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the uglyduckling

virginia repertorytheater

about the performance

The Ugly Duckling is an all-singing, all-dancing musical re-tell-ing of Hans Christian Anderson’s tale by Richard Giersch, per-formed by the Virginia Repertory Theatre (previously Theatre IV) for grades K-5.

The original fairy tale relates the story of a homely little bird born in a barnyard that is teased by the others around him because he is different. But then he unexpectedly grows into a beautiful swan—the most beautiful bird of all.

In the folk traditions of other cultures, different animals learn the lesson of the “ugly duckling.” Virginia Rep unites the classic ugly duckling with the Burmese mole that hates dirt and the Inuit bald eagle with a full head of hair. These three “misfit” heroes work together to earn their home on the King’s estate, finding the self-confidence that only friendship and accom-plishment can provide.

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about the virginia repertory theatreVirginia Repertory Theatre is a nonprofit, professional theatre company and the result of the 2012 merger of Barksdale The-atre and Theatre IV. With four distinct venues, an educational touring arm, and an annual audience of more than 550,000, Virginia Rep is the largest professional theatre and one of the largest performing arts organizations in Central Virginia.

For more than 60 years, Virginia Rep has served Virginia’s adults, children, families and schools and contributed to the cultural, educational, and economic life of our city and region.

Virginia Repertory Theatre creates professional productions of the great comedies, dramas, and musicals—past, present and future. They embrace the art form in its entirety, presenting plays of all genres and national origins, serving an audience of all ages and backgrounds. In keeping with the legacies of Barksdale and Theatre IV, the hallmark of this nonprofit com-pany is community engagement. They seek national caliber excellence in the arts, education, children’s health, and commu-nity leadership.

Songs from Ugly Duckling

“It Doesn’t Matter”It doesn’t matter what you look like on the outside,It only matters what you look like on the inside.If you’re kind to your friends, And you love everybody. That’s better than havin’ a beautiful body,A pretty face comes second place...To a smile that’s big and wide. It doesn’t matter what you look like on the outside,It only matters what you look like on the inside.

Questions:

What message is the playwright trying to get across in “It Doesn’t Matter?”

In what ways does “It Doesn’t Matter” tell the story of the Ugly Duckling?

Which characters would agree with the lyrics of “It Doesn’t Matter?” and which would disagree?

“For You”For you, I would do anything for you. It’s true. I would do anything for you.I’d climb the highest mountain, Swim the deepest sea. If I thought that’s what it would take to make you happy. For me?You’d risk your life for me?It’s hard to believe you’re being so nice to me.I’ve never in my life met a braver one than you.I guess this is what they mean when

miracles come true. I’ve never in my life met a nicer one than you.I guess this is what they mean when miracles come true. For you.....

Questions:

Why would Honker “climb the highest mountain, swim the deepest sea?”

What two characters sing “For You?” Why did the playwright choose these two characters for this song?

How do you think this song affect the mood of the play?

The cast of characters in this delightful production are:

Malcolm Evans (The Baron; Snaggle Claw) is a graduate with honors at North Carolina A&T State University with a Bachelor in Fine Arts in Professional Theatre. His professional career has thrived on the stage, but he has a thirst to be a successful film, TV and stage actor and looks to have a prominent career in the entertainment business.

P.J. Freebourn (Jack Quacker; Harry) is a singer, actor and di-rector now on his 14th tour with Virginia Repertory. Recent roles include Abner in 42nd Street at the Round Barn Theatre and Franz in Virginia Musical Theatre’s production of The Sound of Music. P.J. has been a featured soloist on two recordings released by the Virginia Chorale Society and is the tenor soloist and section leader for Trinity Episcopal Church in Portsmouth, Virginia.

Caitlin Hemmer (Mac Quaker; Madeline) is thrilled to be a part of such a quirky show! This Florida native and graduate of the American Musical and Dramatic Academy spent the past few years performing in Virginia and Nashville, as well as touring the US with The National Theatre of the Deaf. Other credits: Rainbow Magic Live (tour), A Christmas Carol (Regional), Seus-sical, The Musical (tour) and Ordinary Days.

