Charlie and the Chocolate Factory Ed Mats

TEACHER EDUCATIONAL MATERIALS MAIN STREET THEATER – CHARLIE AND THE CHOCOLATE FACTORY –

2009-2010 SEASON 4617 Montrose Blvd. Suite 100, Houston, TX 77006 – 713-524-9196 X101-www.mainstreettheater.com

1

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory

Educational Materials

A Play by Richard R. George Based on the book by Roald Dahl

Directed by Daria James



2

TEACHERS –

Welcome to Main Street Theater! We hope these supplemental materials will help you integrate your field trip into your classroom curriculum. We’ve included a number of activities and resources to help broaden your students’ experience.

Please make sure that each teacher that will be attending the play has a copy of these materials as they prepare to see the show. Recent studies prove that integrating the arts into education

enhances a student's development and performance. Students learning through the arts are more able to think at a higher level,

collaborate with their peers, and score higher on standardized tests.

Before you come to the theater, please take some time to talk with your students about what to expect. Going to a live play is an experience unlike any other, and many students are more familiar with going to the movies or sporting events. Please help them prepare for what they’ll see and how they should act. Here are some things to think about:

How is a play different from a movie or a television show? How is a play different from real life? Can the actors see and hear the audience? Which of the following is appropriate behavior for a theater audience? Clapping, talking,

eating, laughing, running, leaving during the performance. Ask students who have seen a play before to talk about what it’s like to be in the audience.

Have students write letters or draw pictures to the cast of The Charlie and the Chocolate Factory with their thoughts and

comments on the production. All correspondence should be sent to:

SCHOOL BOOKINGS Main Street Theater

4617 Montrose Boulevard, Suite 100 Houston, Texas 77006



3

WHO WROTE Charlie and the Chocolate Factory

ABOUT THE AUTHOR - Roald Dahl lived from 1916 to 1990. His family was Norwegian but moved to Wales in the 1800s. Roald was born in Wales and named after a polar explorer Roald Amundsen, a national hero in Norway. He spoke Norwegian at home with his family. He went to a series of boarding schools in England. At one of the schools the chocolate company, Cadbury would send new chocolate candies to the students to test out before selling them. This was the basis for Dahl’s book, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. He married the Academy Award winning actress, Patricia Neal in 1953 and had five children. They divorced in 1983. He remarried and was with his second wife until his death. The Roald Dahl Children’s Gallery and the Roald Dahl Museum were both opened to celebrate and advance his work in literacy. He is most famous for his children’s books including James and the Giant Peach, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, The BFG, Matilda and The Witches.

SUMMARY OF Charlie and the Chocolate Factory Willy Wonka, the eccentric owner of the greatest chocolate factory in the world, has decided to open the doors of his factory to five lucky children and their parents. In order to choose the children, he hides five golden tickets beneath the wrappers of his famous chocolate bars. Augustus Gloop, who loves to eat, unwraps the first ticket. Veruca Salt, a spoiled child, receives the next ticket from her father, who had employed his entire factory of peanut shellers to unwrap chocolate bars until they found a ticket. Violet Beauregard discovers the third ticket while taking a break from setting a world record in gum chewing. Mike Teavee, who only cares about watching TV, finds the fourth ticket. A poor but good boy, Charlie Bucket who lives in a tiny house with his parents, Mr. and Mrs. Bucket, and all four of his grandparents finds the final ticket. Charlie’s grandfather, Grandpa Joe, is sent to go with Charlie.

In the factory, the children, with the exception of Charlie, fall victim to their own greed. Augustus Gloop falls into the hot chocolate river and is sucked up by one of the pipes. Veruca Salt is attached by nut judging squirrels. Violet Beauregard eats experimental gum and blows up into a purple person and Mike Teavee shrinks himself so he can live in a TV. When only Charlie remains, Willy Wonka turns to him and congratulates him for winning. His prize is the entire factory.



4

Overview

HOW SHOULD I PREPARE MY STUDENTS FOR A TRIP TO THE THEATER?

Read the book to your students or have them read it. The play is taken directly from the pages of the book.

Discuss the page on theater etiquette with your students. Remind them that it

can get very dark in the theater before the play and in between scenes.

Make sure your students use the restroom before they leave school or at the theater before the performance. There will be actors running, walking, crawling, and moving furniture in the aisles during the show. It can be very dangerous to get up to use the restroom during the performance. In addition, you may miss your favorite part!

Talk about what kind of show they are coming to see. Charlie and the

Chocolate Factory is a live theatrical performance. Our stage is very close to the seats and students will be very close to the actors performing. The actors are very friendly though so they should not be afraid.

Talk to your students about imagination. People called actors perform in the

play. They pretend to be the children, oompaloompas etc. Nine grown-up actors perform in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory watch and see how they use their voices and bodies to become different characters.

After the performance, the actors will remain on stage and answer questions

that the students may have. Discuss with your students what a question is. While the actors love to hear what a good time the students had or what part the like the best, they LOVE to answer questions about the show, the book or being an actor. Don’t forget to raise your hand!

The show is fantastical! It is lots of fun so be prepared to giggle, laugh and

have a great time.



