Young Audiences

The Big Cheese Has a Big Idea
Martine Out of Time
Mr. Toad’s Adventures – Scenes from TOAD OF TOAD HALL

MARTINE: I’m planning our Tableau Vivant and I know the women are supposed to represent countries but they don’t get to do anything. I want them to do something!

EMMA: I see. You want them to move, is that it? Would it still be a Tableau then?

MARTINE: Oh, Gran! Art is innovation. You’ve got to move with the times!

Martine Out of Time

Martine Out of Time

Large Cast Version – For Middle and High School Student Actors

Martine Out of Time at Mountain View Academy

Plagued by big thoughts in a little town

It’s 1909 in Winlock, Washington, “The Egg Capital of the World” and Martine Small must find a way to direct this year’s EGG DAYS pageant. It’s easy to bamboozle the town boosters and she enjoys shocking her mother’s friends. She doesn’t mind terrorizing the tableau actors who are more interested in this year’s Easter bonnets than rehearsing, but having to fly against her grandmother’s unruly chickens may be the one unsurmountable obstacle to her epic quest.

Chosen for development by Theatre 33, Salem, Oregon; included in its 2018 3X3 Summer Festival

The Big Cheese Has a Big Idea

The Big Cheese Has a Big Idea at Mountain View Academy

A fable about overcoming prejudice

Mouse King Junior has just inherited the throne and decides he wants a polo ground like he sees in the Life magazine pictures that paper his attic nest. The trouble is he has to move half of his subjects to another nest in order to make room. Once a single nest, a final roof joist divided it in two and the mice in each new nest have created wild stories about each other’s diabolical characters and blood-sucking habits. As two baby mice who don’t know to fear each other become friends and long-lost common ancestors are discovered, the mice learn to come together. King Mouse Junior has to forget his polo grounds, however, as the naked mole rats won’t play horsey.

This play was written for a very specific purpose. Our little school, grades 3-12, was closing – being torn down – and we were being merged with another school. The Big Cheese Has a Big Idea was an attempt to lighten our fears and anxieties about having to pack up, move out and join a new community.

The Adventures of Mr. Toad

Scenes from TOAD OF TOAD HALL by A. A. Milne – adaptation

Mr. Toad, with more money than sense, loves crazes, and the latest is automobiles. After seven crashes and seven cars, his friends, Badger, Ratty and Mole decide they must interfere – but too late. Crash eight sends Toady to court and off to jail.

Produced by Theater Company of Lafayette on Zoom with iPhone movie transitions, 2021

Watch the Adventures of Mr. Toad

More Creative Adventures

Long John Silver and Jim Hawkins in Treasure Island