MONT ALTO, Pa. – On April 13, Penn State Mont Alto theater students will perform a puppet show about recycling and a creative drama on sharing beginning at 3 p.m. at the Waynesboro YMCA located at 80 East Main Street in Waynesboro. About 60 children, ages 3 to 5 years old will attend the performance.
“The puppet show and skit are original and educational,” according to Penn State Mont Alto Assistant Professor of Integrative Arts Nancy Funk. “The students not only wrote the scripts, they also made the sock puppets and painted bed sheets as backdrops for the physical puppet theater.”
The show is part of Funk’s Process of Acting class and gives students the opportunity “to explore their physical, vocal, and emotional capabilities,” she said.
In the role of Farmer Bill, political science major and sophomore Logan Carter of West Friendship, Pennsylvania, will serve as host of the show and also lead the children in sensory awareness exercises in between the show and the skit.
“I will do some ad hoc exercises to get their blood flowing,” he said, “like telling them to be snowmen whose heads have fallen off.”
During the show, Farmer Bill asks Clucks the Chicken (freshman Abby Ebersole, nursing major of Waynesboro, Pennsylvania), Max the Dog (sophomore Glenn Canning, computer engineering major from Centre Hall, Pennsylvania), and Pinky the Pig (freshman Matthew Rhine, chemical engineering student from Shippensburg, Pennsylvania) to help pick up trash around the farm and put it in the right recycling bins.
“Our message to the children is to help clean up the planet,” said Ebersole. “Sustainability is part of the nursing major and it is healthy.”
As a political science major, Carter sees sustainability as a policy issue and wants to give the children an understanding about recycling and educate them about the environment, he said.
The show is sponsored by the Penn State Mont Alto Alumni Society. Starr Insurance of Chambersburg also provided activity books and crayons for the children.
“I appreciate that the YMCA has given my students the opportunity to present our community service project,” said Funk.