Teatro! Hispanic Plays for Young People »

ANGEL VIGIL is Chairman of the Fine and Performing Arts Department, Colorado Academy, Denver, Colorado, and an award-winning educator, author, and storyteller

Based on folktales, animal fables, holiday celebrations, and historical figures and events, these 14 scripts illuminate Hispanic cultural heritage and wisdom. Short and simple to produce.

VOYA

This book is useful for teachers and others working with youth from grades one through eight. It contains fourteen plays that reflect, explain, or celebrate the Hispanic culture as experienced in our country's Southwest. Vigil hopes the plays will help students and their educators experience la cultura hispana for themselves. These are simple plays with simple staging requirements that can be performed with unit sets right in the classroom or elsewhere. While some parts are clearly male or female characters, Vigil has deliberately created many parts that can be cast either way. Six plays are based on folktales, three are animal fables, four stem from a background of cultural holidays, and one is historical. Most of the plays have a narrative format. Each has an introduction, brief staging notes, a list of required props, a cast of characters list, and recommended costumes keyed to a series of drawings in the book that are simple but clear and effective. Recommended grade levels are included for all the plays. These small dramas are colorful and alive and often humorous. The dialogue is quick and flowing and the characterization wonderfully adept for such short pieces. Vigil has done a thorough job, producing a useful tool. Glossary. Illus. Charts. Biblio.