ERVING — It was up to students at Erving Elementary School to solve the mystery of the missing red crayon.
In the school’s first play since before the pandemic, 41 students from kindergarten to sixth grade performed “Toy Story: The Great Red Crayon and Slinky Dog Rescue!” on Friday.
“It’s this really nice outlet for kids to showcase their creativity, showcase their talents,” said Elizabeth Desorgher, who runs the Bridge for Resilient Youth in Transition (BRYT) program at the school and helped direct the play. “My face hurts because I had a big smile the whole time.”
Donning the signature costumes of the “Toy Story” crew, from Jessie’s red cowboy hat to Buzz Lightyear’s wings, the young actors searched for the missing red crayon. After finding it, the toys realized that Slinky Dog was left in an Erving Elementary School classroom and they snuck into the school to rescue the stray toy.
With help from a few teachers and paraprofessionals, students crafted the storyline, script, costumes and set themselves. Sixth graders Zoë Seymour, Jameson Warsawski and Emma Reardon led the cast and crew through the creative process.
According to Principal Beth Gannon, having students at the helm of the production represented an important shift from past performances.
“If they’re going to own and enjoy arts — not just theater, but all of the arts — then they have to be the ones who are really taking charge of it and feeling empowered to be a part of it,” Gannon said. “It can’t be like, ‘This is our vision,’ it has to be [that] they have the authority to create their own vision and then to see it come to fruition on stage.”
Since September, the 41 children have been meeting twice a week after school to practice their lines and craft the costumes and sets in a true collaboration, Desorgher said.
“It was nice to have the experience of doing the play and hanging out with my friends,” said sixth grader Grace Myers, who played Jessie.
“The camaraderie was a big part of it,” added her older sister Makaela Myers, who drove almost two hours from Boston for the five-minute play.
Vehicles filled every corner of the elementary school parking lot. Families and friends of the actors and artists backstage cheered in the gymnasium, bouquets in hand, when the children took a bow and the curtains closed.
“They were listening to each other, and helping each other out if they forgot a line, and they just became this little family, like a little ‘Toy Story’ family,” Desorgher said of the students involved in the play. “They’ll remember this.”