The Memory Project: Storytelling through visual arts, theater & puppetry

  PUBLIC CELEBRATION of ART & PERFORMANCE  from the students of SELFHELP LATIMER GARDENS OAC & NEWTOWN ITALIAN SENIOR CITIZEN CENTER At FLUSHING TOWN HALL Friday June 9, 2023 Spica, Margaret, and I were excited to see our students all together at Flushing Town Hall eager to perform their shadow puppet stories. Gabrielle M. Hamilton, Director of Education & Public Programs and Joanne Lee, Education & Family Programs Administrator at Flushing Town Hall welcomed us and helped set up the performance space, with assistance from their staff. Thank you very much for making it all seamless!    Esther, Program Assistant at Newtown Italian Senior Citizen Center brought our students via a chartered bus, some of whom had never been to Flushing before. Our students from Selfhelp Latimer Gardens OAC walked over, accompanied by the Director, Helen Yang and Miranda, the Case Worker there. We welcome their support and encouragement. It was also exciting for the partic...

  NEWTOWN ITALIAN SENIOR CITIZEN CENTER SHADOW PUPPET STORYTELLING WORKSHOP Friday June 2, 2023 Today is our final class before the Public Celebration on June 9. It has been a privilege and an honor to be working again with my colleague Spica Wobbe and the amazing students of the Shadow Puppet Storytelling Workshop at Newtown Italian Senior Citizen Center. We want to express our sincerest gratitude to the Director, Maria Cuoco and her assistant, Heidi Schmidt as well as the rest of the staff. They have enthusiastically supported our program and offered us assistance whenever it’s been requested.   Spica met early with Paul and Rita Tang to go over their shadow puppet performance. Once in the classroom, Paul performed his story twice for recording purposes. As Paul cannot attend the Public Celebration next week, we will play a video of this performance. Other students marveled at Paul’s deft manipulation of his puppets as well as his clear storytelling. Paul told the story of h...

  SELFHELP LATIMER GARDENS OLDER ADULT CENTER SHADOW PUPPET STORYTELLING WORKSHOP Friday June 2, 2023 We are so fortunate to have an enthusiastic and dedicated group of students at the Selfhelp Latimer Older Adult Center. They arrive early to rehearse their shadow puppet performance and take every opportunity to develop and hone their skills. I am thrilled to be working with my amazing colleague Spica Wobbe again and honored to have this chance to meet and work with more talented older adults. Both Spica and I want to express our sincerest gratitude to Helen Yang the Director and her staff who have always made us feel so welcome and cheered on the participants so enthusiastically. These students love a challenge and rise to the occasion, experimenting with different forms and creating some incredible special effects.   CK (Chuan Kui) arrived early so she could set up her shadow puppets and make sure everything was in its rightful place. Her shadow puppetry performance document...

  NEWTOWN ITALIAN SENIOR CITIZEN CENTER SHADOW PUPPET STORYTELLING WORKSHOP Friday May 26, 2023 Our class continues to attract more students and today was no exception, with a new member who decided to watch while participants rehearsed their shadow puppet story and offered insightful advice and asked interesting questions, which helped focus the story telling.  Spica met with Rita before class to go over with her the order of presentation of her puppets. This is an example of the dedication and enthusiasm of our participants. She decided to add color to the top of each pot of food, to help distinguish the rice from the vegetables, and the chicken from the pork. Her husband, Paul, has made all his shadow puppets and has a very clear idea of the order of presentation as well as the sound effects needed to enhance his story.  Once all rehearsals were complete, students had the opportunity to finish the final touches to their puppets or make the ones that were missing and ne...

  SELFHELP LATIMER GARDENS OLDER ADULT CENTER SHADOW PUPPET STORYTELLING WORKSHOP Friday May 26, 2023 It was a pleasure to meet our other class members, Susana, Chun Qin, and Jia Ling, who were traveling last week. They quickly and enthusiastically began working on their shadow puppet storytelling, taking up where they left off.  Chun Qin and Jia Ling played with ideas for their title card, American Dream . They are telling the story of how they came to New York to give their daughter the opportunity to study ballet here when she was in her early teens. Jia Ling cut out an amazing representation of the New York skyline. All participants made the frame for their shadow theater adding decorative strips of paper to cover the cardboard frame on the front, white paper carefully taped on the back for the light to shine through and black strips of paper to complete the frame on the back. Spica had cut out small “feet”, which were slotted into place to hold the frame. Everyone enjoyed...

  QUEENS PUBLIC LIBRARY "Creative Aging: Virtual Family Album Pop-Up Bookmaking" Tuesday May 23, 2023 Our class today focused on making the portrait page, which signifies the author of the pop-up book., or to whom the book is dedicated. In Beth’s case she is making a pop-up book for her grandson, so she brought in a school photo of him. We warmed up by thinking of a word that described us and presenting a facial and body gesture which suggested this word. Sonia’s word was “shy”, depicted by fiddling with her hands and looking down from the camera, Beth used large hand gestures to show her creativity while a new class member, Marilyn, smiled broadly depicting her happy disposition.    Spica and I shared our portrait pop-up pages and explained our choices of background shapes and colors to symbolize our chosen personality word. I also demonstrated the pocket and how the word is placed in it and can be pulled out to help describe the page when sharing your book.   ...

