I Can Hear the Sun

We just returned from the Wild Swan Theater's production of "I Can Hear the Sun". This is a new play written just for Wild Swan, and creatively adapted from Patricia Polacco's book of the same name.

The children and I read the book on Tuesday, and have been wondering all week on how it would be as a play. Would the character Fondo really fly, as he does at the end of the book? How would he do it? There were geese in the play - would they be real? puppets?

The play turned out to be full of surprises. It was a great adaptation, and kept true to the feeling and emotion of the book. But there were also a lot of differences. One of the best parts of this morning was a "talk back" session after the play - the director, playwrights, actors, puppeteers, and signers were all there to take questions from the audience. We learned a lot about the decision making process ("Why didn't Fondo fly at the end?") as well as the little details ("What is that rock made of?")

Click HERE to learn more about this really excellent production.

By the way - the play was advertised for 3rd grade and up, so we knew our expectations were high for our first and second graders. However, as usual, they rose to the challenge, enjoyed the play immensely, and had excellent and quiet theater behavior.