SANTA PAULA : Actors Inspire Imagination in Students

Diana Tanaka dressed 6-year-old Stephanie Navarro in a white long-sleeve shirt, tied a long rope around the little girl’s waist, and placed make-believe floppy ears and a long, white trunk on Stephanie’s head.

“Does she look like an elephant now?” Tanaka asked an audience of first- and second-graders gathered at the cafeteria at Glen City School in Santa Paula.

“Yes, she does!” replied the youngsters as they laughed at Stephanie who moved awkwardly in her new costume.

“Now, Stephanie,” Tanaka said, as she guided the girl to the front of the stage, “you are a magical, white elephant that can fly. You have just landed in a beautiful garden. Use your imagination so you can see the trees and the flowers.”

Tanaka, was one of three actors who told stories through acting and imagination to about 600 children at Glen City School on Friday.

The “We Tell Stories” program sends groups of actors from the Los Angeles Music Center’s Education Division throughout Southern California. The troupes uses literature, mythology and international folklore to entertain and educate.

The theme of the three stories that Tanaka and her colleagues told the youngsters was “ancient wisdom,” a collection of exotic, sometimes charming and simple tales about many people and places in the Far East.

This was the first time the group performed for the children at Glen City, said Marsha de Lao, a teacher at the school who organized the program.

“Our goal is to expose children to a series of experiences that will give them a sense of the Asian culture,” said Lao, explaining that the school is focusing on Asia this year. The troupe fascinated the youngsters with its tale of a young bug, “Cutie The Cockroach,” who wanted to find a husband. She feared that no one would want to marry her because “they think we’re disgusting,” said Tanaka, who played the title character.

So to disguise her identity, the cockroach put on a Halloween costume and went into town. There, Mr. Lion and Mr. Bee asked her to marry them, but she refused because they were not right for her, she said.

Then she was approached by Mr. Cockroach, who said she looked “weird” in her costume. When she took off her disguise, Mr. Cockroach proposed.

At the end of the hourlong show, 7-year-old Jose Luiz Ponteo said he most liked the character of the nosy neighbor in the elephant tale “because she wanted to know everything and because she couldn’t keep a secret.”