The Tellico Village Players brought a glimpse of the stage to students this past week … with a slew of performances at elementary schools across the region.

Over at Steekee Elementary on September 10, fourth-graders scuttled into the library for a three-performance bill from Studio 212, a Readers’ Theater Troupe affiliated with the Tellico Community Playhouse.

VARIETY OF TOPICS AND TROPES


Sharon Smith, the troupe’s director, hopes to introduce students to a variety of topics and tropes found in literature to blend a sense of fun and learning into the minds of schoolchildren.

She says she and her team, who pick out topics and write their own scripts, try to hit as many of the basic beats as they can in a tight 45-minute window.

“One part will talk about historical fiction — we talk about point of view … to tall tales and introducing those kinds of concepts to the kids,” Smith said.

‘I HOPE THEY REMEMBER THE LIVE THEATER AND THE EXPERIENCE’

From its beginning in 2011, the Reading Theater has toured across Loudon and Monroe County to perform age-appropriate stories for students to project imagination and inspiration on to.

Plain clothed, in minimal costume and with a bare-stage set, the Players create an environment whose sparse nature invites students in with curiosity — and leaves them lingering by giving the ability to fill in the blanks.

“I hope they remember the live theater and the experience,” Smith said. “And we want them to go and read.”

The stories, of which there were three for this edition of school tours, also touch on a variety of regional themes and topics specific to rural Appalachia.

The first of the trio, titled “Jack and the Robbers,” follows a boy on his journey through the woods and focuses on the unlikely friends he makes along the way as he picks up a new discarded animal at each of his stops.

The laughter of the children could be heard with each new creature joining the journey … the humor only growing at the culmination of these abandoned animals clumsily getting rid of a gang of robbers to prove their usefulness, as a collective, and the narrator explaining that Jack and his companions “found their greatest fortune in friendship.”

Then, the players asked for audience participation as they read off and clapped along to “A Possum Comes A Knockin’,” a rhythmic and exciting tale where a washboard is utilized as percussion and the clapping of children filled the room to display rhythm and rhyme scheme as a vessel for storytelling.

DAVY CROCKETT, DOLLY AND ‘POOP IN THE PARK’?

The players also present a stack of books for every school they perform in.

Additions to the Steekee Library included books about Davy Crockett, children’s stories from Dolly Parton and even a story called “Who Pooped In The Park?” which got a few giggles out of students.

“We also like to remind [the students] how wonderful books are,” Smith said. “Because all of our ideas come from books.”

The Players then closed the morning with another poem, rattling off Tennessee legends from Peyton Manning to Sequoyah — illustrating the widespread knowledge that can come from literature, and the stories … real and fictional … to be found inside their seemingly endless pages.

While children laughed and smiled, teachers got to see their students reap the rewards of reading in real time, being invigorated with a sense of learning by seeing education displayed in an entertaining way on the “stage.”

Katelyn Marshall, a fourth-grade math and science teacher at Steekee, spoke to the benefits that learning away from a desk and chalkboard can have.

“I hope they take away that reading can be fun,” Marshall said. “And even acting can be fun.

“Seeing that different perspective can also help them with reading and understanding the literature.”