Owa tachikana yam.
Oh, what a chicken I am.
Old Mother Hubbard went
to the cupboard 
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TEACHERS' GUIDE:
Language Through The Looking Glass
A Romp Through the Mysteries of the Language
Arts
or
(Grades 3-12)
What is language? What are words and how do they mean things? With simple colorful props and his own amazingly mutable body, mime, actor, and science fiction author Eliot Fintushel shares and embodies the verse of Lewis Carroll, both narrative and nonsense. "Jabberwocky" and "The Walrus and the Carpenter," come to life, as an umbrella becomes the sun, a sword, or a dragon's jaws, and a hand becomes, well--everything. Other nonsense songs and verse are explored as well. Here is a visual celebration of some of the mysteries of literature and of language.
Eliot Fintushel, a two-time winner of the National Endowment for the Art's Solo Performer Award, is also author of dozens of short stories in such publications as AMAZING STORIES, ASIMOV'S, THE WHOLE EARTH REVIEW, and THE YEAR'S BEST SCIENCE FICTION.
Here's the
line-up of stage events:
1) MASK: How a simple face mask can convey an astonishing variety of feelings, its "meaning" changing with the posture of the wearer--just as words change meaning according to intonation.
2) PROP: How a simple object can be seen as an astonishing variety of things, depending how it is used--just as words change meaning according to context.
3) Statement Of Theme:
HOW CAN A NOISE BECOME A WORD?
HOW CAN A WORD BECOME A NOISE?
4) GIBBERISH, Depending on the speed and quality of voice with which they are pronounced, these syllables become either sense or nonsense:
Owa tachikana yam.
Oh, what a chicken I am.
Old Mother Hubbard went
to the cupboard
4) THE MODEL OF A MODERN MAJOR GENERAL: Gilbert & Sullivan's song (from about a hundred years ago), plays with words as sound, speed and texture. We sing a breakneck, beat-the-clock rendition--but narrowly fail.
(To visit the University of Toronto's Archive on the poems of Lewis Carroll, please click here.)
We are then executed by means of a plunger-activated exploding umbrella . . . .:
( . . . Was that a WORD or a NOISE?)
(To visit the Gilbert and Sullivan Online Archive, please click here.)
5) JABBERWOCKY by Lewis Carroll--performed with only an umbrella as absolutely everything. THUS--how a word, beginning as mere sound ("brillig, mimsy, borogove"), like a prop (the umbrella) actually can come to mean something.
6) RUSSIAN AND TURK: In this anonymous old verse, the transformation of words to noises to words is accomplished because because the words are names, and foreign ones at that (to us, that is). We begin with an observation on the etymology of the name "Fintushel!" which is now merely a sound, but which probably originated from the Yiddish (i.e., High Medieval German) words for "good" and "buttocks."
7) FATHER WILLIAM: With this Lewis Carroll verse, supposedly a didactic dialogue between father and child, we move on to the use of words as not just meaningless sounds but as SILLINESS, absurdity, nonsense. The meanings are there, all right, but they are just plum crazy.
8) THE WALRUS AND THE CARPENTER: Another narrative verse by Lewis Carroll, this is famous for its near-mathematical use of words to refer to impossibilities (a winged pig, the sun out at night) and TAUTOLOGIES (wet sea, dry sand, clouds in a cloudless sky).
9) WHAT'S NEXT?! (Finale): The audience creates a story out of nothing, and Eliot performs it. (AUDIENCE PARTICIPATION)
Throughout the show, we use things and words in the same ways: in "found object puppetry," things take on new meanings‑-just as noises do when they are coined as words. WALRUS's flying pig, for example, is made of a clorox bottle and two flyswatters. The eldest oyster is a made of a toilet seat. FATHER WILLIAM's wife is really a hot water bottle and two soda caps
PRE-SHOW ASSIGNMENT: Students might be asked to see if they can find some of these objects in the show and what they represent: a hot water bottle, a candle, a broom, a waste basket, a mop head, a sock, a turkey baster, a tuxedo jacket, a vegetable steamer, a football, a dust mop, a feather duster . . .