Vaughn Meccod (Honker Quacker) is excited to be making his debut at Virginia Repertory Theatre. He is a recent graduate from Valdosta State University and obtained a degree in The-atre Arts with an emphasis in Musical Theatre. Though he spent most of his life in Georgia so far, Vaughn is originally from New York. He recently played Eddie in Mamma Mia! (Great Plains Theatre), L.A. in Gypsy (Great Plains Theatre), and was an ensemble member in Ragtime (Great Plains Theatre).

Ashley Thompson (Melissa) is a December 2013 graduate from Virginia Commonwealth University’s B.F.A. Theatre Performance program. She is celebrating her first anniversary back in the River City and is enjoying working in the theatre community as well as making Internet shorts with her two best friends in her off-time.

inspired ideas in the classroomTeacher Focus Student Activity NJ Student Learning Standards

Prepare for the performance

Read the story of The Ugly Duckling with the class and ask these questions:

Why do they think the other ducklings teased the ugly duckling?

What are some physical traits that make people tease or hurt others?

What can happen when these people get to know the person better?

Think about the moral of the story:

Would the story have ended differently if the ugly duckling had not turned into a swan?

Ask your students to decide if they would prefer a beautiful body or a beautiful character. They should consider the pros and cons of each one.

English Language Arts SL.K-2.1. Participate in collaborative conversations with diverse partners.

Experience the performance

How to experience the performance

As you are waiting for the performance to begin, ask your students to experience the performance with all of their senses.

How does the performance make them feel?

What parts of the performance speak to them most strongly?

Pay special attention to the way the story is being retold.

What do adding in the Burmese mole that hates dirt and the Inuit bald eagle with a full head of hair add to the story?

Do you agree or disagree with how the author has created a new story from the original one?

Is the moral the same as in the original story? If not, how has it changed?

English Language ArtsRL.K-2.2. Recount stories, including fables and folktales from diverse cultures, and determine their central message/theme, lesson, or moral.

Reflect, respond and read

Reflect on and respond to the performance

Read other Hans Christian Anderson fairy tales with the class. Are there any that the students want to rewrite? What are some of the ways they can change an original fairy tale to make it resonate more with the current day?

Compare and Contrast

Brainstorm ways to create a new retelling from older stories, such as The Emperor’s New Clothes or The Princess and the Pea. (See the resources section for other Hans Christian Anderson tales).

English Language Arts RL K-2.7 Compare and Contrast

Focus

Create a modern day skit

Break the students into pairs or small groups and challenge them to write or act out a skit that brings the fairy tale into modern day. Tell them that, like the performance they just saw, they can add new characters into the skit to create a retelling of the story.

Decide upon a fairy tale and consider if modernizing it means the moral has changed

Have your students discuss in their groups or with their partners which of the Anderson tales they want to adapt. Remind them that the moral can change based on their new retelling.

English Language Arts W.2.3 Write narratives, in which they recount a well-elaborated event or short sequence of events.

Originate

Create an original work of art

For younger students: You can have your students dictate their ideas about their revised fairy tale and jot it down on paper. Ask them what the moral of their new fairy tale will be.

For older students: Let them write a script of their revised fairy tale. Have them also consider props, costumes, and make-up to bring their stories to life.

Work together to write the script and assign parts

Work in your group or with your partner to act out your new fairy tale. Decide which character you are going to play and also consider adding a narrator role.

English Language Arts W.2.3. Write narratives, in which they recount a well-elaborated event or short sequence of events.

Rehearse

Rehearsal

Talk to the students about their ideas, making sure they have considered what moral their modern telling offers to a contemporary audience.

Practice the Performance

Have students work together to stage their performances, practicing them until they are certain they can perform them for an audience.

Visual and Performing Arts 1.1 The Creative Process

Make magic

Presentation

Invite your students to watch the various performances and encourage them to admire the work of their classmates.

Share your art

It’s time to share your creation. Talk about the process you experienced as you considered how best to tell your story. Listen to the reactions of your classmates. Were they were inspired by your creation? Were you inspired by theirs?

