Grimm Fairy Tales are indeed grim. Grandmas get eaten, apples get poisoned, children get fattened up for supper… But it doesn’t have to be that way. At ReadAloudPlays.com we’ve taken one of Grimm’s most disturbing tales and turned it into something quite delightful.

In the original story called, “The Mouse, the Bird, and the Sausage,” three roommates (yes, Sausage is one of them) have a happy and contented life until Bird meets another fowl who convinces him that he’s doing too much of the hard work. He goes back and demands change, which results in the sausage getting eaten by a dog, the mouse getting boiled in their kettle, and the bird drowning in a well. Imagine having your third graders enact that!

We couldn’t—so we rewrote it.  And now, having just produced it with a small group of fifth graders, I’m kind of thinking it may just be the best play we offer!  Read on to find out how to view our recording of it!

Our version calls for music support, that is, each character has a “walk up” song. With some guidance from me, the students selected pieces such as Who Let the Dogs Out for Dog’s entrance (of course they did!), and a slice of Pavarotti for our Italian Sausage, and for the crows, a German punk hit by Rammstein. Along with some simple but clever costuming and a few props, the play was engaging from beginning to end.

My dog actor did a good job of learning her lines and delivering them in Dog’s deadpan, aloof manner, but she’s shy and unassuming. I wanted her to enter the performance all frisky-like, to jump around the audience, to sniff first graders, but she just couldn’t do it. That is, not until I got her a squeaky dog toy shaped like a bone!  You can watch her and her fellow thespians perform the play on my public school site, The Daily Platypus. The simple recoding comes via a helpful parent (my Ipad decided to quit midway through the first act). You’ll see how each character entered and how our version remains faithful to the Grimms while being a blast to perform. To give you even more insight, we also recorded several important scenes without the audience. You’ll find them at DailyPlatypus.org as well.

The “walk-up” music we used includes Kali Flowers by Chris Joss for Mouse, Build a Nest by Earth, Wind & Fire for Bird, and Pavarotti’s Saint Lucia for Sausage. We also used Sehnsuct by Rammstein for Crow and the afore mentioned Who Let the Dogs Out for Dog. We used Stan Kenton’s morose version of Saint Lucia for Mouse’s boiling scene, and we reprised Kali Flowers for our conclusion. The music was edited for length in Audacity, but your sound person could simply fade out or pause each tune during your show. And don’t forget, you can select any music you want!

We decided to make all our sets black with silver outlines, which made for a cool Grimm-like essence. Our DIY paper masks came from Etsy sellers. The most challenging component of the play (aside from getting young actors to project their voices), was creating a costume for Sausage. It was well worth the extra effort. Here we are almost a week later and younger kids are still approaching the girl who played Sausage and saying, “Sausage, you’re alive?” and then telling her how great she is. She and the rest of the cast have all become celebrities!

Your students can experience the joy of celebrity too!  The Mouse, the Bird, and the Sausage, along with seventy other exceptional readers theater scripts, are available on our TeachersPayTeachers storefront. Each one has been carefully crafted by real humans and then kid-tested by real kids. Plus, they come with teacher notes, comprehension activities, and limited performance rights.

Happy directing!