Program Description

As Cathy and Jeff construct a wall backdrop, they tell three stories of walls around the world:  a wall in China painted by a famous dragon painter, built to protect a village; a wall of chinks from Shakespeare’s MIDSUMMER NIGHT’S DREAM, built to separate two friends; and a Montana wall, signed by pioneers, created to memorialize those who completed the journey along the Oregon Trail in the 1800’s. Visual effects, props, and costumes add to the drama which culminates with audience members creating their own registry cliff wall onstage.  Cathy and Jeff teach us to think of walls as telling stories from our past, present, and future.  We'll never think of walls the same again after seeing this show.

   Artists Bios

Cathy Kaemmerlen, professional actress, dancer, and storyteller, is known for her variety of characters, one-woman shows, and for her rapport with audiences.  A performer and “creator of shows” since she can remember, she has toured in schools coast to coast, since receiving a BA in English/elementary education from UNC-Charlotte, and a MFA in dance performance/choreography/theatre at the University of Wisconsin.  She tours through Young Audiences of Atlanta, the Georgia and South Carolina Touring Arts Rosters, Fulton County SAP, and has received numerous grants and honors, including Outstanding New Interpreter for her region with the National Association of Interpreters.  See her website:  www.tattlingtales.com
Jeff Matheris a community-based artist who has conducted over 80 residencies in educational settings since 1990.  He has a BA degree from Hobart College in Proxemics, which is the study of space as language and is a branch of anthropology.  Jeff is best known as a site sculptor, however most of the site generated projects that he directs involve cross-disciplinary collaborations with performing artists.  Jeff is a collaboration coach with the Community Arts Network, a member of Alternate Roots, the primary visual arts trainer for APAL (Atlanta Partnership for Arts in Learning), on the GCA and SCAC residency rosters and books through Young Audiences of Atlanta and the Fulton County School Arts Program.  See Jeff's website at:  www.jeffmather.com

Background on Art Form

Telling stories is an oral tradition, dating back to when mankind first developed a language or form of communication.  Storytelling is a universal way of passing down information to be saved and remembered for generations to come.  It is an interactive art form in which the storytellers’ passion for the story, material, and information, is passed on to the audience, who sorts through, interprets, stores, and synthesizes what is heard.  Creating a wall or site sculpture involves three dimensional design; use of architectural and structural forms; artistic vision and planning; and use of space in a creative and efficient manner.

Prepare:

Teachers, please read this to your students.

Today we are going to have a program by actress storyteller Cathy Kaemmerlen and musician/site sculptor Jeff Mather as they present a show called IF THESE OLD WALLS COULD TALK.  As they construct a background wall, the two performers are going to tell us three stories about three different types of walls:  one that protects, one that separates, and one that helps us remember.  We'll look at walls in a new way and learn some history too, about China, Shakespeare, and the Oregon Trail.

Warm up Questions to set the stage for engaging students

-- Why do we build or create walls?  Are we walling in or walling out?
--Read Robert Frost’s MENDING WALL (see addendum).  What did he mean by something there is about a wall that wants tearing down?  Do good fences make good neighbors?
--Find stories about walls like the Great Wall of China, the Viet Nam Memorial Wall, the CIA Memorial Wall, the Wall of Presidents, a bulletin board.  If these old walls could talk, what stories would they tell?
--Look at the books:  TALKING WALLS and MORE TALKING WALLS by Margy Burns Knight and Anne Sibley O’Brien and check out the website that goes with these books:  www.eduscapes.com/42explore/walls.htm.  What do you see as the various kinds and types of walls in history and around the world?  What purposes do walls serve?

Vocabulary to look at before and after:

Chinks:  holes, cracks, or crevices
Graffiti:  a rude drawing on a wall or building, sometimes quite artistic, but unsolicited
Magistrate:  the official first in rank
Tao:  religion and philosophy of Chinese Lao-tse, teaching conformity to the cosmic order
The Fourth Wall:  in theatre known as the wall the audience occupies, the other three being the three walls of a traditional proscenium stage
Schooner:  a ship having two masts
Cholera:  a disease affecting the bowels, caused by epidemics spread by contaminated water, food, fesces
Epidemic:  an unarrested spread of a disease

Warm Up Questions for meeting the Georgia Performance Standards for "Listening/Speaking/Viewing":

Describe the perfect audience.
What are some of our class rules for being good listeners?
How do we show someone we appreciate their visit to our school or classroom?
How does being part of an audience help make you a good citizen?
What are some examples of bad audience behavior or attitudes?
How does a negative audience member effect your enjoyment of a show or performance?
How would this make the performer feel?
How do we want the performer to feel when they leave our school or classroom?