Visual and Performing Arts 1.3 Performance

1.4 Aesthetic Response & Critique

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NJ Visual and Performing Arts Standards

1.1 The Creative Process All students will demonstrate an understanding of the elements and principles that govern the creation of works of art in dance, music, theatre and visual art.

1.2 History of Arts & Culture All students will understand the role, development and influence of the arts throughout history and across cultures.

1.3 Performance All students will synthesize skills, media, methods and technologies that are appropriate to creating, performing and/or presenting works of art in dance, music, theatre and visual art.

1.4 Aesthetic Response & Critique All students will demonstrate and apply an understanding of arts philosophies, judgment and analysis to works of art in dance, music, theatre and visual art.

National Arts Standards1: Generate and conceptualize artistic ideas and work.5: Develop and refine artistic techniques and work for presentation.6: Convey meaning through the presentation of artistic work.7: Perceive and analyze artistic work.8: Interpret intent and meaning in artistic work.11: Relate artistic ideas and works with societal, cultural, and historical context to deepen understanding.

NEW JERSEY STUDENT LEARNING STANDARDS

English Language Arts

SL.K-2.1. Participate in collaborative conversations with diverse part-ners. SL.K-2.4. Tell a story or recount an experience with appropriate facts and relevant, descriptive details, speaking audibly in coherent sentencesRL.K-2.2. Recount stories, including fables and folktales from diverse cultures, and determine their central message/theme, lesson, or moral.RL.K-2.7 Analyze how visual and multimedia elements contribute to the meaning, tone, or beauty of a text.RL K-2.7 Compare and ContrastW.2.3. Write narratives in which they recount a well-elaborated event or short sequence of events, include details to describe actions, thoughts, and feelings, use temporal words to signal event order, and provide a sense of closure.

standardsnew jersey student

learning standards

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FIND THE STANDARDS – For more detailed information on the standards, visit these websites:

NJ ENGLISH LANGUAGE ARTS www.state.nj.us/education/cccs/2016/ela/

NJ SOCIAL STUDIES STANDARDS www.state.nj.us/education/cccs/2014/ss/

NJ WORLD LANGUAGE STANDARDS ww.state.nj.us/education/aps/cccs/wl/

NJ ARTS STANDARDS www.state.nj.us/education/cccs/2009/1.pdf

NATIONAL ARTS STANDARDS www.nationalartsstandards.org

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culturalconnections

About Hans Christian Andersen Danish author Hans Christian Andersen wrote more than 160 fairy tales, including The Ugly Duckling, The Princess and the Pea and The Little Mermaid, literary classics enjoyed by children and adults alike. Andersen was born on April 2, 1805, in Odense, Denmark. His parents were poor: his father worked as a shoemaker and his mother was a washerwoman. He was a tall, gawky, clumsy boy who was laughed at by the townspeople. So, like his ugly duckling, he knew what it meant to be teased.

At the age of 14, Andersen moved to Copenhagen, where he tried to become an actor and playwright in the Royal Theater. Directors of the Royal Theater decided that Andersen needed an education to write plays, and one of the directors raised money to send him to school. Andersen hated school, as he was much older than the other students and the schoolmaster made fun of him. He was finally given a private tutor, after which he graduated from Copenhagen University.

Andersen wrote poems, books, and plays. He was 30 before he began writing fairy tales. His first collection of fairy tales was immediately popular and his fame grew from that point on. Andersen put many pieces of his own life into his fairy tales. His own personal experiences of being ridiculed are reflected in The Ugly Duckling, which points out that sometimes being different may help you succeed in life.

The Cycle of the Swan After the eggs are laid in the nest, the mother incubates them for 35 days until they hatch. Nests are usually laid from April to June. Cygnets, or chicks, can take to the water right away, however the parent swans must gather food for them to eat. Cygnets usually start learning how to fly around four and half months. The cygnet’s grey fuzzy coating will turn to white feathers by the time they are two years old.

Adult swans mate for life and each mate protects the other. Swans touch beaks to kiss, their necks forming a heart. Swans build nests made of mats of reeds and plants near the water’s edge. Their eggs are about four inches long.

