The Diary of Anne Frank
About a week and a half ago I went Hale Center Theater in Orem to see the closing night of The Diary of Anne Frank. I have been to the Hale Center Theater in West Valley to watch Les Miserables and The Little Mermaid. Both experiences exceeded my expectations with the cast, music, dancing, and setting. The stage is a circle in the middle of surrounding chairs, the stage can rotate, and different parts can move up and down to create different settings within one scene. As I entered the theater in Orem I felt like I had walked into an underground basement. The ceiling was very low and it felt claustrophobic with the plethora of lights covering the entire ceiling space. The stage reminded me of the puny stage in my theatre class in high school where you kind of felt like you were going to fall through at any step. It was basically in icebox and I had to put my arms in my shirt, as well as have Mariah put her legs over mine so I wouldn’t freeze to death. As for the production itself, it was fantastic. The accents weren’t perfect, and sometimes it became a little difficult to hear what someone had said, but you could tell that they worked hard with their speech and it helped set the tone. Each actor put so much emotion into their character that you nearly felt as though you were in the attic with them, fearing that at any moment you were going to be caught by the Nazis. In the end when the Nazis were storming up to their hiding place your own heart raced and your eyes would tear up as you heard the screams and cries of the characters. Something they added at the end that I liked, since we all get curious, is they brought out each character one by one and told us their fate. Throughout the play you would laugh, maybe cry, and feel quite a bit of fear. It was a nice production, however I feel that if they had done it in a bigger setting it would have made it a little better.
This would be great for fifth and sixth grade, however it would tie into the curriculum better for sixth grade. As sixth graders learn about current issues in the world, as well as historical events that have created the world as it is today, they could very well find a way to relate such a tragic event to a current issue.
Woodbury Art Museum
For my second field trip I went to the Woodbury Art Museum, first off I have to say that the complete silence in there kind of freaked me out. Nonetheless, it was very interesting looking at the different pieces. What I pictured it to be like was just a bunch of paintings hanging on the walls, but when I got there I was rather surprised at the different art projects on display. There were a few displays that really stuck out to me. The first one was called “Kissing Cousins” and it was a picture of a human skull and monkey skull touching. At first I thought it was a photograph, but when I looked closer it looked as if it had been drawn, the label said mixed media was used. There was another display that was something I wasn’t quite expecting to see. It was called “Out of Hand”; it consisted of oil paint, mixed media, and found objects. It was fun being able to analyze this piece of art and find the different objects that the creator found and decided to put in. My favorite one was “Container People Dancing” and I think I liked that one the most because it had a story. The creator went to Africa and she saw that many of the people were living in shipping containers. Yet everyday she saw moms and their children dancing away as if they hadn’t a care in the world.
I think it is extremely important for students to not just see art, but to learn the stories behind different pieces. Art also doesn’t have to be something big and intricate, you can create art out of anything. This would also fit in visual arts standard 3: The student will choose and evaluate artistic subject matter, themes, symbols, ideas, meanings, and purposes.