  SELFHELP LATIMER GARDENS OAC SHADOW PUPPET STORYTELLING WORKSHOP Friday May 19, 2023 It is a privilege to work with Spica again delivering The Memory Project, Storytelling through shadow puppetry workshop at Selfhelp Latimer Gardens Older Adult Center in Flushing. Our two students who attended today’s class are self motivated and very creative. It was a great pleasure to work with Chuan Kui (CK) again after she attended one of our last classes before COVID. As always, she loves the engineering aspect of creating and is always curious and inventive.    CK finished her Chinese lantern and experimented with adding color, which upon investigation she realized would not look so good. She added Chinese writing into the center of the lantern. Her dragon came alive when she added a control to the center. She also finished the puppet of two brothers carrying a basket by adding 2 controls and practicing behind the shadow screen.    Qiu Ping Guo intricately cut spokes in...

  NEWTOWN (ITALIAN) SENIOR CENTER SHADOW PUPPET STORYTELLING WORKSHOP Friday May 19, 2023 It was wonderful to be working with Spica again, in person, at a center for older adults. The Newtown Senior Center, in Elmhurst, is buzzing with activity and our class immediately follows a very popular zumba class. Each week Spica greets new participants, and this week was no exception with 2 new students, Beatriz, and Carolina.    All the students made title cards using black cardstock and acetate. Fabiola’s title is Fabiola’s History , Rona’s is First Communion , Nidia posed a question, Why am I in USA? , and Paul’s long title clearly expressed his story, 911 Tai Chi Health. Chui Fong created a title card in the shape of a bitter melon, Growing Vegetables, Hilda beautifully decorated her heart shaped title card with floral designs, Memories in both English and Chinese, and Rita’s title card in Chinese encapsulates her story about the charity of the craftsman of the lumber yard...

  QUEENS PUBLIC LIBRARY "Creative Aging: Virtual Family Album Pop-Up Bookmaking" Tuesday May 16, 2023 Inspiring our participants to create their own work is our mission. Having learnt some of the basic techniques of pop-up book making, Beth wants to make a book for her grandson, and we were excited to hear her ideas. She’s thinking about how she can bring a paint box to life. As well, Beth shared her completed pop-up bedroom page, featuring “mirrored” closet doors made from shiny reflective paper and a colorful rug and matching bedspread. Her love of art was reflected in the Van Gogh painting she added to the wall behind her bed, downloaded and printed from the internet as well as a Van Gogh chair and vase.   Building on the skills learnt in the last two weeks of class, we made a series of different sized parallelograms, which became stairs. Warm up exercises included lifting our legs as though walking up and down stairs and stretching our arms, hands, and fingers to increase...

  QUEENS PUBLIC LIBRARY "Creative Aging: Virtual Family Album Pop-Up Bookmaking" Tuesday May 9, 2023 Madlyn is on a well-earned vacation, so we were ably hosted by Ricola and Willie. Thanks to both for all their help. It was great to be in the same time zone as everyone, having arrived back in New York the night before. Sonia came onto Webex early and shared the terrific pop-up pages her older adult students are making. As a visual teaching artist, Sonia has been inspired by our classes to try some simple pop-ups with her classes and the cards they have made are colorful and inventive. She also told us her granddaughter loves making pop-up art, which she takes to school for show and tell.    Today’s lesson features how to make a pop-up bedroom, so my warmup was a word association game using “bedroom”. We went around the class with students offering the first word they thought of when they heard “bedroom”, with some surprising results including lambs, art, music and romanc...

  QUEENS PUBLIC LIBRARY "Creative Aging: Virtual Family Album Pop-Up Bookmaking" Tuesday May 2, 2023 Building on what we learned last week, our participants were eager to use their known skills and try their hand at something new. We began with a transformation theater game as we are transforming the simple page into a magical and surprising pop-up. Take an everyday object, look at it and without thinking too much transform it into something else. I led the game with a mug which I used as a telescope, spying our host Madlyn, “Ahoy there Madlyn!”. Next the humble wooden spoon became a ukulele as I serenaded the class with “On the Good Ship Lollipop”, and finally I took a book I was reading and made it fly, not across the room, but used the pages as the wings of a bird, a cheeky seagull swooping down to devour a tasty morsel.    Our word for today’s class was “parallelogram”. I shared screen shots of these shapes in everyday objects such as a tissue box, a door and window, ...

  QUEENS PUBLIC LIBRARY "Creative Aging: Virtual Family Album Pop-Up Bookmaking" Tuesday April 18, 2023   We had another good roll of students this morning, some new faces and quite a few returning participants.  Sonia was so inspired by last week’s class that she researched more methods of making pop-ups and even bought a book on the subject!. She shared over 8 examples of different pop-up pages she made.    As our class is about how to make a “flap”, which opens to show what is underneath, our warm up was centered on “the reveal”. We placed our hands over our face then moved them apart horizontally, vertically, and diagonally each time revealing a different facial expression. Next, we gave ourselves a hug, closing our body, then opened our arms, stretching them in different directions. Finally, we opened our hands from closed fists into hand gestures.   I screen-shared our word of the day, FLAP and an example of a “turn-up” book popularized by medical stu...

                                                                   QUEENS PUBLIC LIBRARY "Creative Aging: Virtual Family Album Pop-Up Bookmaking" Tuesday April 25, 2023 This was our 3rd class, and it was great to see a lot of familiar faces. Sonia continues to inspire us with the pages she made during the week. She shared her pop-up home page which featured her apartment building and church. In the front she added footsteps to mark her path to and from her home.    The warmup asked participants to close their eyes and imagine what they might see outside their window. Upon opening their eyes, they showed an expression on their face and in their body, which demonstrated to others what they saw, such as fear, disgust, surprise, happiness and welcoming.   I shared my pop-up windo...