Joyce for Kids?!

James Joyce for fourth graders? yes I said yes I will Yes. More than 120 eager fourth graders from the School District of Philadelphia visited the Rosenbach in October for the first in a series of storytelling projects that the education department is developing. Our premier production, The Potable Joyce: A Watered Down Version of Ulysses, was an experimental program—designed to test the possibilty of introducing Joyce to children. The result was an unqualified success, engaging children, teachers, and parents in a rousing performance about Joyce's creativity and invention.

Using music, shadow puppets, and a collection of unusual props, a performance troupe led by actor and writer Sebastienne Mundheim told the story of The Odyssey, the first Ulysses, and the processes by which Joyce used the tale as the basis for writing his modern manuscript. James Joyce is the absolute hero of this play, having been true to his art and his vision. Students then climbed their way to the Rosenbach's library to view the original manuscript of Joyce's Ulysses, where librarian Elizabeth E. Fuller read some of the novel's passages aloud.

"Introducing kids to the abstract and creative use of language in Ulysses is a way of encouraging an appreciation of the book before adult prejudices have formed," says director of education Bill Adair. "We're trying to create a new generation of readers and writers much more open to the gifts of Joyce and other modern authors."

The next step for the Rosenbach's fourth grade visitors is a bookmaking project, produced in collaboration with the Samuel S. Fleisher Art Memorial. With Sebastienne Mundheim, students will be writing and binding their own manuscripts—based on the Joyce story that they heard and saw at the museum.

 

The Rosenbach's school partner programs are generously supported by The Hirsig Family Fund of the Philadelphia Foundation.