Performance artists

Arts & Activities, Dec, 2004 by George Szekely

My daughter Ana opens the refrigerator to find a theater of stars. She animates a milk jug by grabbing its handle and dancing it to the table. Children are Geppettos, lending lively moves and gestures to most any object.

We adults may open a drawer to take out a pair of socks. Kids open the same drawer and see colorful performers ready to be auditioned. The greatest off-Broadway show I have seen took place in a school cafeteria on the stage of an open lunch box. After lunch, remains took the stage, including a talented apple core dressed in shimmering foil. It performed a show with a banana-peel partner that was moved with a plastic fork.

It is natural for children to find hidden talents with any object in their hands, pockets or lunch boxes--including their vast stable of ready-made, small plastic figures. The Cecil B. DeMilles of the art world often direct vast scenes with dolls and stuffed animals.

In the art class, we recognize the importance of children's performance talents and encourage their special relationship with objects as a legitimate art form. We provide mirrors, video cameras and audiences with which to rehearse and preserve this art. More than a dozen different lunch boxes generally line the art-room counter, each with its own cast of found objects or fast-food-figure performers. our latest is a bus-shaped lunch box, the official touring vehicle for the entire "Raisin Figures Band." We have an art-class sock drawer of wildly outrageous socks that yearn to be in show business.

SCOUTING TALENT Can you ask a mop to dance? In a child's hand, a broom, a mop, or a gardening glove becomes a special object when animated by energetic movers. Young artists recognize talent in the most unlikely performers, and by using performance, children learn to explore the object world first-hand.

Children are expert performers with all kinds of objects with handles. In the middle of our badminton game, there is a pause while my young opponent gives an impromptu performance with her racquet held just above the net. Residents of the hall closet--feather dusters, flyswatters and dustpans--all wait their turn to perform. Most items in a toolbox have been creatively handled by master performance artists. During "Pencil Fest," our art room becomes the gathering place for the best-dressed pencils, introduced by a master of ceremonies who announces each pencil's stage name.

Kids often use objects found in nature with which to perform. once, when I was carrying my daughter's coat, I noticed it was heavier on one side. In one of the pockets was a collection of rocks, carefully wrapped, which she had found behind the school. Children's outdoor cast of characters often includes pinecones, sticks, acorns and flowers, outdoor art is not necessarily landscape painting on an easel. Children peruse the ground to find a lost flower petal, save a butterfly wing, pocket an unusual berry or bring a rock to life.

Lesser-known performers such as popcorn heads, raisins and button people have had an illustrious show-biz history. Raisins have performed on the rim of children's cereal bowls way before they reached stardom singing for television commercials. And some of the most expressive faces in sculpture have been inscribed on popcorn.

Children also use giant forms such as inflatable beach toys in exciting pool performances. One of the finest shows I've seen involved large beach balls worn as heads on top of heads, and animated through beach towels. A lawn bag stuffed with leaves can become a ventriloquist's dummy and received humorous animation from a child. Children enjoy big animation challenges such as bringing a block-long dragon to life, made from giant hoops and blankets wrapped around corrugated drainpipes.

Moving parts provide a special inspiration for young players. If scary shadows roam your child's wall, don't worry, they are only shadows from a folding yardstick, unfurled into great changeable action figures by the animator. Clothespin acrobats rehearse dangerous acts on backyard laundry lines. Hand mixers swirl in space like futuristic vehicles from a science-fiction film.