The Pushcart Players Push Their Cart Into Middle Gate!

By Benjamin Greenfield, Bethany Murphy,

 Samantha Pribesh

On January 28, the Pushcart Players visited us at Middle Gate to perform the play Peter and the Wolf.

This story is about a boy named Peter who lives in the city with his mother and father. In the summer Peter goes to visit his grandfather who lives in a small house surrounded by a garden. There is also a meadow and pond nearby. Beyond the meadow is a dangerous forest, where wolves roam. Peter is forbidden to go past the garden’s gate. Peter disobeys and goes past the garden gate to meet his animal friends, Sasha, the bird, a cat called Yophia, and Clara the duck. Peter tries to get past the gate again many times but is caught by his grandfather.

Until one day he manages to sneak out when his grandfather is still sleeping when a wolf approaches him! Without being seen by the wolf, Peter silently fetches a rope from inside his grandfather’s house and lassos the mean wolf holding him back, when suddenly hunters appear. Peter tells the hunters not to shoot the wolf and then at that moment the grandpa comes out of the house yawning. The wolf, Peter, grandfather and the three hunters all become friends and the wolf decides to go to the zoo to have a good life and be taken care of by the people at the zoo.

“Hilarious!” says Ben Greenfield.

“Humorous,” Emily Fiory says.

“Authentic scenery,” Meridith Palo states.

Elaine Bomly says, “I liked the costumes because they looked original.”

“I thought it was funny, and it looked as though the words of the play came natural to the actors,” David DeLaVega quotes.

“I liked the cat hand puppet because it looks and acts like a real animal,” says Tanya Rotella.

As you can see, this play was greatly enjoyed by many children here at Middle Gate.

The Pushcart Players’ scenery was attractive and brightly colored so that it would catch your attention, and you would be curious to see what will happen next. The Pushcart Players perform more than one play. They also do The Very Last Butterfly, Wow, What a Century, and Peter and the Wolf.

The Pushcart Players performance is greatly enhanced with many varieties of music. Such as, when there were hunters, the music director (Sandi Zimmermann) would put on low music, or when Peter was running in the meadow there would be high pitch bouncy kind of music. I feel that the music expresses the characters’ feelings at the time it is being played.

Visit the Pushcart Players Web site at http://www.pushcartplayers.org, or for further questions, mail them at 197 Bloomfield Ave, Verona, NJ 07744. Or call them at 973/875-1115. The Pushcart Players provide many schools with a lot of educational fun!