From Pema: In Fourth Grade we are putting on a play. We have to practice our play a lot. At first we had four groups that met separately. The groups were, Ellis Island, tenement life, street scene, and modern immigration. Each fourth grade teacher led each scene. All the fourth graders were put into each group.
When we started to write the scripts we would rehearse all the lines that we had so far. We did a little bit of improv in the beginning. After a week or two some groups started assigning the parts.
Once each group was done writing their scripts we all went into the auditorium and practiced the whole play. Everyone started adding music to the scripts and we started putting together where everyone was going to be. We practiced altogether three times. The second time we did we went to Houston and the third time we did it in the music room. On the third time we added the Give Me Your Tired, Your Poor Raps made by fourth graders. It was really fun to add the raps to the play.
We just went to the high school P.A.C which is where all the plays happen. We are going to put on our play in the high school. We got to see the backstage it was an amazing experience. It took us a little bit over an hour to finish the rehearsal. And we still hadn’t rehearsed the whole play. It got a little boring backstage since we had to be really quiet.
The hardest part of practicing the play is remembering everything. We can’t wait to perform the play.
From Thomas: The script was not easy to write. This is because we had to cut and add pieces. We also had to practice for homework and in class. We cut pieces because we didn’t have enough time to perform them. We also had a lot of actions in the script because it would not be a play without actions. It’s a musical so we a lot of songs in the play. We have 4 scenes that are 10 minutes plus a beginning and end scene that are each 10 minutes so 10X6=60 so the play is an hour long.
From Max: We made our own costumes out of materials from our house. Different people have different costumes. I am an inspector, other people are immigrants and modern day immigrants. Some people need props. I need a buttonhook and a podium. The immigrants have dirty costumes and the inspectors have hats and jackets. Modern day immigrants would dress in modern day clothes and the judge would wear a robe. Juno, the Statue of Liberty, would wear a green dress.
From Andrei: To make a musical, you need music and song. We sang a lot of songs like “Give Me Your Tired Your Poor” and “Far From My Homeland.” “Give Me Your Tired Your Poor” came from the poem “The New Colossus,” a poem written by Emma Lazarus about the Statue of Liberty. For “Far From My Homeland” we edited the words a little for each scene so it was connected to that scene. For street scenes, they edited the words so it was about peddlers and boys and girls playing on the streets. For the Ellis Island scene they made the words about inspection. In music, we made raps for “Far From My Homeland” and that is where the raps in the end came from. My scene is Modern Immigration, my favorite line from our song is, “I miss my culture but I can make a better life.”