5

WHAT DOES IT TAKE TO PUT ON A PLAY? It takes many years of preparation before you see a show at our theater. Many, many people work to put all the parts of a play together. The play you’re seeing today comes from the book Charlie and the Chocolate Factory written by author Roald Dahl who also wrote (among others)— The BFG (Big Friendly Giant). It was the idea of the playwright, Richard R. George, to form this book into a play. About a year before MST’s production, the producer contacted the licensing agency about the rights to perform the play. Once the agency agreed, the production team was assembled. The production team is the group of people directly responsible for a how a play looks and sounds. The director is the person who makes the decisions about who is in the play, how the play looks, and what themes are emphasized to the audience. S/he works with the designers to establish the concept (or mood & themes) of the play. The director also hires the actors to play the parts in the show. Once rehearsals begin the director conveys the concept to the actors by giving them directions on their character development and by blocking their movements. The set designer creates the world that is seen when you enter the theater. S/he decides whether there will be real furniture or pretend furniture (such as cubes or chairs). The set designer decides where all of the different locations will be on the stage. The designer drafts diagrams so the carpenters can build the set. S/he also comes back once the set is built to paint everything. The costume designer is the person who chooses what clothes the actors will wear to represent the concept of the play. The designer will sometimes shop for clothing or may build some costumes from scratch. S/he works closely with the actors to make sure that all of the clothing fits and feels comfortable. S/he also works with the set designer to make sure that the actors’ clothing will not clash with the colors on the set. The props designer is the person who provides all of the handheld items used by the actors during the play. This person either buys or builds everything that the actors might need to convey the story. The sound designer creates or selects all of the sound effects and music for the play. The sound designer creates the noises that are heard when someone rings a doorbell, a dog barks offstage, or a telephone rings. The sound designer can also create music pieces to aid in setting the theme or the mood of the play. The lighting designer decides how stage lighting will help tell the story. How can the color of lights complement the costumes and sets? Does the play require a scene at night? S/he will also decide when the lights should go out to cover up a scene change or when they should stay on. The actors are the people who perform the play. They are real people who are pretending to be the different characters in the story. Actors are trained to play old people, young people and sometimes even animals. It’s their job to tell the story to the audience. The audience is part of the play too! Without someone to hear the story, there would be no reason to tell it. The actors want to get the audience to care about the characters, to laugh and cry, and applaud when the play is over.



6

Post Performance Activities –

1. Have your students conduct an experiment. Do a taste test with various brands of chocolate

and see which brand is the most popular.

2. Divide the class into small groups and have them design their own candy wrapper. Have

them create a slogan and an advertisement campaign.

3. Study the food pyramid with your class. Is junk food on

it? Discuss proper eating habits. Have each student

keep a food journal for a week and see how much

nutritional value it has and how much junk food they are

eating.

4. In the MST production, the Oompa-loompas used rap for

their poems. Have your students come up with their own

songs. What other forms of music could they use?

5. Have your students design their own factory machines.

What would they call them? What would they do?

6. Have each student create their own character. What would their vice be? Have them draw a

picture of them. What would they wear?

7. Augustus Gloop, Veruca Salt, Violet Beauregard and Mike Teevee only cared about

themselves. They had no concern for others. They wanted everything – candy, gum, TV –

anything. In the end, their greed was their downfall. Discuss with your students times in their

lives when they have been greedy. Discuss in history when leaders have been greedy. How

did this turn out for them? For you? Was it worth getting everything you wanted? Did you fail

eventually? Some examples – King Henry the VIII; The CEOs of Enron; Adolf Hitler; The

Romans.

8. The costume designer used a lot of 1970s influences in her costume design. Discuss with

your students what the fashions were during that time. Why would she have chosen that

time period? Some of the costume renderings are attached for your reference.

9. Watch the old version of the movie. Have your students compare and contrast the book, the

old movie and the play. What similarities did they see? Differences?



7



8



9

APPLAUSE, APPLAUSE

This production of

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory

would not be possible without the generous support of the following –

AND

FOR THEIR GENEROUS SUPPORT OF OUR CURTAINS UP FUND

Main Street Theater is funded in part by grants from the City of Houston

through the Houston Arts Alliance as well as Bank of America, The Brown Foundation, Continental Airlines, Copy.com, The Cullen Trust for the

Performing Arts, the George and Mary Josephine Hamman Foundation, the Albert & Ethel Herzstein Charitable Foundation, The Hoglund Foundation, The

Humphreys Foundation, the Houston Chronicle, Houston Endowment, The Charles & Betti Saunders Foundation, The Shubert Foundation, The Simmons

Foundation, Target, Texas Commission on the Arts and The Wortham Foundation. Additional support is provided by BBVA Compass, KUHF 88.7 FM,

the Kinder Morgan Foundation and LIATIS Foundation.



10

THEATER ETIQUETTE

Cell Phones, Pagers and other electronic devices should be switched off BEFORE the performance. It is impolite and disruptive to the actors and the other audience members to hear a ringing phone or a patron talking on the phone. In addition, please do not leave the theater to take a phone call unless it is an emergency. You will have to climb over several other patrons to exit the seats and will disturb each one of them.

No photography or video taping of any kind is allowed during any performances. It is a disturbance to the performers because photography generates noise which creates a distraction both to audiences and performers. The sudden burst of flash photography blinds vision and can endanger the life of the performers on stage. The only photography and recording rights are reserved for archival purpose. It is also against our contractual arrangements with the publishers to allow videotaping and photography.

No food and drinks are allowed at any time during a performance or in the theater. Munching and crunching is considered rude and food crumbs, wrappers and soda cans cause a mess in the seats. This includes chewing gum and candy!

Keep feet, bags and patrons out of the aisles; some directors use this space for actors entrances and exits as well as a place to move scenery. It is very dangerous to block the aisles. It is also against the fire code.

Do not put feet on the theater chairs. It makes them dirty and disturbs the people in front of you.

Never throw anything on stage. Items thrown on stage can harm an actor.

Discussion and comments that you have about the performance should be left till you leave the theater. Please remain quiet during the show. It is alright to react to the performance but chatting that causes distraction is considered rude.

Some audiences leave the show when it is nearing the end because they want to beat the crowds that are exiting at the same time. It is very distrustful to the actors and the other patrons for people to get up before the show is over. Please stay seated until the very end.

Documents

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory Ed Mats