Midwest School Assembly Performer Acts Out in Pennsylvania

School assembly audiences across the Midwest and on the East Coast are likely familiar with a great school assembly performer from Mobile Ed Productions named Robert Pirtle. Robert comes to us from Memphis, Tennessee and is a multitalented individual who offers schools a variety of school assemblies including Bodyworks (a program on human anatomy), The Magic of Science, Martin Luther King and Frederick Douglas. However, Robert is also a very skilled mime and carries our two mime based programs Young Authors Day (Creative Writing) as well as Mime Time a simple exploration of the entertainment and cultural arts wonders inherent in the practice of classical mime.

Robert was recently touring his school assemblies through the Midwest and found himself performing his Young Authors Day school assembly at Meridian Elementary in Butler, Pennsylvania. A reporter from the local newspaper was there and filed this report:

It's mime time
Laughs accompany lesson
By Sandy Pontius
Eagle Staff Writer 

 Meridian Elementary School students got to exercise their imaginations Thursday. Students at an all-school assembly were introduced to the art of mime and then wrote stories for silent performances.

 The 440 kindergarten through sixth grade students laughed out loud at the antics of Robo the Mime. Unbeknownst to them, they received a writing lesson, too.

 “We were looking for something different,” Tim Sisinni, principal, said. “We wanted something to benefit everyone. Who knows? We might develop an author or playwright out of something as little as this.”

 Robo, who is known as Robert Pirtle of Memphis, Tenn., trained in classical mime, in the tradition of Marcel Marceau. He gave the children some writing instruction between performances.

 “Stories need to have three Ps and an S,” he said. “A person, a place, a problem and a solution.”

 He showed the children what he meant in the story “A Sticky Situation,” when he played a fellow who tried to get gum off his shoe and out of his hair. 

 When third grader Nathaniel Cornibe tried to help, he became stuck, too. He and Pirtle were unstuck after a lot of tugging and pulling.

 Pirtle told the children to have no more than three characters in a story. He played each one by making a 360-degree turn and changing his expressions and mannerisms.

 Pirtle demonstrated that technique in a story called “The Dancing Janitor.” He played two people, a janitor who thought he danced unseen, and a colleague who saw him and laughed.

 In other skits, like one about a patient avoiding a shot at a doctor's office, he moved surprisingly fast, changing characters in a split second.

 The assembly was recommended to Sisinni by the school's Parent Teacher Organization.

 “We fund it,” said Erin Linnon of Meridian, who led the PTO effort. “It's so hard to find an assembly that's geared toward writing.”

 In visits to each classroom afterward, Pirtle steered the students toward storylines that lent themselves to mime.

 Jacob Keene, a fifth grader, came up with a winner. He told the story of a nervous bowler who shook when he put on his shoes, dropped a too-heavy ball on his foot, hit himself in the head with one that was too light, but made a strike with a ball the right weight.

Creative writing is always something difficult to get kids excited about but Robert and the Young Authors Day school assembly are able to do so in a manner that not only works but also shows kids a really fun time. Robert is currently on the East Coast and available to schools in New Jersey, New York, Eastern Pennsylvania, New England, Maryland and Northern Virginia. But will be back in the Midwest and available to schools in Ohio, Indiana and Illinois as a treat to close out the year in May.

Here is additional information about Pennsylvania school assemblies.