The Lion PLayers Theatre Company recently enjoyed a very successful run of this delightful childrens' story. On September 30, and October 1 & 2, 4252 first and second grade students of Spring Independent School District were brought to Spring High's Main Auditorium for this special event. It is always difficult to tell who was having the most fun...the elementary students, or the Lion Players! The run extended into public performances on Thursday evening and Saturday afternoon and evening. Audiences were a mix of chidren of all ages and adults. The audiences were large and enjoyed the play very much.

Technically, Childrens' Theatre is not as simple as it looks. With a target audience of six and seven years old, the scenery, props and costumes must be big, bright and capable of handling a lot of action in order to hold their interst. We decided to create a forest environment for the animal characters of the play by constructing five large stationary trees carved from large blocks of polystyrene foam. Over two hundred cubic feet of polystyrene foam was used overall. Three hundred and fifty hand tied bundles of raffia were hung in 450 square feet of nylon netting and suspended from 40 linear feet of pvc pipe to create the foliage for the trees. Scenery changes were created with use of wagons to indicate the various locations. One large wagon was used for both the "frog rock quarry" and the garden wall. A smaller wagon each was used to indicate the footbridge and Mr. Hedgehog's house. The "frog rock quarry" used polystyrene foam for three dimensional rocks, while the garden wall used painted stones and three dimensional artificial ivy and flowers. The river under the footbridge was created with 12 yards of china silk fabric. Mr. Hedgehog's house also used hand tied bundles of raffia for its walls. The trees, rocks and stones were all painted with at least four different colors of latex paint plus a dry brush coat of yellow Wildfire paint. Eight forty watt blacklight tubes were utilized in four fixtures plus one large strobe fixture to provide special effects. The characters were equipped with eleven wireless FM microphones so they could be heard above the cheering of hundreds of children in each performance. The crew performed flawlessly for each performance. The costumes and animal character heads were custom built for the show.