Reflect:

--Look at different walls in your school, community, home.  What do these walls tell you?
--Look at walls throughout history and the world. What do they reveal about mankind and various cultures?
--After the show:  choose a wall that interests you and research that wall.  When was it built; what purpose does it serve.  Generate a list of questions about this wall, such as who made it and why.  If you can’t find the answers, make educated guesses to help you create your story behind the wall.  Use your creativity to write and/or tell a story about your wall, including what it would say if it could talk.
--Create your own class wall:  could be a class memorial wall; could be a bulletin board wall; could be a best of the year wall; could be a class project that comes out of the curriculum:  example:  a pioneer cliff; a Civil War memorial wall; a Revolutionary War protest against British taxes informational wall; a scientific cause and effect wall, etc.
--Make a log of walls around the school, community, home.  How many different types of walls can you find??

Resources:

CHILDREN OF THE TRAIL WEST by Holly Littlefield
THE PRAIRIE SCHOONERS by Glen Rounds
TALKING WALLS and MORE TALKING WALLS by Margy Burns Knight and Anne Sibley O'Brien
A WALL OF NAMES by Judy Donnelly
THE BERLIN WALL by Lisa Mirabile
THE ANCIENT CLIFF DWELLERS OF MESA VERDE by Caroline Arnold
THE WALL by Eve Bunting
THE GREAT WALL OF CHINA by Leonard Everett  Fisher
THE STORY OF A BOY AND A FINGER IN THE DYKE from THE SILVER SKATES by Mary Mapes Dodge
MATTHEW WHEELOCK'S WALLS by Frances Ward Weller
PIONEERS, a Library of Congress Book by Martin W. Sandler
www.mentorplace.org/Walls.htm
www.eduscapes.com/42explore/walls.htm
A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM by William Shakespeare
A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM FOR KIDS by Lois Burdett
CHILDREN OF THE WESTWARD TRAIL by Rebecca Stefoff, Milbrook Press
WAGON TRAIN: A FAMILY GOES WEST IN 1865 by Courtni C. Wright, Holiday House
ACROSS THE WIDE AND LONESOME PRAIRIE:  THE OREGON TRAIL DIARY OF HATTIE CAMPBELL, 1847 by Kristiana Gregory, Scholastic Press

MENDING WALL by Robert Frost
Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,
That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it,
And spills the upper boulders in the sun,
And makes gaps even two can pass abreast.
The work of hunters is another thing.
I have come after them and made repair
Where they have left not one stone on a stone,
But they would have the rabbit out of hiding,
To please the yelping dogs.  The gaps I mean,
No one has seen them made or heard them made,
But at spring mending-time we find them there.
I let my neighbor know beyond the hill;
And on a day we meet to walk the line
And set the wall between us once again
We keep the wall between us as we go.
To each the boulders that have fallen to each.
And some are loaves and some so nearly balls
We have to use a spell to make them balance:
‘Stay where you are until our backs are turned!’
We wear our fingers rough with handling them.
Oh, just another kind of out-door game,
One on a side.  It comes to little more.
There were it is we do not need the wall:
He is all pine and I am apple orchard.
My apple trees will never get across
And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him.
He only says, ‘Good fences make good neighbors’.
Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder
If I could put a notion in his head:
‘Why do they make good neighbors?  Isn’t it
Where there are cows?
But here there are no cows.
Before I built a wall I’d ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out,
And to whom I was like to give offence.
Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,
That wants it down.’  I could say ‘Elves’ to him,
But it’s not elves exactly, and I’d rather
He said it for himself.  I see him there
Bringing a stone grasped firmly by the top
In each hand, like an old-stone savage armed.
He moves in darkness as it seems to me—
Not of woods only and the shade of trees.
He will not go behind his father’s saying,
And he likes having thought of it so well
He says again, “Good fences make good neighbors.”

IF THESE OLD WALLS COULD TALK THEME SONG:

If these old walls could talk,
They’d have dozens of stories to tell.
Of something there is that doesn’t love a wall,
That wants it down.
Before I’d build a wall, I’d ask to know,
What I’m walling in or walling out.

Oh, if these old walls could talk.

If these old hallowed walls could talk,
What tales they’d have to tell.
Of painted dragons, and chinks, and registry cliffs
Protecting, Dividing, Remembering—
The people and places and travels and friends.

If these old walls could talk.

If these old walls could talk,
The stories they’d have to tell.
These old walls have seen it all,
Each little tear, each little step,
And every dream we come to seek.

And every dream we come to seek.

QCC's:  Grade 4 Language Arts: 45; Grade 4 Social Studies: 26, 28; Grade 5 Language Arts: 57; Grade 5 Social Studies: 13, 14; Character Education: 7, 11 (11.1, 2, 3); 12 (12.1, 2, 3, 4, 5); 13 (13.1, 2, 3, 4)