Malaysian Folktales for Children's Theatre
Featuring many familiar Malaysian folk characters, both human and animal, this collection of tales provides an entertaining window into Malaysian cultural values and ideals.
Both product and process are included. Most of the stories are presented as first collected in Malay, then translated into English and augmented through research and discussion. The finished tales often provide a fusion of differing versions. Sometimes a character barely mentioned in one version of a tale turns out to have a more significant role in another version. And sometimes separate versions of a tale include different adventures of the same central character. Many of these alternatives are incorporated to enrich the finished stories for dramatization and help provide gentle moral lessons--as well as entertainment for children of all ages.
The finished play scripts for presentation by actors for Children's Theatre--or for presentation by the children themselves--are developed for presentation in a classroom as well as on a stage, with no sets, costumes, or props required. The actors (in neutral clothing) become the set pieces as well as characters and narrators in the tales, and they mime the props. Producers of the plays, of course, can add sets, costumes and props to enhance performances.
In addition, there are story narratives ready for teachers of language or theatre arts to development as classroom exercises with their students. Likewise the Readers Theatre selections illustrate a range of staging methods, from reading in place to full enactment of scripts--again, with costumes, props, and scenery optional.
The original impetus for the book was the interest of teachers of English in the primary schools near the University of Malaysia in Kuala Lumpur when these plays were presented for their students. Their sense of the educational as well as the entertainment value of the play presentations prompted this documentation of the process, from story collection through finished dramatizations.
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