My Name Is Celia: The Life of Celia Cruz/Me llamo Celia: la vida de Celia Cruz October , 2019 10-11am, Grades K-5 This study guide will give you background information, discussion questions, and activity ideas to do with your class before and after the performance at the PAEC.

Performance Information: Boom boom boom! beat the congas. Clap clap clap! go the hands. Queen of Salsa, Celia Cruz, brought joy and music and the sweet and spicy Havana sound to millions of people around the world. In this celebration of her life and her gift of song, you will hear her story and feel the warmth of her love fill your heart. It’ll make you feel like dancing! ¡Azúcar! Celia Cruz grew up in Havana, Cuba, with sugar on her tongue, a song on her lips, and her people in her heart. From her mother, she got the taste for sweetness. From her father, she got the gift of music. From her teachers the strength to share her sound with the world. Despite facing racism and sexism at the start of her career, Celia kept her light shining and her voice singing. She and her husband emigrated to the United States after the Cuban Revolution of the late 1950s. From New York to Miami she brought a new rhythm to the people and they loved to shake, swing, and dance to her sound. Celia’s music reached across borders and over the oceans. Even now that she is gone, her music lives on. My Name is Celia, based on the book by Monica Brown, is a production of Book-It Repertory Theatre, a non-profit organization dedicated to transforming great literature into great theatre. Performers will speak English and Spanish! Look and Listen For: Spanish and English spoken together. How the actors work together to tell the story. How the actors become different characters. Happy, funny, sad, or surprising parts of the stories. How the actors use objects (props), costumes, and sets to tell the story. How music helps tell the story. Connections to history. How the story makes you feel and what it makes you think. Discussion Questions (before and after the performance): What do you know about seeing a play? (Ask before and after the performance). Do you want to see another one? Who has gone to a live performance before? What was it like? How is it different from going to a movie? What should you do and remember when you're there? Why do you think the play is in English and Spanish? How does that affect how the story is told and how the audience experiences it? After the performance, have students respond to the show. Discuss the story, the costumes, the sets, the expression, how and what meaning was conveyed, and what connections to other arts, stories, or their own lives the students can make. After the performance, what new ideas or understanding do you have? What did you used to think and what do you think now? Discuss the sequence of events in the stories. (You may wish to chart this). What would happen if the actors did not tell the story parts in order? What were the problems Celia had to solve? How did she solve them? Can you think of other ways to solve the problems? How can you describe Celia? (You may wish to create a bubble map). What about her is similar to or different from you? How did you feel at different points in the performance? What did you notice about the props? How did the actors use them? How did the play use music? How did it help tell the story? Celia came from Cuba. How does that make her who she is? Where is your family from? How does that affect your life? My Name is Celia uses all the senses to describe Celia's life. What does your life look, sounds, smell, taste, and feel like? What are the ways racism impacted Celia’s life? How did she deal with it? What connections can you make to people of color’s experiences today? Compare and contrast the book and the play. What was the same and what was different? Why do you think they made these changes? What books would you like to see as a play? What do you know about, and what do you wonder about, now that you’ve seen live theater? What do you know about the job of an actor? Would you like to try it?

“I have fulfilled my father’s wish to be a teacher as, through my music, I teach generations of people about my culture and the happiness that is found in just living life. As a performer, I want people to feel their hearts sing and their spirits soar.” -- Celia Cruz

