selling out for self-promotion

just this week, i was thinking to myself that now might be the time to introduce all of you to my other blog. it’s still, i think, a work in progress, simply because i haven’t quite found the “voice.” it is, unlike this one, actually set up to act as a promotional site for the book that my mom and i are writing, PictureBook Plays.

over the past few years, i’ve developed a (not to boast too much) fantastic technique for teaching theatre arts to children ages 2 through 5. this is something very unusual because although we include music, visual art and literacy in the ece curriculum, theatre is not.  as such, there are very few reference books for teachers and parents who are interested in pursuing the idea.

then i came across this post and realized that this could be my opportunity to both introduce you to my other blog and maybe win a t-shirt for A__ (that’s the selling out part).

so, let me tell you in brief why thanks to theatre the idea of my child wearing braille is very exciting:

i used to produce 90 minute versions of plays that toured to high schools. they weren’t historical plays or “end the violence” plays. don’t get me wrong, those are great, but most high schoolers don’t get to see an actual play. a play that they will read in their english class but never fully comprehend because they’re reading it rather than seeing it. so we created plays like Hamlet and The Diary of Anne Frank to go perform for students. in our tours we always included the Perkins School for the Blind. it’s where helen keller went to school.  and suddenly i got to learn all about audio-description.  a professional describer creates a script that runs in conjunction with the play.  she or he sits in a sound-proof booth describing the action on stage into a microphone.  blind theatre-goers listen to the descriptions via ear-pieces during the spaces in dialogue.  it’s amazing.  i watched The Glass Menagerie with my ears.  and it was so much better than watching with my eyes.  it was a profound day.  it was the day i really thought about the lives of visually impaired people and how creative the world can be to make spaces for them so we can learn to live together.

so, that said, now you’ve got a lot of places you can go check out:

1. bitty braille t-shirts for tots where you can see for yourself the braille bling
2. crunchy domestic goddess where you can also enter to win
3. picturebookplays.com which you should read and explore and tell me how to make it better.  hint:  it feels a little “preachy” right now which i’m not too fond of but am having trouble dropping.

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