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NYC Public School Kids See Their Scenes Performed by the Cast of 'Matilda'

By Maria Villasenor | December 12, 2014 6:02pm | Updated on December 15, 2014 8:53am
 The "Write Here, Write Now" program teamed the cast and crew of "Matilda the Musical" with students from 10 different schools across the city. The students wrote new scenes and songs based on the musical, and saw the cast perform their pieces on stage Friday.
Public school students see their work performed on stage
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MIDTOWN — Broadway got a new crop of playwrights when public school students took control of the stage for “Matilda the Musical” on Friday.

Students from 10 different public schools in Brooklyn, Manhattan, Queens and the Bronx were tasked with writing new scenes, dialogue and songs for “Matilda the Musical.” One piece from each school was picked and performed Friday morning on stage at the Shubert Theatre on W. 44th Street.

It’s probably the coolest assignment Ruby Cohen, 10, has ever had.

“Usually if you’re writing some thing, it’s not for something big,” said Cohen, a fifth grader at P.S. 29 John M. Harrigan in Cobble Hill. “But when you’re writing for ‘Matilda,’ it’s something really big.”

Cohen and her classmate Leo Gordon wrote a song together for a minor character, Bruce Bogtrotter, who in the musical gets sent to the “Chokey,” a menacing cupboard with glass shards and nails, by the villain Miss Trunchbull. The Broadway production was adapted from the Roald Dahl story “Matilda,” which follows a young girl who loves to read and discovers she has powers she can use against her angry parents and mean principal.

The Royal Shakespeare Company, which produces the Broadway show, and the city’s Department of Education teamed to bring the “Write Here, Write Now” program to New York City, after it was first launched in London. Students in 10 public schools were brought to a performance of the play in October, then they brainstormed and developed scenes in the following weeks. On Friday, they were bused back to the Shubert Theatre’s plush red chairs to watch the chosen pieces performed by the professional cast.

Alicia Tully, a theater arts teacher at E.S.M.T-I.S. 190 said “Matilda the Musical” was one of the first Broadway shows many of her South Bronx students had ever seen. “Then back in the classroom, they really got into the writing process,” she said of her sixth, seventh and eighth graders. “Taking this approach to writing absolutely engaged them and it changed them.”

Two of her students wrote a piece that included Matilda’s parents and a chase sequence involving the Russian mafia. Jose Pineda, 13, said writing that sequence with his classmate David Lara, 13, was a fun assignment and different from what he usually does. “It’s really different when you’re writing a play,” Pineda said. “You’re able to let all of your ideas flow into something new.”

For weeks, cast members and crew practiced the students’ scenes in addition to their usual rehearsals and performances. Alison Luff, who plays Ms. Honey, Matilda’s teacher, said she and the other actors were amazed by the work the students did at such young ages.

“It was so creative and I liked the additional characters they added and the twists and turns,” Luff said. “I try writing right now at 26, and I can’t even do it.”

The “Write Here, Write Now” program blends many aspects of literacy — comprehension, point of view, narration — in new ways that help students connect to what they are learning in their classrooms, said Peter Avery, the NYCDOE theater director. An important part of the program was for the students to see their writing and original work performed by the musical’s cast with live music, spotlights and all the features of an actual Broadway show.

“This level of professionalism really honors the students’ voices,” Avery said. “And this makes them realize they could be the next generation of playwrights and actors and directors. They know they have a voice, but they don’t always know other people recognize it. But they got to see their work performed and hear people laugh at their jokes and applaud.”