The following can be used both as . . . . . .
PREPARATORY & FOLLOW-UP EXERCISES:
Make a puppet of an object found in the kitchen.
Find out the origin of their first and last names--or to make one up!
Compose a poem of mostly made-up words. Then translate it into real English!
A Contest: How fast you can recite a verse of Major General? Acting students often do this as an exercise in elocution. Make every syllable as distinct as you can. (Click here for the text.)
Gibberish Games: Imagine what it would be like to watch a TV commercial in an unknown language. Sell something to the class as a whole, as in a TV commercial, but using only Gibberish (words--just sounds, really--made up on the spot). This can also be done by the whole class in couples, one buying and one selling--then switch.
Circle Story: Sitting in a circle, each person in turn adds one new sentence to an evolving story. A variation (This is more difficult!): Each person may add only one word.
Prop Rounds: Present to the class any common object--e.g., a broom, a waste basket, a hat--and ask for volunteers to demonstrate what else these things might be! (E.g., is the broom a telescope, a bugle, a nose? Is the waste basket a boat, butter churn, a TV set . . . ?)
THE WALRUS AND THE CARPENTER
Dramatis Personae (In Order Of
Appearance)
The
Sun...............................
a
vegetable steamer tray
The
Moon............................
a
football
The
Sea................................
one
tablespoon of tap water
The
Sand.............................
a dust
mop head
A
Cloud...............................
the same
dust mop head
No
Birds..............................
section
of expandable playpen with attached feather duster and bicycle horn
The
Walrus..........................
a kitchen
trash can, two turkey basters with bulbs removed, a bit of a mop
head, two
32 oz. yoghurt tubs, a mixing bowl covered with flat black gaffer
tape, a
section of a plastic shoe rack, a tuxedo jacket split down the back, a
fragment
of a necktie and white shirt, two athletic‑type shoelaces, a
handkerchief, and a section of a wire clothes hanger
The
Carpenter......................
a small,
spring-loaded bathroom trash can, a decorative corn husk broom,
a bit of
the wire clothes hanger, eight inches of string elastic, a couple of
sorts of
string, and a nifty folding stool
A
Bitter Tear........................
party
streamers and another piece of that wire clothes hanger
Oysters..................................
sixteen
salad bowls with little thread‑and‑leather hinges, four celastic
molded
tongues, and eight tiny celastic molded pearl/eyeballs, all mounted
on sticks
with hot glue and velcro and strong thread, and another piece of
that
plastic shoe rack‑-also, the legs from four stuffed Minnie Mouse dolls
Eldest Oyster........................
a toilet
seat
Winged Pig.........................
a Clorox
bottle with two fly swatters, three melted twisted plastic spoons,
and a
bit of string
The performer gratefully will accept any
suggestions as to how to store his remaining clothes
now that his shoe rack and clothes
hangers have all been sacrificed to Art.
Here are the materials used in FATHER WILLIAM:
Young Man................. the audience
Father William........... a small whisk broom, two votive candles, still more pieces of wire coat hanger, yet another section of the plastic shoe rack, a piece of threaded plastic pipe from an old vacuum cleaner or something, some velcro, another one of those little thread‑and‑leather hinges I've become so fond of making, and lots of hot glue‑-also a sweeper thingie
Ointment Box............. nested colored plastic boxes connected by heavy thread through holes in the middles of their bottoms
Ma William................ hot water bottle+2 soda caps
An Eel......................... rubber snake, tongue cut off
(Rubber snake tongue available to interested parties at Extremely Reasonable Cost.)
Many and deep thanks to Ari Siletz and the mad scientists at SOLA for fabricating the timer used in MAJOR GENERAL.
This device employs an actual photo-electric cell triggered by a scrap of cellophane tape on the second hand in order to make the doorbell ring at one minute exactly.