Teacher’s Study Guide for the Jack Tale Players and "Two Lost Babes"

Prepared by Thomas Townsend
May 2006

Introduction

The Jack Tale Players offer a special opportunity for students of all ages to share in the unique experience of reliving a vital part of our Appalachian heritage. Under the creative guidance of Dr. R. Rex Stephenson, the Jack Tale Players hold the distinguished honor of presenting North America’s longest continually running dramatic production for young audiences. During more than thirty years of entertainment and education, the Jack Tale Players have played venues as small as a living room or a school hallway and as large as the Omni Center in Atlanta, Georgia and Central Park in New York City. The Jack Tales have thrilled children and adults as near to Ferrum College as Ferrum Elementary School and in foreign locales such as school houses in rural England or audiences near Beijing, China.

The Jack Tale Players represent a much larger idea than mere entertainment. The stories and songs that they share are part of the grand circle that is oral tradition. Though full of folk humor, fast paced physical comedy, and endearing energetic characters, the folktales performed by the troupe draw from the deep well of Appalachian culture that is disappearing from around those of us who call the Blue Ridge and Smoky Mountains home. The Jack Tales are not only the story of the ever-clever Jack, but the story of the peoples of the Appalachians and the country that they helped to build. The voices that shaped our past are given to the children who will be our future.

The following study guide is presented to help educators in preparing their students to enjoy fully the richness and depth of the Appalachian storytelling and the theatre experience.

The Study of Oral Tradition, Folklore, and Jack Tales

The study of Jack Tales and other Appalachian folktales must begin with a brief look at Oral Tradition, then at Folklore, and finally at the Appalachian stories known as Jack Tales and Grandfather Tales.

Oral Tradition:

Before the Internet, before television, before telephone, before radio, before even electricity, even before writing, people shared ideas with their mouths. For students to grasp the importance of oral tradition, they should try to insert themselves into that not-so-long ago time when oral language was the only communication people possessed.

Exercise: The Grapevine/The Statue

• Have the students sit around you, asking them to use their imaginations to pretend they have no modern technology, press, or electricity. Ask them: How would your life be different? What would your entertainment be? How would you get news of what was happening?

• Tell the students a short story of your choosing. Make the sequence of events simple to follow and logically progressing.

• Divide the students into groups of four or five. Choose one person out of each group to retell the story to their group.

• When all the groups have finished, have the students come back together.

• Ask the students: What was different in the stories? What was the same?

• Have the students sit in a circle and play “Grapevine” (also known as “Gossip” or “Telephone”). The rules are:  you will whisper a message into the ear of the student beside you. He or she will then whisper the same message to the student next to him or her. Remember, the message can only be whispered once. When the message has returned to you, ask the last student to speak out loud the message he or she received. Explain that sometimes when a story is only told orally, the details can change

• Have the student go back to their groups. Ask them to prepare a sketch of the earlier story, using their own ideas and details.

• Present the sketches to the class, noting to the students how the story changes each time.

• Ask the students to go back into their groups. Ask them, “What do you think is the biggest problem you would have in living without modern conveniences?”

• Have the students then to create a living statue. Then build a scene, frieze, or statue that describes their answer to your question.

• Present the statues to the class and have them guess at the answers.

Folklore:

Lechner, Judith V. Allyn & Bacon Anthology of Traditional Literature. New York: Pearson/Allyn & Bacon, 2004. Web site with supplemental tales.

Lindahl, Carl, ed. American Folktales: From the Collections of the Library of Congress. 2 vols. Armonk NY: M. E. Sharpe, 2004.

Yolen, Jane, ed. Favorite Folktales from Around the World. New York: Pantheon, 1986.

Folklore and Mythology Electronic Texts. edited and/or translated by D. L. Ashliman, University of Pittsburgh, http://www.pitt.edu/~dash/folktexts.html.

See also Complete List of AppLit Pages on Folklore.

Jack Tales and Grandfather Tales:

When the European settlers came into the Appalachian Mountains, they brought with them their immigrant cultures and homeland memories. As their families grew and the first generation of Americans was born, the connection with Europe became more and more remote. The stories they knew were re-invented and restaged to their new home, be it in the mountains of Virginia or the seashore of New Jersey. While most of the United States experienced rapid cultural change, the culture of the Appalachians grew in the isolation of the terrain, producing a unique folk heritage of story and song with European roots and similarities, but with American heroes and voices. The remoteness and precarious nature of the Blue Ridge and the Smoky Mountains created cradles where the cross-cultivation of cultures produced genres of music and stories unlike anything found elsewhere. For centuries after similar songs and stories had disappeared from other places in the world, these tales and music were still a vital part of life in the Appalachian Mountains.

One of the most frequent characters that lived through many of these tales was a boy named Jack. He is the same Jack from the European tales (such as "Jack and the Beanstalk") but given decidedly American traits. In many Jack Tales and other folktales, the European traditions such as castles and kings are still present, while some things such as golden geese and gold harps are replaced. Jack is often naughty, misguided, silly, and a definite underdog, but in almost every tale, he learns that resourcefulness, hard work, cleverness, resilience, and straightforwardness will help him champion every cause. His two older brother, Bill (or Will) and Tom are most times trying to keep Jack in his place as the youngest and the dumbest. As Jack is our hero, he always comes out on top with the loot, the food, or the hand of a beautiful girl to marry.

