Wolverine Orders a Latte

Adventures in kid-driven play writing

So a while back I wrote about how my classes are working with local plants and animals this year, each student having pulled one out of a hat. We wrote field guide entries about them, painted them, wrote poems from their point of view and in dialogue with them, wrote monologues in their voices, made up character sheets about them (did you know caddisfly wants to be a chihuahua, bitter cherry wants poptarts, and fox glove wants to be the benevolent dictator of the forest?), and basically have woven them into the curriculum in every way I could think of.

There have been some lovely extra moments, too, like when an artist at the arts community center in Seattle where I hold class offered to give us a slide show about salmon. Did you know about diatoms and how beautiful they are, microscopically speaking? I did not but now I do, thanks to this slide show. Or when we saw the bitter cherries blooming for the first time this spring.

It’s been great! But we’re not even done yet.

Now, we’re writing plays, where everyone gets to be their animal or plant, but sort of Myth Time style, so everyone can walk and talk and want things like poptarts.

I love writing plays this way with kids, because ecology (and character building) lays out so much of the possible tensions. Coho salmon and Pacific Giant Salamander both eat each other’s babies? Let’s get them on that stage to duke it out!

The process:

Playwriting is very similar to the make-believe play kids are so fluent in, the “then I say…. and pretend that you…..” variety. The main difference is that you write it down. What I like to do is get the kids in small groups, with one kid being the scribe. We figure out a premise for the scene, and then set them loose, with kids figuring out what their lines are as they go, and the scribe writing it all down. So perhaps Frog and Woodpecker are working the forest coffee shop counter, when Caddisfly walks in, and Woodpecker says, “Don’t order the pretzels, and don’t ask why!” (I stole this 100%. And yes, we do have a play in the works that is about an even mix of woodland creatures forming a battle plan to save the forest from logging, and those same woodland warriors’ coffee orders. This is the cutting edge of theater, folks!)

Worth coming out of the wilderness for, right Wolverine?

Meanwhile, I get another group of kids writing another scene. Maybe in this one, Flying Squirrel is mad that his tree got cut down, and the woodland warriors begin to gather. Or maybe Wolverine gets a little restless out there in the deep wilderness, and heads down to get a nice cup of coffee. Or Orca brings Questionable Rock Frog Lichen the fish tacos he’s been dreaming of, only to find he’s ridden away in a woodchip-powered car with Wolverine. OR MAYBE ALL THESE SCENES ARE BEING CREATED AT ONCE AND WILL ALL BE PART OF THE VERY SAME PLAY. Which they will.

I do some work to help the class keep the bigger tensions and plot in mind, helping groups know what other groups are doing, getting the scenes in a good order, and keeping things from getting scrambled. I help out when they get stuck. I work with them to make sure their scenes communicate the information the audience will need to follow the excitement. But mostly, they write the play.

We’re early in the process right now, but I’ll keep you posted! Last thing I heard, Caddisfly was still waiting for their coffee order and it was getting tense. Hold onto your hats everybody!