Charter school brings color to a dreary day

Despite the dreary, rainy weather, it was a bright and colorful Friday morning at Palmerton thanks to an illustrious performance of “The Day the Crayons Came Home.”

Students from the Lehigh Valley Charter High School for the Performing Arts came to Palmerton Area Library to put on the show, based on a book of the same name by Drew Daywalt, which is the sequel to the original tale, “The Day the Crayons Quit.”

In the story, a boy named Duncan — Daisy in the play — has lost his crayons throughout his home and around the world, and they communicate with him via postcards. For the stage adaptation, the Performing Arts crew had to make a few adjustments.

“The big thing about adapting this book specifically is that it works as a book of a bunch of letters,” playwright Tom Quackenbush said. “Directly translated, it would be a bunch of monologues. But, to make it more dynamic and group oriented, it was all about translating a lot of the letters in the book into scenes and dialogue, and figuring how we could fit all of these characters into one place.”

Along with some alterations to the storyline, the cast and crew had to figure out how to make their production work in a different location, which was especially challenging at the library.

“I think they did really well,” director Helaina Coggs said. “One thing that we try to work on, because we move to different locations, is that we have to adapt to different spaces. This is probably one of the smaller spaces we’ve worked in, but I think they adapted pretty well.”

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Kids in attendance, including a class from Watch Me Grow Daycare, were enthralled with the adventures of Daisy as she seeks out Pea Green, Glow-in-the-Dark, Yellow and Orange, Neon Red and all the other crayons.

Laughter filled the room as Zamarrie Pusey’s Neon Red told her stories about her misconstrued travels around the world, such as confusing Texas for England, promising Daisy that she would return soon.

The larger-than-life Pea Green, who changes his name to Esteban the Great, stole a number of scenes, with actor Marcel Williams playing up an amplified accent while he explains the woes of not being used that often.

Duo Yellow and Orange, who were melted together by the sun, played a dynamic part wrought with internal conflict. Charlotte Stark’s Yellow pleads with the rest of the group to give Daisy a second chance, with Venus Omega’s Orange remaining skeptical of their former owner.

Theater faculty member Ashley Weller said that the show strikes such a strong chord with the kids because it offers an exciting and engaging experience that can’t exactly be found anywhere else.

“They’re crayons, and sometimes the characters are over the top, and there’s a lot of animation going on, even though it’s live theater,” she said. “Therefore, the little ones pay attention. They want to know what happens to the crayons. They follow Daisy and help her with her story. There’s an element of what you can’t find on TV or in cartoons that we find on the stage that’s really special, that the little ones sometimes don’t get to see, so it’s a whole different realm for them.”

Throughout the show, the crayons pass on their own bits of knowledge, and what they’ve learned on their little adventures.

“It’s fun, I honestly enjoy it. There was one theme in the actual book, ‘take care of your belongings,’ but our playwright, he incorporated many other lessons, to love yourself, love others,” Katie Colacito, who played Daisy, said. “I’m telling the story, leading the kids through the story, and overall it was a really fun experience.”

Palmerton’s Kennedy Malsch, who played Glow in the Dark Crayon, was thrilled to be able to come back to her hometown and share the performance with a local audience.

“To be able to show my theater class what my hometown is like, and to show my hometown what my theater class is like, and what it has to offer, and what I have been working on personally, is very special,” she said. “Getting to integrate my two favorite places, my home and my theater class, bringing them together is really fun.”

While some may assume that a production for a kids’ show might be rather easy to execute, “The Day the Crayons Came Home” required plenty of work. Coggs said that the group began the play in September with casting and character development, and Quackenbush adapting the original story. For the actors, building their crayon’s personality presented a challenge of its own.

“It’s actually a lot more work than I was expecting, because you have to be really animated and big, but you have to add different layers to your character so the kids stay interested and engaged. You also at the same time have to be watching your articulation and projection,” Malsch said. “Keeping all these things in mind while developing this fun, spunky character was really fun and interesting, and also a little hard, too.”

At the end of the show, all of the crayons congregate in Daisy’s room to help her create an ecosystem picture for her class. She’s learned a lesson about caring for others, and appreciating your friends, all in an entertaining adventure that the whole crowd loved.

“I liked the guy who played the older crayon, and I liked when the green one thought he could fly and fell on the bag,” Bryce Nissen, 5, said. “And I learned to be nice to everyone.”