If You Really Love Polar Bears Tour Wrap-Up (12/22/11)

Roly Poly Bear and the Polar Bears’ biggest fan, Patchy Blair, finished up their five borough tour of If You Really Loved Polar Bears... this Sunday with a small, yet attentive audience at The American Museum of Natural History.

As the kids in the audience (and their parents too!) demonstrated how Polar Bears swim with webbed paws and helped teach Patchy a lesson by becoming melting icebergs, I was filled with pride at what we had accomplished: over a short span of three weekends we had entertained over 1,000 children and their families across the city--and taught them something important too, but not just about the environment.

In my mind, theatre for young audiences, or TYA, has two important functions: first, it has been proven to be effective as an educational tool, especially for children; second, it exposes the next generations to theatre. Hopefully when they’re older (say, at the age of ticket-buying adults) they’ll remember all that wonderful theatre they saw as children, and continue supporting it.

So, If You Really Loved Polar Bears... doesn’t just teach kids about Polar Bears and the environment, it teaches them about theatre too. While some of the children mentioned above might be future artists, they will hopefully all be future supporters of artists. With the holiday season upon us, I cannot think of a better gift we at Making Books Sing can give, or receive.

If You Really Love Polar Bears performers Patchy (the puppet), Melissa Gordon and Flor Bromley with two fans of the show at New York Hall of Science.

Josh Penzell's blog Dec 22, 2011 6:31pm Add new comment