All
I Ever Really Needed to Know
I Learned in Kindergarten
(The reduced musical version)
conceived and adapted by Ernest Zulia
Directed By
Drew Thomas
Featuring
Jim Crow, Cecilia Anderson, Joshua Cliffe,
Steve Cosgrove,
Kirsten Didier, Karen Guler, Clara
Krumrei, David Mortenson,
Caleb Slaga-Schwarz, Stephanie Whitmire and Tamara Woodrow
SYNOPSIS
All I Really Need To Know I Learned in Kindergarten is a book of short essays by Robert Fulghum, first published in 1986.
The title of the book is taken from the first essay in the volume, in which Fulghum lists lessons normally learned in American kindergarten classrooms and explains how the world would be improved if adults adhered to the same basic rules as children.
Based on Fulghum’s best selling books, The adaptation of All I Really Need To Know I Learned in Kindergarten takes a funny, insightful, heartwarming look at what is profound in everyday life. This tightly woven adaptation has earned standing ovations from Singapore to Prague – from L.A. to D.C. The Players are producing the reduced musical version full of monologues, dialogues and multiple voice narrations. The delightful stories feature colorful characters such as: a shy little boy who insists on playing the “pig” in his class production of Cinderella and steals the show; a man whose dream of flying carries him high over Los Angeles…in a lawn chair buoyed by surplus weather balloons; a “mother of the bride” who’s staged a perfect wedding – until the bowling ball of fate rolls down the aisle; and a modern-day Greek philosopher who finds the meaning of life in a piece of broken mirror from World War II. These stories celebrate our very existence, from the whimsy of childhood to the wisdom of old age.
A brief summary of Fulghum’s priceless advice from
All
I Ever Really Needed to Know
I
Learned in Kindergarten
Wisdom was not at the top of the graduate school mountain, but here in the sandbox at nursery school. These are the things I learned: Share everything. Play fair. Don’t hit people. Put things back where you found them. Clean up your own mess. Don’t take things that aren’t yours. Say you’re sorry when you hurt somebody. Live a balanced life. Learn and think, draw and paint, sing and dance, play and work a little everyday.
Most
of what I really need to know about how to live, and what to do, and how to be,
I learned in Kindergarten. Wisdom
was not at the top of the graduate school mountain, but there in the sandbox at
nursery school.
These
are the things I learned: Share
everything. Play fair.
Don’t hit people. Put things back where you found them. Clean up your own mess.
Don’t take things that aren’t yours.
Say you’re sorry when you hurt somebody. Wash your hands before you eat.
Flush. Warm cookies and cold
milk are good for you. Live a
balanced life. Learn some and think
some and draw and paint and sing and dance and play and work some every day.
Take
a nap every afternoon. When you go
out into the world, watch for traffic, hold hands, and stick together.
Be aware of wonder. Remember
the little seed in the plastic cup. The
roots go down and the plant goes up and nobody really knows how or why, but we
are all like that.
Goldfish
and hamsters and white mice and even the little seed in the plastic cup – they
all die and so do we.
And
then remember the book about Dick and Jane and the first word you learned, the
biggest word of all: LOOK.
Everything you need to know is in there somewhere, The Golden Rule and
love and basic sanitation, ecology and politics and sane living.
Think
of what a better world it would be if we all – the whole world – had cookies
and milk about 3 o’clock every afternoon and then lay down with our blankets
for a nap. Or if we had a basic
policy in our nation and other nations to always put things back where we found
them and clean up our own messes. And
it is still true no matter how old you are, when you go out into the world, it
is best to hold hands and stick together.
May 11, 12, 18 & 19 at 8pm
May 13 & 20 at 2pm
Performances
At The
Community Building Complex of Boone
County
111 West First St. – Belvidere,
Illinois
Ticket
Information
(Tickets will be available at the door)
$12.00 Adults - $10.00 Senior/Students