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 Still Life with Iris 
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Last week I attended the play Still Life with Iris. It took place in a fantasy world where every night a group of people stayed up in order to create the wind, rain, polka dots on lady bugs etc. Here everyone was always happy and wore a coat which contained all of their memories. If there was a painful memory all you had to do was remove the button which contained that memory and you would no longer feel any pain. As the play continues a little girl is chosen to go live on an island and be the adopted daughter of a couple who live in a utopian society. Here everything is perfect and there is nothing that will ever go wrong. It only has one of everything as they only accept the best. There is one glass of water, one shoes, one chair and so on. It is after Iris is here that she realizes that this is not the ideal life she wants. She wants to be around her friends and remember the past and how she once was. She wants to have more than what is offered her in this perfect society as she is not satisfied by what she is given. She doesn't need everything to be perfect she just wants to remember and be able to return to her previous life. I could never imagine living in a society like this because it is your friends and the people around you who help you develop yourself as a person. We don't live in a perfect society and it is only from our mistakes that we grow as humans. It is the friends around us that keep us alive and teach us how to better ourselves. Overall, I thought it was a great play. I could tell that they had really taken the time to rehearse and the costumes and props were fantastic. I would highly recommend this play as it helped me realize how different life can be and why I should appreciate what I have.

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Elizabeth Laubach


Wed Nov 11, 2009 10:49 am
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I attended the play Still Life With Iris back in October. The opening scene was in the Land of Nocturno. In this land, the colors are very bright and it is a world of endless possibilities and imagination. In the world of Nocturno, all the things one sees by day are made by the people who live there at night while the rest of the world sleeps. Each of the inhabitants of Nocturno wears a beautiful coat that contains all their memories, a coat that is kept carefully mended by the local tailor, the Memory Mender.

In the beginning, there was a lot going on at one time. The thunder makers, Mister Otherguy and Mister Himtoo were making thunder by using bottles. The Bolt Bender, the Rain Maker, the Flower Painter, and the Leaf Monitor were all apart of this opening scene. They each were doing their own thing or mingling with others. The next scene involved Iris, Annabel Lee and Elmer Elmer and Annabel Lee are brother and sister and somehow they have lost the spots that go on the ladybugs. Since Iris is known for finding things, they ask Iris to help them. While Iris is looking for the spots, she meets a man who is dressed in all black. The man calls himself Matternot. He explains to Iris that she is perfect and he takes her back to the Great Goods to become their perfect daughter. In order to do this, he takes off her coat and she is left with no memory. The only thing she has is a button that fell off of her coat. She keeps this button with her the entire time and when she holds it, she sees the white table in her house but does not remember why she sees that. With the help of Elmer and Annabel Lee, they uncover the truth of her past.

I thoroughly enjoyed the performance. I loved the colors in the Land of Nocturno. All the costumes were bright and vibrant. Even their tones of voices were confident and positive. This play was very appropriate for children. It lets them use their imagination and create a world full of color and fun people. Iris plays a young girl and talks just like one. She plays this role extremely well. While I was at the play, there were two young boys who were very engaged during the whole play. They would laugh or make comments throughout the whole play because they really enjoyed it. The script definitely has a huge role. The story outline is basically finding who you truly are. Do not change for other people. This really relates to children because they need to acknowledge themselves and be proud of who they are. I think the children are most engaged when Iris and Elmer are searching for the truth and they enter the tunnel. At the end of this particular scene, many things are revealed and it creates the climax of the story. I was on my toes at this point of the play.

I would love to use this play to connect to my curriculum. This play has a lot to do with imagination so I could connect it to a unit about imagination and have my students create something that goes along with the play. I would love to follow up on the play and make my students write an alternate ending. It also talks about science and my students may have questions like where does rain come from. I could have them research this and make a presentation. These are just a few ideas.

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Thu Dec 10, 2009 10:13 am
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