Living Bookshelf
Living Bookshelf was developed out of a conversation between artists from Arts For Anyone and educators at Pennypack Elementary school in Hatboro-Horsham school district in Pennsylvania back in 1996. Teachers were asked, "What do you need?" Classroom teachers told the artists that they wanted their students to interact with Literature beyond reading a book and talking about it. Music teachers said they would like their students to have a meaningful experience with the process of composition. The solution? Take a book from the reading curriculum and use it as inspiration for each class across one grade level to create, in collaboration with our lyricists and composers, an original music-theatre scene to be performed by professional artists from the worlds of Broadway and Opera.
In keeping with our requirement that what we do should fit within a school's existing paradigm, each scene is developed during three classroom sessions of approximately 45 minutes each. The book's theme and characters are discussed during the first session. During the second session, the lyrics are created and in session three those lyrics are set to music.
During a month's hiatus, performers are selected, hired and rehearsed. In the morning on the appointed day of presentation, the artists get together with the entire grade to go over what has been created. The singers sing each scene and possible staging ideas are discussed with the students. Before the performance later that afternoon, all the material is recorded, the staging rehearsed, and the students prepared to make the introductions of each scene for the audience.
In the afternoon (usually right after lunch) there is a formal presentation of these original scenes for an audience chosen by school administrators. These performances have a maximum of three professional singers and one pianist. Often in addition, students, teachers, and local artists also participate. More and more, the author of the selected novel are invited to the school on this day which provides the opportunity for a three way discussion between our artists, the students, and the author.
Following the conclusion of the project, each class is provided with a CD of all the music created by all the classes in the program.
- View the sheet music and listen to audio clips of some of our work…
- What I Could Have Been