Photo: Thomas Townsend (standing, right) and Rex Stephenson (standing, left) perform in "Jack and the Robbers" with school children and other Jack Tale Players in Woodstock, Georgia in 2002.

As part of the WPA Writers Project during the Great Depression, scholars and writers combed the Blue Ridge and Smoky Mountains with their notebooks and pencils to capture the folktales of the region. One of these researchers was Richard Chase. An Alabama native, a botanist educated at Harvard University and Antioch College, Chase traveled the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina and Virginia, where he collected music and tories from the natives. He fell in love with the stories, songs, and games of the Appalachian Mountains , and spent the rest of his life collecting, teaching, and writing about this culture he adopted as his own. Many of the stories he collected were published in two books, The Jack Tales (1943) and Grandfather Tales (1948), both of which can be found in most school libraries. Grandfather Tales contains "The Two Lost Babes" and other folktales that are not about Jack but come from the same oral tradition of wonder tales and trickster tales. (See the list of Folktale Collections Indexed in AppLit.)

For further information on Blue Ridge folklore, the Blue Ridge Institute, http://www.blueridgeinstitute.org, is a great source of information and images. School groups sometimes visit the Blue Ridge Institute and Farm Museum on the Ferrum College campus and see a Jack Tale show on the same day.

Background on the Jack Tale Players

    "R. Rex Stephenson originated the Jack Tale Players in 1975 with a grant from the Virginia Commission for the Arts to present the traditional Jack Tales in dramatic form for children. After a trial run in a hallway at Ferrum Elementary School, the first performance of the Jack Tale Players occurred at Callaway Elementary School in Franklin County, in December 1975. Since then, more than half a million people have enjoyed over 2,500 performances in thirty-four states and in England . Folklorist Richard Chase visited Ferrum College twice in the late 1970s as consultant to the Jack Tale Players. An anniversary performance was given in the same room at Callaway Elementary School on December 12, 2005."  From The Jack Tale Players web site, http://www2.ferrum.edu/jacktales/jhist.htm. See more background and photographs at this link, and in the article "Ferrum Performers Keep Jack Tales Alive."

In the photo at left, Thomas Townsend plays the washtub bass and sings with the Jack Tale Players in 2002.

Background on the Folktale "Two Lost Babes"

          "Two Lost Babes" is a story from the Appalachian oral tradition. Several different transcripts of the telling of this story exist. "The Two Lost Babes" can be found in Richard Chase’s Grandfather Tales (1948).  It is related to the traditional European version recorded by the Grimm Brothers in their tale, "Hansel and Gretel." Different versions are compared and discussed in AppLit's Annotated Index of Appalachian Folktales at http://www2.ferrum.edu/applit/bibs/tales/babes.htm. "The Babes in the Woods" and "The Little Babes in the Woods" are related tales reprinted in AppLit from the James Taylor Adams Collection in the Blue Ridge Institute archives.

The Jack Tale Players' Adaptation of  "Two Lost Babes"

    As with all of his folktale scripts, R. Rex Stephenson writes a script that, while holding to the original charms and nuances of the oral narrative, also finds a way to captivate modern audiences with his own unique form of storytelling. Stephenson’s story theatre script combines the strongest elements from the tale "The Two Lost Babes," collected by Richard Chase, and "Babes in the Woods," collected by James Taylor Adams. The resulting tale, though faithful to the older tales, speaks with its own voice.

    Stephenson’s scripting of the newest version layers the traditional Appalachian narrative with an additional message about nutrition. This added nutritional theme puts a significant twist on the traditional “Babes” tale, as many older versions depict hungry children who find a house made of cake or gingerbread (or some other sugary treat). With childhood obesity and the health complications that accompany it becoming a national health concern, the message of the play is not only timeless, but timely. Songs added to most performances of this adaptation help tell the story and reinforce the nutritional theme with humor and rhythm.
 

LESSON IDEAS

Lesson Ideas Pre-Jack Tale Visit:

• What is a play?  Why are drama and theater important? How is it different from television and movies?  How should you behave in the audience (think about live actors, that it's okay to laugh but not talk, etc.)
   
• What is a Jack tale?  Where do they come from?  Discuss with your class the following terms and their significance: Appalachian Oral Tradition, Grandfather Tales, Jack Tales.  Why are they important?  Why is folk heritage important?  Do you think the folktales are important to all students or only students living in the Appalachian Mountains?
   
• Introduce nutritional ideas to the students. Discuss what is good nutrition and what is bad nutrition. Discuss with the class what their eating habits are. How can they improve their habits? Discuss the importance of diet AND exercise.

Lesson Ideas Post-Jack Tale Visit:

• Discuss the play, characters, and events, seeing how much the students retained.

• Have the students draw pictures of their favorite scenes or event or characters.

• Read a Jack Tale or Grandfather Tale to the class. Have the students tell a new version, either oral or written. Pick one of the students’ versions and have them act out the new story for their fellow students.

