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In the "One-on-One" program, The Project's cornerstone acting program, we take a group of ten kids out of town to a country retreat for a week in the summer (Block Island, Rhode Island and Tyler Hill, Pennsylvania are two of our typical destinations). Each child is assigned a playwright who is charged to write a play specifically for that child. The plays are almost all two-character pieces with the playwright acting the other part (cameo appearances and off-stage voices are frequent). If the playwright declines to act, another adult is recruited. The plays are rehearsed over the course of the week and performed informally for the community in the retreat setting. Upon returning to Manhattan, the plays are performed in an Off-Broadway theater supported by professional designers and crews who volunteer their services.
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An important feature of the One-on-Ones: each is a fully realized mini-musical, affording kids a rare opportunity to experience the power of music by working hand-in-hand with a professional composer, also a volunteer.
Two sets of One-on-Ones are produced each year; one in July, the other in August.
From "SOME CRUMB" by Willie Reale for Noel Polanco, age 11
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The stage is bare save for JAIME, a lone crumb on the bottom of a toaster. Elisabel, an ant enters. She tries to pick up JAIME
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JAIME |
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May I ask what you are doing?
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ELISABEL |
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I am taking you back to my ant colony where you will be devoured.
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JAIME |
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I would prefer you didn't.
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ELISABEL |
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Yeah! I'm sure that's true but nevertheless, this is to be your fate.
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JAIME |
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Please unhand me.
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ELISABEL |
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It will do you no good to resist. You are inanimate. A food stuff. Your purpose is to provide sustenance for the colony.
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JAIME |
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You know nothing of my purpose.
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ELISABEL |
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What possible purpose could you have? You're a crumb at the bottom of the toaster.
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| JAIME |
| True. I am a crumb, this I will not deny. But I have great purpose. I am the crumb of destiny. (Segue into song...)
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