Adaptation The Ugly Duckling is a form of literary adaptation, the altering of a literary source such as a novel, short story or poem to another genre or medium, such as a film, stage play or, in this case, a musical. The idea of adapting something that already has an audience appeals because it obviously works as a story, with already well-developed characters and plotline. Many musicals for children are adaptations from stories and books, including Peter Pan, The Wizard of Oz, Matilda, Wicked, Oliver! and Mary Poppins.

Musical Theater History The roots of musical theatre can be traced back to the theatre of ancient Greece, where music and dance were included in stage comedies and tragedies during the 5th century BCE. In the 12th and 13th centuries, priests used religious dramas to teach moral lessons. The European Renaissance saw these forms evolve into commedia dell’arte, where raucous clowns improvised familiar stories. In England, Elizabethan and Jacobean plays frequently included music. Tudor court masques involved music, dancing, singing and acting, often with expensive costumes and a complex stage design. These developed into sung plays recognizable as English operas, while in France in the late 17th century, Molière turned several of his farcical comedies into musical entertainments with songs and dance.

From the 18th century, the most popular forms of musical theatre in Britain were ballad operas, like John Gay’s The Beggar’s Opera, that included lyrics written to the tunes of popular songs, and later pantomime and comic opera with romantic plot lines. In Europe, singspiel, comédie en vaudeville, opéra comique, zarzuela and other forms of light musical entertainment were emerging. Other musical theatre forms developed in England by the 19th century, such as music hall, melodrama and burletta.

In the late 1800s, Gilbert and Sullivan were the first British authors to write musical stage works, combining humor, acting and music. In America, Edward Harrigan and Tony Hart collaborated on vaudeville sketches. Popular variety shows consisted of chorus girls, dancers and comics. Minstrel shows, which now carry racial stigma for their use of black-face, were also introduced around this time.

The Broadway we know came into being in 1866 with the show The Black Crook. In the 1900s George M. Cohan, an American entertainer and Victor Herbert, an Irish born cellist and composer, gave musicals the distinctive style that we know today. Musicals evolved steadily throughout this period and the twentieth century. Rodgers and Hammerstein’s famous musical Showboat premiered in 1927. The 1950s saw the advent of such iconic Broadway musicals as The King and I (1951), Bernstein and Sondheim’s West Side Story (1957) and Lerner and Loewe’s My Fair Lady (1956). Concept musicals, such as Cabaret (1966), emerged in the 1960s—musicals which put significance on the statement rather than the narrative.

Appearance The way that someone or something looks.

Character Trait A describing word (adjective) that tells about a person, place or thing.

Cygnet Baby swan

Fairy Tale A type of short story that typically features folkloric fantasy characters, such as dwarfs, dragons, elves, fairies, giants, gnomes, goblins, griffins, mermaids, talking animals, trolls, unicorns or witches, and usually magic or enchantments.

Folk Tale A type of short story with a simple plot. They have characters representing a characteristic like good or bad and feature events that are repeated, especially in threes. They are based in fantasy.

Literary Adaptation The adapting of a literary source, such as a novel, short story, poem to another genre or medium, such as a film, stage play or musical.

Musical Theatre A form of theatrical performance that combines songs, spoken dialogue, acting and dance.

Personality Trait A character trait that describes what a person (or animal) is like on the inside. For example, the word kind is a personality trait.

Physical Trait A character trait that describes appearance or looks. For example, the word short is a physical trait.

Prejudice preconceived opinion that is not based on reason or actual experience.

Retelling To tell a story, tale, etc., over again or in a new way.

