WELLFLEET — Music is in the air at Wellfleet Elementary School. On the heels of their annual spring concert, performed earlier this month, students have been preparing to perform The Jungle Book.
The musical is a collaborative effort, with Tammy Harper directing. Wellfleet Preservation Hall’s new programming director, Harper was at Harwich Junior Theatre for over 20 years, where she led its educational efforts. Wellfleet Harbor Actors Theatre offered its stage for the occasion — “an incredible opportunity,” Harper says.
The school’s version of The Jungle Book brings together 24 students in grades 3 through 5 to tell the story of Mowgli, a boy raised by wolves in the Indian jungle and protected by his animal friends from a tiger, Shere Khan, the play’s antagonist.
Originally a collection of stories by Rudyard Kipling, this classic narrative has gone through multiple adaptations, the best known of which is Disney’s 1967 movie musical, the inspiration for the Wellfleet performance.
Storytelling is a central concern for Harper, and that doesn’t just mean plot points. “The students are learning how to tell a story with their bodies and their voices,” she says. For many of the students in the production, this is their first experience of theater.
The rehearsals, which began three months ago, started out with interactive theater games. “When you have a new group who you want to invite into the world of theater, you need to make it exciting for them,” says Harper. “It can’t just be rehearsal all the time.”
The performance captures this sense of fun. The students are decked out in animal costumes with bold colors, fake fur, and patterns designed by Kate Clark, a special education teacher at Eastham Elementary School.
Aside from a few main characters, students take the stage in groups: monkeys, vultures, wolves, and a multi-coil snake. They narrate portions of the play, which follows Mowgli’s journey as an orphaned child torn between life in the animal world and a human village that beckons from beyond.
Julian Brencher as a spirited Mowgli commands the stage, supported by Spencer Correia as Baloo and Beckett Baum as Bagheera. Coral Dalby adeptly conjures the sinister and threatening energy of her character, Sher Kahn — an antidote to the otherwise cheerful atmosphere of the performance.
The stage comes alive during the musical numbers, with students singing and dancing. Harper pulled in her former Harwich colleagues Bob Wilder as musical director and Suzette Hutchinson as choreographer.
Harper was invited into the project at Wellfleet Elementary School by Adam O’Shea, the recently appointed principal. The two met working on collaborations between Harwich Junior Theatre and Monomoy Middle School, where O’Shea was previously the principal. “He insisted on a musical,” says Harper. She modified the original script for a group of first-time theater participants. In its current form, the play runs just under a half hour.
“We had support from the whole school,” says Harper. In addition to teachers and administrators pitching in with costumes and logistics, art teacher Sharon Hughes created props.
Harper imagines the experience at WHAT might be motivation for some of the students to continue performing, but she sees value in theater for everyone. The students putting on the show “are learning about collaboration, teamwork, how to present themselves with their body and voice,” says Harper. “Theater skills are really life skills.”
The students have worked hard and now, Harper says, “Hopefully they will feel rewarded when they hear the audience and get the accolades.”
The Jungle Book
The event: Performance by students from Wellfleet Elementary School
The time: Thursday, April 25, 6 p.m.
The place: Wellfleet Harbor Actors Theater, 2357 Route 6
The cost: Donations accepted, proceeds to WES PTO
