Serving Gogebic, Iron and Ontonagon Counties
Serving Gogebic, Iron and Ontonagon Counties
Rodney Rice, left, comes to the aid of John Wray during a Brainstormers presentation of a student-written play at Luther L. Wright School Monday morning in Ironwood. The three-person educational acting troupe returned to LLW to perform five plays written by students in grades 2 through 6 since the troupe's visit in May. The play adapted from a true story by one of the students about a bicycle accident he had. Many of the plays included volunteer actors from the audience enlisted moments before the action.
By LARRY HOLCOMBE
Ironwood - More than 200 Luther L. Wright elementary school children attended a high-energy presentation on creative writing Monday morning.
Brainstormers - a traveling acting troupe pitching writing skills and based in downstate Royal Oak - returned for Parts 2 and 3 of an ongoing writers workshop aimed at grades 2 through 6 that began in May.
The three-member troupe set up a curtain at one end of the gym and set out to perform - with some help from some audience members - five short stories written and submitted by the students since their last visit in May.
The program was a brainchild of Ironwood Carnegie Library director Lynne Wiercinski, who saw the troupe online and helped secure grant funding to bring them to Ironwood.
John Wray, one of the three members of the troupe, said that while they travel in groups of threes, there are actually eight members of Brainstormers and collectively they do around 300 shows a year, mostly in Michigan and Illinois.
"This is our first time in the U.P. We'd love to do more," he said while meeting with this cast mates behind the curtain before the performance.
Pinned to the back of the curtain were five brief story outlines, one for each of the stories to be presented. There is a lot of improv or "adaptation" that goes on, said Wray, who hails from Madison Heights. "We came to perform some creative writing stories."
Other members of the cast included Rodney Rice, of Ypsilanti; and Kendall Kotcher, of Clarkston.
The plays presented were adaptations of the stories written, concentrating on themes, characters and creative ideas, with an eye on entertaining a room full of young school kids.
The adults were entertained as well. Many of the parents of the five selected authors were in attendance to experience the performance.
One by one the author's name was announced before each performance and they each took their seat in the author's chair stage left. After a brief interview from one of the cast and some recruiting of actors for the scene to come from the audience, the play began.
One story was about a trip to a haunted amusement park, another was a true story about a fall off a bicycle. A third story involved a farm, chickens and an evil lord. There were lots of quick costume changes behind the curtain and high energy performances in front, not to mention roars of laughter in the audience.
Brainstormers is wrapping up their season on Wednesday with three more shows in Manawan.
In May, the group made another high-energy presentation to the students in grades 2 through 6 about different types of writing, working within the curriculum, according to Wiercinski.
In the interim period of time the kids wrote their own stories, sometimes during school and sometimes after school during a young authors group the library puts on, according to Wiercinski.
Organizers selected 15 of those stories and sent them to Brainstormers, which chose five of them to perform Monday morning.
After lunch on Monday, 35 students attended a writing camp with the Brainstormers cast to learn more about creative writing.
Wiercinski said the Carnegie works to promote writing.
"Writing is a huge thing with our library - creative writing, between poetry groups, our young authors and illustrators groups; so this fell right into our niche," she said. "When I saw them online, between the creative writing and the performing arts, because we're really involved with the Awkward Stage Drama Club, it just kind of combined the two."
Wiercinski said she was happy to work with the school on the series of events.
"We partner with the school regularly," she said. "These students belong to all of us. It takes all of us to make sure they get a good education and get all the opportunities they can get. The library works as hard as it can, whether we do it at the library or (at the school), it's irrelevant."