• Discuss nutrition and its importance. By using the health links below, have the students look up the daily recommended nutritional intake and figure out if they are eating healthfully or not. Have them write down what they eat in an average day. Begin to get them to think about the importance of what they eat. Have the students calculate their average caloric intake and then calculate their recommended caloric intake. Discuss also the importance of healthy body image; emphasizing that eating too little is just as dangerous as eating too much.

• Discuss with the students what they should do if they are ever lost. Where do they go? Who can they trust?

Questions for Discussion:

• Why do you think Bess and Buck are treated so badly? 

• Was Buck’s plan to find their way out of the forest a good plan?  What plan would you have conceived?

• Why do the witches keep Cocklepea?  Why does he (or she) stay?

• What sorts of food do the witches feed Bess and Buck?  Why?

• How do Bess and Buck beat the witches' plan to fatten them up?

• In what ways does Cocklepea try to help Bess and Buck?  Can you think of another plan(s) that Cocklepea might have used to free his (or her) new friends?

• What happens at the end of the story?  Can you think of a different ending?

• What do you think happens to all the different characters after the story ends?  What are their futures like?

• How is Stephenson's Jack Tale Players' version different from the Grimm Brothers’ version of "Hansel and Gretel"? 

Health and Nutrition Web Sites:

Nemours Foundation’s Kid’s Health, www.kidshealth.org

American Heart Association, http://www.americanheart.org/presenter.jhtml?identifier=4575

Dairy Management Inc.’s Nutrition Explorations, http://www.nutritionexplorations.org

United States Department of Agriculture, http://www.usda.gov/wps/portal/!ut/p/_s.7_0_A/7_0_1OB?navtype=SU&navid=FOOD_NUTRITION

Portion Distortion: Seeing the Healthy Way to Eat. Video for Ages 7-12/Grades 3-5. 20 minutes. "Real kids convincingly provide viewers with solid strategies to make wise food choices. Live action mixes well with animation to dish up a healthy serving of entertaining information." Description from American Library Association 2006 Notable Children's Videos List. Mount Kisco, NY: Human Relations Media, http://www.hrmvideo.com/home.cfm.

The Edible Pyramid: Good Eating Every Day. Revised edition of a picture book by Loreen Leedy. Holiday House Books for Young People, 2007. A Reading Rainbow book in 1994, this book is now "revised to incorporate the U. S. Dept. of Agriculture's newly redesigned food pyramid, along with the latest research on nutrition."

Advice for Parents and Children on “Being Lost”:

BBC’s Parenting web site, http://www.bbc.co.uk/parenting/your_kids/safety_out.shtml

National Center for Missing & Exploited Children’s Guide for Parents, http://www.ncjrs.gov/html/ojjdp/psc_english_02/page2.html (direct parents to this site!)

Keep Kids Healthy, LLC, http://www.keepkidshealthy.com/welcome/safety/safety_plan.html

Virginia Department of Education Standards of Learning (SOLs):

Virginia Department of Education, http://www.doe.virginia.gov/testing/index.shtml

Another AppLit study guide: Standards of Learning Covered by Study of "Mutsmag" and "Ashpet" Dramatizations (based on 2001 SOL's)
 

Other AppLit and Jack Tale Players Links:

The Jack Tale Players Web Site

Bibliography of Dramas and Tales by R. Rex Stephenson

Study Guides on Dramatizations by the Ferrum College Jack Tale Players

Activities for Teaching Appalachian Folktales and Dramatizations by the Jack Tale Players

The Script as Story Theatre by R. Rex Stephenson

Chinese Students Learn Jack Tales - article by Tina L. Hanlon

Photos of Richard Chase at Ferrum College

Thomas Townsend, author of this study guide:

Thomas Townsend worked with the Jack Tale Players and the Blue Ridge Dinner Theater at Ferrum College for six summers from 1997 to 2006. A native of Johnson City, Tennessee, he has a BA from Milligan College and earned an MA in theatre and storytelling from East Tennessee State University in 2003. He has worked in a variety of theatre jobs in Chicago, New York, and other parts of the U.S., including positions as an actor and house manager at the Chicago Shakespeare Theater. He spent 2005 teaching Oral English, literature, and Western culture to English majors at Dongying Vocational College, in Shandong province, eastern China. He used Jack Tales in his classes and directed the Chinese students in public performances of Rex Stephenson's Jack Tale dramatizations. He started out in 1997 playing inanimate objects such as a fire bush, then a donkey and half a horse, before advancing to human roles in Jack Tales. The mean blacksmith Wicked John is his favorite lead role. He has played the narrator in “Ashpet,” “Mutsmag” and one of Stephenson's  longer children’s plays, The New Snow White. In 2001 he  inaugurated the popular role of a foolish husband in “The Three Old Women’s Bet,” appearing onstage in a red suit of long underwear after his wife tricked him into wearing an invisible suit (see other photos at this link). Townsend was also assistant director of Stephenson’s adaptation of Rudyard Kipling’s The Jungle Book when it premiered in Ferrum in 1997.

Email address: thomas.townsend.1@gmail.com.

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