For more information, please see the National Museum of American History's online exhibit "¡Azúcar! The Life and Music of Celia Cruz" at https://s.si.edu/2GsIJvh and also monicabrown.net. Activity Ideas (before and after the performance): Read My Name Is Celia: The Life of Celia Cruz/Me Llamo Celia: La Vida De Celia Cruz, by Monica Brown to the class. Discuss what you might see in the play. Note characters and plot elements to look for. Return to this list after the performance. Have students write and/or draw reviews of the show. Have them include what they liked, what they did not like, what parts they remember the best, and what they think of the performers. Have students step inside a character from the play. Have them think and/or write about what that character feels, knows about, believes, and cares about. Have the students become that character and talk about who they are and what they are experiencing. Copy images from the book My Name Is Celia and have students put them in sequence. Ask them to retell the story in their own words, using expressive vocabulary and dramatic vocalization. They can even record their narration or perform it for others. Have students in small groups create tableaux of important scenes in the story. A tableau is a living picture. Groups of students pose themselves in a frozen scene, using their arrangement, facial expressions, and positions to convey the event and the characters. Students can also write what their character says in the scene. Have students make puppets of the characters in My Name Is Celia and act out a scene with a partner. Encourage students to act out their favorite scenes from the play, using improvised dialog. Ask them to show what the characters are feeling, not just what they are doing. Have students write about their experience watching My Name Is Celia using these sentence stems: “I used to think… Now I think…” Invent a headline for an article about My Name Is Celia that tells why it’s interesting or important. Learn and sing the songs of Celia Cruz. Make your own percussion instruments! Rhythm is an important part of salsa music. Create a conga line to salsa music with your students where they follow the leader’s movements on the beat. Students can write letters to the PAEC telling us their thoughts on the play. (We'd love to hear from you!)

¡Azúcar!: “¡Azúcar! was Celia Cruz’s battle cry. It literally means 'sugar.' It was her way of energizing and injecting the music with that extra serving of s my ing i sabor [flavor]. It was also the way she made the Sing as “ It h life. my been music her own. Sugar is an essential agricultural ays alw will e. It product in Cuba’s history, directly linked both to lif e my ys b alwa the vibrant diversity of Cuban culture and to the life.” Cruz elia violence of slavery. Celia Cruz’s throaty cry evoked -- C those associations.” -- National Museum of American History Recommended Reading: Aligned Standards: My Name Is Celia: The Life of Celia Cruz/Me Llamo Celia: La Vida Theater Anchor Standards, De Celia Cruz, by Monica Brown Responding 7: Perceive and Celia Cruz, Queen of Salsa, by Veronica Chambers analyze artistic work; 8: The Life of Celia/La Vida de Celia, by Patty Rodríguez Interpret intent and meaning Oye, Celia!, by Katie Sciurba in artistic work; 9: Apply Me, Salsa Dance? Can You Imagine Learning How to SALSA criteria to evaluate artistic DANCE in 60 Minutes?, by Michael Hickman work. Goodbye, Havana! Hola, New York!, by Edie Colón Theater Anchor Standards, Cultural Traditions in Cuba, by Kylie Burns Connecting 10: Synthesize Mama Does the Mambo, by Katherine Leiner and relate knowledge and Feel the Beat: Dance Poems That Zing From Salsa to Swing, by personal experiences to make Marilyn Singer art; 11: Relate artistic ideas and American Latin Music: Rumba Rhythms, Bossa Nova, and the works with societal, cultural, Salsa Sound, by Matt Doeden and historical context to World of Music: Latin America and the Caribbean, by Andrew deepen understanding. Solway Common Core ELA, Key Ideas and Details: Read closely to determine what the text says explicitly and to make logical inferences from it. Determine central ideas or themes of a text and analyze their development; summarize the key supporting details and ideas. Analyze how and why individuals, events, or ideas develop and interact over the course of a text. Common Core ELA, Integration of Knowledge and Ideas: Integrate and evaluate content presented in diverse media and formats. Analyze These materials are solely for educators' non-commercial use. how two or more texts address similar themes or Remember: topics. Social Studies, History 4.1: Watching live theater isn't like going to a Understands historical movie because the performers can hear chronology; 4.2: Understands you! Please don't distract them, but do and analyzes causal factors laugh when something is funny, cry that have shaped major events in history; 4.3: when something is sad, cheer when Understands that there are something is awesome, and clap at the multiple perspectives and end. Show the actors you appreciate interpretations of historical their hard work and help everyone have events; 4.4: Uses history to a good time! understand the present and plan for the future.

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