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- Subscribe - Contact Us - Rate Card - Place an Ad Archives Revels Classifieds Real Estate Menu Guide Wedding Weather Subscribe Contact Us February 23, 2005 Students bring Aesop to life By Jennifer Squires Ashland Daily Tidings There are no costumes and, aside from seven colorful scarves and a small mound of black wooden boxes, no props. In fact, the sound effects are the most expensive part of the production of "Fable Tales." Two members of the "Fable Tales" cast perform for the Southern Oregon University preschool on Feb. 17. The cast gave a test-run to three of the eight Aesop stories they will present in full-length "Fable Tales" show. Jennifer Squires | Ashland Daily Tidings But, judging from the reaction of the 3-, 4- and 5-year-olds in the Southern Oregon University preschool program during a preview performance last week, nothing else is necessary to relate the adaptation of eight of Aesop's classic stories, the children's theater show that opens Friday in the Black Box theater at SOU. "The kids just love it," said Linda Floyd, a teacher at the preschool, after the three-story performance. "It doesn't seem to have anything to do with their age. It has to do with the acting." Theater students in the movement-for-the-actor courses, required classes for all theater performance majors at SOU, have visited the preschool for the past seven years to perform physicalized stories based on fairy tales and fables as part of their final exams. However, it was last year when some students took the show off-campus to Bellview Elementary School for an audience of kindergarten-through-fifth-grade students that the idea to bring Aesop's allegories to the stage was born. "It's always nice to do theater for a totally uncritical audience," said Maggie McClellan, an SOU theater professor who authored the "Fable Tales" script and is directing the show. After the seven actors - two seniors and five sophomores, five women and two men - were selected in early January, the cast and McClellan worked to create a script. They read about 150 of Aesop's tales to choose their favorites. The stories, which are usually no longer than a paragraph, contain no human characters. Instead, lions, mice, foxes and spiders teach the moral of the story. Because the fables are so short, the cast needed to act them out, adding monologues, dialogues and, sometimes, narrators to create skits that last about 10-minutes. McClellan taped each rehearsal, then went home to script the characters the cast had created. "I don't think, in the end, people will understand how much work goes into a single sentence or paragraph," said sophomore Amanda Long. Ten days before opening night, the cast finally received the last script revisions. "I think the process was really appealing to us," said senior Brooke Bilofsky. "The show will probably be different, for the most part, every night." "Fable Tales" opens Friday at 7 p.m. and will run through March 6. Saturdays have three performances (11 a.m., 2 p.m. and 7 p.m.) and there are only matinee performances at 2 p.m. on Sundays. For more information, call the SOU Box Office at 552-6348. Staff writer Jennifer Squires can be reached at 482-3456 x 3019 or [email protected]. DailyTidings.com Home Page Archives | Revels | Classifieds | Real Estate Guide | Weather | Subscribe | Contact Us Copyright 2005 Ashland Daily Tidings and Ottaway Newspapers All Rights Reserved Free Musick Downloads Slippers Ceramic Piggy Banks Heloc Calenders 2005 Women's & Men's Slippers Accelerate Weightloss Products Memory Foam Mattress tcg student loan consolidation Home Equity Loans teleconferencing W2 Forms cortisol weight loss Diamonds Futures Broker Bad Credit Loans Auto & Personal Loans Mesothelioma Free Home-Loan Referrals Sports Betting Website Design & Marketing Student Loans African Safari Conference Calls - $50/Month Security Systems Helzberg Diamonds Currancy Exchange Online Casinos Community Student Loans Bonus Casino Poker Games Homeschooling Auto Insurance Mortgage Calculator Mailing Lists Mystery Shopping Jobs Debt Consolidation Loans Payday Loans Click Here .:Advertisements:. Site Search: RESOURCES - Mail Tribune News - ODOT Road Cams