at YouTube that includes music from various periods. This Bumble Bookie was recorded when Emily was 13. I enjoy his YouTube clip of Emily Bear at age 12 playing around in a piano store playing two pianos at one time. She is playing a piece she wrote. I think that many children will be engaged seeing a child composer being obviously playful. Jahan Raymond, 2002, is an American pianist and composer. Jahan Raymond is the first child composer to published by Stone Soup. His piano composition, Starchaser, appeared in a 2013 Stone Soup iPad issue. Jahan has an extensive YouTube channel. This piano composition, “Blur of Motion” was written and performed by Janan when he was nine. It well represents the extemporaneous feel of his playing. Perhaps the best way to introduce yourself to Jahan’s music is through his webiste. There are good number of videos posted there.
Two Kids Recite Poems about Life: From a TedX Youth Talk
Poetry is meant to be recited. Recited poetry has its own cadence, one that is a little different from spoken English. These two children recite poems that each, in their own way, speak to the central issues in their lives. Note the musical cadence. The poem by the Mikaela Miller speaks to her growing sense of self-identity — it is a coming of age poem. The poem by Brandon Sanders also speaks to the struggles of growing up, in this case, a growing awareness of the difference between his inner happiness and how he projects himself to the world.
