Flynn Center Presents
Pete the Cat
Welcome to the 2016-2017 Student Matinee Season!
Today’s scholars and researchers say creativity is the top skill our kids will need
when they enter the workforce of the future, so we salute YOU for valuing the
educational and inspirational power of live performance. By using this study
guide you are taking an even greater step toward implementing the arts as a
vital and inspiring educational tool.
We hope you find this guide useful. If you have any suggestions for content or
format of this guide, please contact [email protected].
Enjoy the show! -Education Staff
An immense thank you...
The Flynn Center recognizes that field trip resources for schools are extremely limited, thus matinee prices
for schools are significantly lower than prices for public performances. As a non-profit organization,
the Flynn is deeply grateful to the foundations, corporations, and individuals whose generous financial
support keeps matinees affordable for schools.
thank you to Heather and John Dwight for sponsoring this performance.
Thank you to the Flynn Matinee 2016-17 underwriters:
Northfield Savings Bank, Andrea’s Legacy Fund, Champlain Investment Partners, LLC, Bari and Peter
Dreissigacker, Forrest and Frances Lattner Foundation, Surdna Foundation, Tracy and Richard Tarrant, TD
Charitable Foundation, Vermont Arts Council, Vermont Concert Artists Fund of the Vermont Community
Foundation, Vermont Community Foundation, New England Foundation for the Arts, National
Endowment for the Arts, and the Flynn Jazz Endowment. Additional support from the Bruce J. Anderson
Foundation, Green Mountain Fund, & the Walter Cerf Community Fund.
THE COMPANY:
THEATREWORKS USA
Theatreworks USA has a distinguished history of
not only providing young audiences with their
first taste of the performing arts, but also giving
young actors, writers, directors and designers
an early opportunity to work in this field.
Theatreworks USA is America’s largest and most
prolific not-for-profit theatre for young and
family audiences. Since 1961, Theatreworks USA
has enlightened and instructed over 90 million
people in 49 states and Canada, performing for
about three million people annually. Click here to
learn more about TheatreworksUSA.
What to expect
Pete, a rock and roll cat and his animal
friends are living a life of freedom and jam
sessions when they wander into a yard and Pete
is caught by the cat-catcher. His punishment is
to spend a week as a housecat with a family.
Pete meets his host family, the Biddles. He
becomes roommates with Jimmy Biddle, a
second grader who is nervous about the idea
and has a lot of rules about behavior he
wants Pete to follow. However, Pete likes to
play it cool and is not a rule-follower.
Jimmy brings Pete to school and his math test
turns into an art class. Jimmy is flustered
and copies another student’s painting because
he can’t think of his own idea for a picture. He
gets in trouble and has to create an original
picture in order to pass second grade.
To help him, Pete takes Jimmy in the VW (Very
Wonderful) bus to find inspiration for his perfect
picture. They travel to the beach, the moon and
Paris and when Jimmy finally learns to let loose
and jam with magic sunglasses on, he paints the
perfect picture.
The Creative Team behind the Pete the Cat Books
AUTHORS: JAMES AND KIM DEAN
James Dean’s art has sold in more than ninety
galleries and shops across the United States. He has
devoted his paintings to Pete the Cat for ten years
and has turned his natural love for cats into his life’s
work. James published his first adult book, The
Misadventures of Pete the Cat, a history of his
artwork, in 2006. He illustrated his first self-published
children’s book, Pete the Cat I Love my White Shoes,
written by Eric Litwin, in 2008, and the follow-up
book, Pete the Cat: Rocking In My School Shoes, in
2011. James lives in Savannah, Georgia with his wife,
Kimberly.
In 2004, Kimberly & James Dean sat down at their
kitchen table to work on a children’s book together.
Their dream has finally become a reality with the
release of this new Pete the Cat book, Pete the Cat
and His Magic Sunglasses. Both left corporate jobs
in the late nineties (James was an electrical
engineer, Kimberly worked in the press office of the
governor of Georgia) to pursue their passion for art,
and they have experienced a life made up of
strange and wonderful coincidences ever since. Pete
the Cat has brought magic into their lives. They
work in side-by-side studios, sharing their home with
five cats and Emma the pug.
ILLUSTRATOR: ERIC LITWIN
Eric Litwin is a guitar-strumming, song-singing,
banjo-picking, tale-telling, song-writing,
national-award-winning, music-producing, fun,
folksy type of guy. He loves to blend song and story
together and is inspired by the depth and simplicity
of folk songs and folktales. Eric is a popular
performer, delighting thousands of children and
families every year. He has recorded two
award-winning children’s music CDs.
