Children's tour comes to campus
"Yer's Pa Ndau, a Hmong Tale" has been traveling to elementary schools in the Valley and will be on campus to April 22
Andrew Riggs / The Collegian
Bethany Rader and Cindy Thao perform in “Yer’s Pa Ndau” in the Arena Theatre, Wednesday. The play was written by Fresno State students and is touring in the Central Valley. Theatre for Young Audiences has been around for nearly 40 years and typically reaches more than 16,000 elementary students in a single season. |
By Katie Hicks
The Collegian
Children in the audience giggle and gasp as a tiger pretending to be a man knocks at the home of the young Hmong girl in “Yer’s Pa Ndau,” the latest traveling play put on by the University Theatre for Young Audiences at Fresno State.
The group of student actors performed for elementary aged students and Fresno State faculty Thursday morning in the Arena Theatre at Fresno State. But for the past two months the group has traveled to nearly 30 elementary schools around the Valley sharing their original adaptation of a Hmong folktale, which performers described as a Hmong version of Little Red Riding Hood.
“Yer’s Pa Ndau,” which translates to “Yer’s Story Quilt,” is told by Yer herself as a grown woman. She narrates the story from her youth of an evil tiger dressed as a man that comes to the door of her home and only she can foresee the danger. The courageous young girl is forced to stop the tiger and save the village before everyone is eaten.
“We had such a difficult time deciding what was okay to show the kids,” said actor Samuel Frank, who played both the tiger and Yer’s brother, Tong. “In the original story there was a lot more blood and the crushing of bones.”
Throughout the performance, the cast of nine actors goes through several costume changes including several puppet costumes they use to interact with the young audiences.
“To me this is one of our most important audiences,” said Director Kim Morin. “This is what builds our audience for the future and for many members of our audience it’s the only play they see.”
Morin said when the play concludes in May her group will have performed for more than 16,000 young people.
“When we started looking for plays last year we found that there were no children’s plays written about the Hmong culture,” Morin said. “These people have such a rich cultural background and many of the children we are performing for are Hmong.”
Frank said performing for children was one of the best parts of the play because young children have such raw emotional responses to his ferocious roars.
“Sometimes they make noise and it’s a good thing, but sometimes they’re totally silent and you don’t know what they are thinking,” Frank said. “But afterward we usually do a meet and greet and I have girls who are too afraid to come up to me.”
The University Theatre for Young Audiences group will perform twice during Vintage Days at 10 a.m. and 2 p.m. Saturday in the Arena Theatre in the Speech Arts Building.
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