Rhyme Two or more words that share a common ending sound are said to rhyme. For example, man, can, Stan and pan all rhyme.

vocabulary resourcesAbout the Theatre and Performance:

Virginia Repertory Theatre website: va-rep.org/index.html

Interview with actor Eric Pastore, The Ugly Duckling at the Empire Theatre: www.youtube.com/watch?v=tVu_ecGb1iU

About Hans Christian Andersen

Scholastic entry, written by Danny Kaye: www.scholastic.com/teachers/authors/hans-christian-andersen/

Biography entry: www.biography.com/people/hans-chris-tian-andersen-9184146

The Hans Christian Andersen Centre: andersen.sdu.dk/liv/index_e.html

Other Fairy Tales by Hans Christian Andersen:

The Emperor’s New Clothes

Thumbelina

The Princess and the Pea

The Steadfast Tin Soldier

The Fir Tree

The Little Mermaid

The Nightingale

The Little Match Girl

About Swans:

Fun Swan Facts for Kids: easyscienceforkids.com/all-about-swans/

Video of a swan’s nest and hatching of cygnets: www.youtube.com/watch?v=TznYGOVLzGU

About Musical Theater

History of Musicals: www.musicals101.com/stagecap.htm

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John R. Strangfeld, Chair, NJPAC Board of DirectorsJohn Schreiber, President & CEOAlison Scott-Williams, Vice President, Arts EducationJennifer Tsukayama, Assistant Vice President, Arts Education OperationsBetsy True, Senior Director, Artistic Faculty & Curriculum DevelopmentCathleen Plazas, Senior Director, Curriculum and Program EvaluationMark Gross, Director, Jazz InstructionJamie M. Mayer, Director, Curriculum & Professional DevelopmentRosa Hyde, Senior Manager, SchoolTime & AssembliesVictoria Revesz, Senior Manager, School and Community ProgramsRoneasha Bell, Manager, On-site and Community ProgramsKyle Conner, Manager, Sales & PartnershipsAshley Miskoff, Manager, Professional DevelopmentDanielle Vauters, Manager, School and Summer ProgramsRaven Oppong-Boateng, Coordinator, Program Registration and OperationsDaniel Silverstein, Coordinator, On-site and Community ProgramsPatricia Sweeting, Coordinator, Performances & EngagementTara Baker, Administrative Assistant/Office Manager, Arts EducationDenise Jackson, Administrative Assistant to the VP and AVP, Arts Education

teacher resource guidesThe Writer’s Circle, LLC: Judith Lindbergh, Michelle Cameron, Scott Caffrey, Chris Knapp

Lia DiStefano, Graphic Design liadidadesign.comthe arts in your schoolIn-School Residencies: Drama + Social Studies. Dance + Math. It all adds up in NJPAC’s In-School Residencies in which professional teaching artists partner with educators to bring the arts into the classroom. Each 7- to 10-week program culminates in a student performance or an interactive family workshop. All programs address state and national standards. NJPAC is the regional provider in New Jersey for international arts programs like the Wolf Trap Institute’s Early Learning Through the Arts Program and Dancing Classrooms Global.

Assemblies: NJPAC presents engaging school assembly programs that are presented by professional artists that invite students into the enchanting world of live performance. NJPAC’s assembly series promotes cultural awareness and invigorates learning by presenting works that are connected to your’s school’s curriculum.

study the arts at njpacSaturday Programs: NJPAC’s Saturday programs are geared towards students at every level—from those who dream of starring on Broadway to those who are still learning their scales. Students work with professional artists to build technique and develop their own creative style in film, contemporary modern dance, hip hop, jazz, musical theater and symphonic band.

Summer Programs: Want to begin to explore the arts? Or immerse yourself in the study of one genre? Then join us at NJPAC next summer in one of seven programs that spark the creativity in every child through the study of music, dance and theater.

njpac staff

NJPAC Arts Education programs are made possible through the generosity of our endowment donors: The Arts Education Endowment Fund in honor of Raymond C. Chambers, The Joan and Allen Bildner Family Fund, Albert and Katherine Merck, and The Sagner Family Foundation

Generous annual support for NJPAC Arts Education Programs is provided by: NJ Advance Media/The Star-Ledger, McCrane Foundation, Inc., care of Margrit McCrane, John and Suzanne Willian/Goldman Sachs Gives, MCJ Amelior Foundation, Amy Liss, Jennifer A. Chalsty, Johnson & Johnson Family of Companies, Panasonic Corporation of America, and Atlantic, Tomorrow’s Office, Stewart and Judy Colton

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