Visit these links to learn more:
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Activities: http://www.petethecatbooks.com/activities/
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Book Characters: http://www.petethecatbooks.com/friends/
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The Books: http://www.petethecatbooks.com/books/
Activities
Character Maps
Create a character maps to describe Jimmy and
Pete. After students have listed some traits on the
map, have them write a paragraph describing the
characters using the trait words. Discuss what
traits are the same and different for Pete and
Jimmy. Students can combine their paragraphs
into a story and bind it into a classroom book for
all to share.
Journal Writing
In the play, Jimmy needs inspiration to create the
perfect painting. Have students write a journal
entry using one of the following prompts:
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Pre-Show Questions
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Read some of the Pete the Cat books. The reading can
be silent reading, read aloud or reading to a friend or
pet. Talk about what happens in the book. How would
you describe Pete?
What words would you use to describe your or a friend’s
pet(s)? What kinds of things do you see your pet doing?
One character in the play has a list of rules he likes to
follow. What sort of rules do you have in your
classroom? Discuss why rules are important. What
happens when someone breaks the rules? Do you have
rules at home?
Post-Show Questions
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How was the play different from the Pete the Cat books
you have read? How was it the same? Discuss the actor
who played Pete. How do you think he/she prepared for
her role? How would you portray a cat on stage?
If your cat or pet could speak, what would you ask it?
What do you think it would want to talk about? How
would your family change with a talking animal in the
house?
Why did Jimmy copy the painting? What happens if you
copy someone’s work at school? Why do you think it was
hard for Jimmy to come up with a painting of his own?
Jimmy had a lot of rules for being a roommate. Pete
didn’t follow the rules. What do you think is better: to
have rules or not? Discuss how rules are important in
some cases and maybe not important in others.
If I could go anywhere in the world…
I would use magic sunglasses to…
My perfect pet would be…
Post-Show Collage Activity
Invite students to look through old magazines and
newspapers to find images and words that reflect
their thoughts and feelings as they were watching
the performers on stage. Have students cut out
the images and words and create a collage which
represents the experience, the ideas that came up
for them during the performance, and the
impressions they were left with. Discuss the
collages as a class.
What Inspires You?
Pete the Cat is inspired to sing about everyday
things: shoes, buttons, meeting new people. In
Pete the Cat, Jimmy gets inspiration to paint by
using Pete’s magic sunglasses. What inspires you?
What simple things make you happy? Write a
short paragraph about something that makes
you happy or inspires you to do your best.
Using the paragraph, write a song or create a
painting that reflects your source of happiness or
inspiration and how it makes you feel. If desired,
write the song using a well-known tune, rewriting
the words to fit. Share the song or painting with
class. What makes you happy or inspired? Do you
find the other things people sing or paint
inspiring? Why or why not?
Activities
Who Are You?
The actors in Pete the Cat play more than one character. At
the beginning of the show, they play animal characters and
then they play members of the Biddle family. The actors
have to switch back and forth between being an animal and
being a family member. To do this, they need to look and
sound different so we can tell each one apart. Split into
groups to try out some acting. Each group should have two
characters, one animal and one family member. Examples
include:
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Frog and teenage boy
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Owl and young girl
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Squirrel and older man/Dad
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Alligator and older woman/Mom
Begin by exploring how each animal moves and sounds.
Then explore how each family member moves and sounds.
What is one sound each of these animals or people would
make or say? What is one way they would sit or walk (try
having the animals all move on two feet)? Explore being the
animal and then switching to the family member. Have each
group share their characters. Is the audience able to tell
which animal and family member they are? What can you
observe in the sounds and movements your classmates use?
How did you make your choices? Which one do you prefer,
animal or family member? Why?
Extension: create a simple mask out of a paper plate for each
of your characters. Do your sound and movement with the
mask. How does having a mask change the way you sound
and move?
Check out these books that inspired the
performance:
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Pete the Cat: I Love my White Shoes
Pete the Cat: Rockin’ in My School Shoes
Pete the Cat and His Four Groovy
Buttons
Pete the Cat and His Magic Sunglasses
Pete the Cat and the New Guy
Pete the Cat Saves Christmas
Pete the Cat and the Bedtime Blues
Fun Facts About Cats
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Cats can sleep up to 16 hours a day
Cats can make 100 different sounds,
dogs can only make about 10 sounds
The proper name for a hairball is
“bezoar”
Cats only meow to communicate with
humans.
A cat can jump up to six times its length.
Cats use their whiskers to detect if they
can fit through a space.
Valuable Friendships
In this activity, students will draw a picture of
an example of friendship and caption it.
After reading excerpts from the Pete the Cat
stories, ask students to recall times when the
theme of friendship was highlighted.
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Brainstorm ideas of things that friends
do together, how they show that they
care for one another, etc.
