Theater Education for Disadvantaged Students

Thank you for your generous support of Oregon Children’s Theatre!

OCT’s 2011-2012 season has begun with the smash hit Pinkalicious! We’ve been getting great feedback from our audiences and we’re selling out most performances!

Pinkalicious: The Musical is based on the popular picture book by Elizabeth Kann. When the title character eats one too many cupcakes, she turns pink. So pink that even a bath won’t wash away the color—which isn’t so bad as far as she is concerned. The remedy is a strict diet of green foods, but Pinkalicious can’t stop thinking about those cupcakes!

4,883 students from 75 schools in Oregon and Southwest Washington have attended or will attend a school performance of Pinkalicious. OCT provided full scholarships to 754 students and partial scholarships to 1,338 students. We invited the teachers to attend a complimentary performance to preview the play before bringing their classes, and we hosted a free professional development workshop for teachers with OCT’s Technical Director.

OCT’s provides free, in-depth resource guides for teachers who attend field trip performances, and Pinkalicious was no exception! Our resource guides provide activities that directly connect our plays to required curriculum across an array of subjects and grade levels. The Pinkalicious resource guide focused on activities for Pre-Kindergarten through Second-Grade students, including:

• Tickled Pink: Teachers merge a discussion about crafting characters on stage with language arts concepts, including character development and plot. Students create emotional ‘portraits’ of Pinkalicious’ miraculous transformation, and contrast this moment with other points in the plot.

• Prescription Pad: Students become doctors for a day, as they create a prescription for pinkatitis showcasing their favorite fruit or vegetable and celebrating its nutritional benefits and great taste.

• Pollinators in Play: Students find out why honey bees chase Pinkalicious at the park. This variation on the game of tag introduces the concept of pollination and ways in which living things depend on one another.

• Shades of Poetry: Students use Pinkalicious’ all-consuming love of the color pink as a jumping-off point for writing poetry about favorite colors, introducing students to the list poem format, and using figurative language in their writing.

Please feel free to contact us if we can provide any additional information about Pinkalicious or Oregon Children's Theatre’s educational services for disadvantaged schools. Thank you again for your support!

Links:

• Watch audience members give feedback on Pinkalicious
• Read the Pinkalicious teacher resource guide