Transcription of MISS NELSON IS MISSING! - Actors' Playhouse
1 Welcome to Actors Playhouse Theatre for Young Audiences. We hope that you enjoy the show and that attendance at live theatre will become a regular part of your entertainment activities. We have prepared this Student Enrichment Guide to help in your understanding and appreciation of the show. We encourage teachers to make full use of this guide and to download, or print as many copies for your students as you wish. If you have further questions about this, or any future productions at Actors Playhouse , please do not hesitate to call us at 305-444-9293 Story Behind the Author Author with James Field Trip Us Your for & Group Fun NELSON is MISSING! WHEN?April 23-May 30th, 2009 WHERE?Actors Playhouse at the Miracle TheatreActors Playhouse at the Miracle Theatre280 Miracle MileCoral Gables, Fl.
2 305-444-9293 miss NELSON IS MISSING! miss NELSON is not pleased with her class!"Something must be done!" she declares. T h e S t o r y B e h i n d t h e S h o wWhat you are about to see is an adaptation of the stories; miss NELSON IS missing and miss NELSON IS BACK by Harry Allard and James Marshall. What is an adaptation? It is a new version of a previously written story. Sommetimes adaptations add new characters, or even take out a character or a story line, which may have appeared in an earlier version. You may have seen adaptations of famous stories. In fact, most fairy tales you hear are adaptations from earlier writings because many fairy tales were originally in other witty and wacky musical adaptation of these hilarious and mysterious favorites is by Joan Cushing!
3 It was originally commisioned and produced by BAPA's Imagination Stage, White Flint, Bethesda, Maryland. It com-bines the two books into a funny and thought provoking look at how your choice of behavior can affect your life and those around students in room 207 are known for misbehaving. They don't seem capable of following the rules and being respectful to their kind gentle teacher, miss NELSON . One morning miss NELSON is mysteriously missing from school and the students have a moment of satisfaction in thinking that they have succeeded in driving her away. Their celebration turns quickly to dread when the substitute, the mean and scary miss Viola Swamp, descends upon the classroom. soon the children are inundated with homework in a military style classroom and they even have their story time taken away!
4 Ultimately the students realize how terribly they treated miss NELSON and decide to take matters into their own hands. After an unsuccessful attempt to enlist the assistance of polieman Detective McSmogg the children decide it was their own behavior that drove her away and set out to right their wrongs. To the students delight the clever miss NELSON returns to room 207 the very next day and is somehow knowingly pleased to find a newly appreciative and much more respectful version of her class!Composer, lyricist, playwright and political humorist Joan cushing is best known fer her satirical revue, Mrs. Foggybottom and Friends! which ran for 10 hit years at the Omni-Shoreham hotel, as well as extended runs in NYC. Also in New York she performed her solo night club act, Lady Sings the News!
5 , at the Ballroom, and appeared in Gary Trudeau's Tanner for President! series on HBO, directed by Robert Altman, and studied musi-cal theatre writing under Lehman Engel and Mary Yeston at BMI Musical Theatre Workshop. In 1997 her musi-cal Flush! won the Lewis Award for Playwright Development in the source Theatre Festival. Her 1999 musical Tussaud, based on the deliciously gruesome and dark tale of Madame Tussaud, won the Source Theatre Festival, was awarded the Pat Sheehy New Play Fund Award and The Ensemble Award, and received a staged reading at the Pulse Ensemble Theatre in New first children's musical, based on the popular miss NELSON is missing ! books was commissioned and pro-duced by Imagination Stage in Bethesda, Maryland. miss NELSON is missing ! has received numerous productions around the country since winning the 2004 National Children's Theatre Festival here at Actors' Playhouse .
6 She has also written the musical miss NELSON Takes a Field Day! among Playhouse Student Enrichment Guide P 2 Author, Composer and Lyricist JOAN CUSHING HARRY ALLARDB iographical Statement from1983 Biography from Fifth Book of Junior Authors and Illustrators --1999 update: Harry Allard was born in Evanston, Illinois, on January 27--the same birthday, Allard notes, as Mozart and Lewis Carroll. After growing up in California, Long Island, and Chicago, Allard graduated from Northwestern University in 1948. After college he entered the Signal Corps of the Army and was sent to Korea. On his release from active duty, he lived and worked in Paris for three years before returning to the United States, where he earned his master s degree in French from Middlebury College in 1960. After another year in France, Allard came back to teach, first in Virginia, then in Texas.
7 From 1965 to 1968 he attended Yale on a fellowship, then moved to Massachusetts, where he has lived ever since. Allard received his in French from Yale in 1973. Upon his arrival in Boston, Harry Allard met James Marshall, author and illustrator of the George and Martha books. It was Marshall s art that was the inspiration for Harry Allard s first book, The Stupids Step Out. James Marshall provided the illustrations for the story and this collaboration paved the way for the publication of several other Stupids books. Documenting the adventures of the dimwitted family, the stories are perennial favorites with young library borrowers. In 1996, director John Landis made a feature film entitled The Stupids based on the exploits of these hapless characters. The Stupids Step Out was followed in 1977 by miss NELSON Is missing which was highly praised.
8 Booklist said of it: Rarely has the golden rule been so effectively interpreted for children. The book was a runner-up for a 1977 Edgar Allan Poe Award. Like the Stupids series, the adventures of miss NELSON and the students of Horace B. Smedley School have been continued in miss NELSON is Back and miss NELSON Has a Field Day. miss NELSON is missing ! won the Colorado Children s Book Award in 1985. In the same year as miss NELSON Is missing , Allard s own favorite, It s So Nice to Have a Wolf Around the House, was published. Eventually, this book was made into a full-length cartoon feature for television. Three of the books on which Allard and Marshall collaborated have been recognized with honors. The Stupids Step Out was included on the School Library Journal Best of the Best 1966-1978 list (December 1979); I Will Not Go to Market Today was exhibited in the 1980 American Institute of Graphic Arts show; and The Tutti-Frutti Case was named a New York Times Best Illustrated Children s Book of the Year 1975.
9 James MarshallJames Marshall was born in San Antonio, Texas, and grew up sixteen miles outside of the town on the family farm. His father, who worked for the railroad, had his own dance band in the thirties and appeared on the radio. His mother, also musical, sang in the church choir. So it wasn t surprising when Jim considered playing the viola for a career and received a scholarship to attend the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston. But during an airplane trip he was jerked out of his seat and injured his hand, and that was the end of his musical returned to San Antonio College and later Trinity, where he studied French under Harry Allard, his future collaborator. After moving East, Jim graduated from Southern Connecticut State University with a degree in history and French. The French major somehow wound up trying to teach Spanish in a Catholic school in Boston.
10 Before long he was looking for a new a fateful summer afternoon in 1971 James Marshall lay on his hammock drawing pictures. His mother was inside the house watching Who s Afraid of Virginia Woolf on TV. The strident voices of the movie s protagonists, George and Martha, split the quiet air, and as the sketches began to take shape, history was made .. and James Marshall never had to look for another so, with tongue-in cheek, Jim Marshall began his career and became one of the most pro-lific and successful author/illustrators of children s books. He is best known for his series on the mischievous exploits of Fox, a debonair, lazy showoff; the uproarious adventures of the two Cut-Ups, Spud and Joe; George and Martha; and the misadventures of the Stupid family. The Washington Post said in a review of his work, There are few better writers and illustrators for children now than Marshall.