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Invite students to draw a picture that
shows one of these examples and to
write or dictate a sentence that explains
their picture, using the sentence starter
“I value friendship because…”
Follow-up Questions:
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What does it mean to be a friend?
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What kind of things do you like to do
with your friends?
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What can you do to help a friend feel
better when they are sad or going
through a tough time?
WORDS COME ALIVE:
Arts Integration Activities
Providing the opportunity to actively
explore the world of the show helps
students become more engaged and
connected audience members, thinking
about artists’ choices and approaching the
performance with enhanced curiosity.
For more information about our arts
integration activities:
● click here
● call 652-4548
● Email Lauren at
[email protected]
Activity: Solo Acts
Tell students you’ll begin the story now. “Everyone crouch down and
make yourself as small as you can in your space. Imagine you are
inside a hard, transparent, spherical shell. The shell is only just big
enough for you to fit, so you can barely move. The shell is hard, but you
discover that by pushing against the wall of the shell you can make a
"dent." You can push one small part of the wall out away from you, and
when you let it go, it doesn't spring back. Keep making more "dents"
until you have actually made the whole shell bigger. Keep pushing the
walls out around you, smoothing out the dents as you go so you keep
your shell smooth and round. Keep enlarging your shell until it is just big
enough to stand up in.
Now, listen as your teacher narrates some key moments from the story.
In your “shell” respond to the words and images. For example, imagine
you are Pete getting caught by the cat catcher, or you are Jimmy and
you can’t think of what to draw, or you are Pete jamming out with his
band.
Activity: Moving Through Space
Ask students to walk or move freely around the room, aiming for the
open spaces and being careful not to bump into others. To help keep
attention high, instruct them to “freeze” occasionally and also to vary
their speeds or qualities. Examples: Move faster. Move faster still.”
“Travel in slow motion. Travel backwards.” Brainstorm with students
words they would use to describe different characters. Example: Pete groovy, relaxed, musical. Ask students to move from one point of the
room to another, illustrating the first character trait. Then name another
adjective to add to their portrayals. Continue until the whole list is being
embodied. Repeat this exercise for other characters in the story
(Jimmy, the Biddells, etc.)
To conclude, reflect on how each character felt different. How does
Piggie move differently than Elephant? What kind of physical changes
were evocative of different character traits? Since actors play multiple
characters in the show, how important do you feel having distinct
movements for each character might be? Would this have been a
helpful experience for the actors?
We can’t wait to see you at the theater!
Etiquette for Live Performances:The Essentials
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Listen, experience, imagine, discover, learn!
Give your energy and attention to the performers.
Please do not eat or drink in the theater.
Talk only before and after the performance.
Turn off wireless devices.
No photos, videos, texting, or listening to music.
Teachers, a few reminders:
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Share your experience with us! Use the feedback links, or
share your students’ artwork, writing, responses. We love
to hear how experiences at the Flynn impact our audiences.
Explore other student matinees at the Flynn this season.
We still have seats in some shows and we’d love to help you
or other teachers at your school enliven learning with an
engaging arts experience!
The Flynn is a place for ALL students, and these tools can help!
Pre or Post-Show Video Chats:
Hello
from the
Flynn!
Help students build enthusiasm or process their experience with a free, 5-10 minute video chat before or after the show!
We can set up Skype/Facetime/Google Hangouts with your class to answer questions about the content, art form, and experience.
Contact Kat, [email protected] to set up your chat!
Autism and Sensory-Friendly Accommodations:
The Flynn Center has been working diligently to break down barriers for audience members with disabilities,
with a particular focus on those with sensory-sensitivities. Social stories, break spaces, sensory friendly materials,
and more are available for all student matinees. Feel free to let us know ahead of time if any of these would be useful,
or ask an usher at the show!
Common Core Standards
We appreciate and value your feedback
The Common Core broadens the definition of a “text,” viewing
performance as a form of text, so your students are experiencing
and interacting with a text when they attend a Flynn show.
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Seeing live performance provides rich opportunities to write
reflections, narratives, arguments, and more. By writing responses
and/or using the Flynn Study Guides, all performances can be
linked to Common Core:
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Click here to evaluate our study guides.
Click here for Teacher Feedback Forms for the
performance.
Click here for Student Feedback Forms for the
performance.
Click here for Parent Forms to help parents engage
with their children around the show.
CC ELA: W 1-10
You can use this performance and study guide to address the
following Common Core Standards:
CC ELA: RF 1-4, RL 1-10, L 3-5, SL 1-2
This guide was written & compiled by the Education Department at the
Flynn Center for the Performing Arts with inspiration from the
TheatreworksUSA Study Guide and Website. Permission is granted for
teachers, parents, and students who are coming to Flynn shows to
copy & distribute this guide for educational purposes only.