Katherine Lyons

“The Dragon Show; Share, Care, and Play Fair” promotes the social-emotional skills of empathy, respect, self-control, kindness, cooperation and problem solving through the interactive story/drama, Goodbye to a Greedy Dragon.”  We’ll explore the Story Elements of character, setting, problem, and solution, use chants and imaginary travel as students become different community helpers, playing rhythms on the tools they each use to help solve the problem. Assembly Program Pre-K – 4th 50 minutes

What tools does an actor need? Actors use their bodies, their voices and their imaginations to change or transform into something else. We’ll use our transformation imaginations to create a performance together, to become the animal characters in the play, “Who’s in Rabbit’s House?” with masks, music, transforming props, and a surprise ending. Professional musician, Elias Mays Schutzman joins Katherine live on stage to provide the music and sound effects for the show. Assembly Program Pre-K-3rd 50 minutes

In this unique arts integrated residency, Katherine Lyons uses the tools of an actor to creatively explore a complex, process in nature. Through costumes, voice and movement, students explore the metamorphosis and life cycle of a butterfly and learn to transform themselves into the characters in this natural drama. The basics of this residency can also be a one-day workshop. Grades K-3

How do we help each other make the world a better place? Meet a human family and an animal family and explore how they each fear and need each other. Journey with us in this story dramatization combining A Crocodile’s Tale, from the Philippines, and a story from West Africa, The Hunterman and the Crocodile presented by Master Teaching Artist and actor, Katherine Lyons. Both stories deal with the relationship between humans and nature and teach us to respect and appreciate the earth and all living things.  We’ll use body movements and chants, match instruments and props to characters, and explore ordinal numbers, counting, sequencing and problem solving.

"In 1913, when I was only seventeen years old, I left my home, my family, everything I knew to come to a new land, a land of golden opportunity, a land I had never seen before where they would not speak my language. Can you imagine such a change in your life?" So, begins Ida Rehr, a Jewish immigrant who came to Baltimore from the Ukraine in the early twentieth century. In this exciting, interactive, first-person account, discover how Ida escaped from the pogroms, learn about her early life in Russia, and the difficulties of her journey to America. Hear about her work in a garment factory, her dream of citizenship, and how she created a new life here in Maryland. Using family photographs and personal objects from her trunk, Ida, played by Katherine Lyons, takes us from the Old World to the New World and shows us that by learning about where we've come from, we can understand who we are today. Students will attend a performance and then a series of workshops to explore the immigrant's dreams, hardships, hopes and fears through writing, theatre games, tableaus and their own group performance. 3rd grade - adult.