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TEEM players of PS 15 flourish in SE Queens

By Adam Kramer

This is the question Claudia Aldamuy tries to answer in her play, “Trial of the Big Bad Wolf.”

“We, I say, we are prepared to reveal the truth,” said Foghorn Leghorn, head of the wolf's defense team.

Aldamuy's play was performed by the third, fourth and fifth graders of PS 15 at 121-15 Lucas St. in Springfield Gardens Friday and Saturday. The students were part of her after-school theater arts program TEEM, which is an acronym for “Teach, Empower, Enlighten and Motivate.”

Aldamuy and her daughter Crystal created the program because declining school budgets have forced the cuts in extracurricular and after-school activities. She designed the program to fill the void created in the school system due to the budget crunch, she said.

Aldamuy said the group got its start at her home, which was a favorite after-school hangout for the neighborhood kids, and she saw a need for a creative outlet so that the children could express themselves.

The not-for-profit, youth-oriented theater and arts program was started in 1996 and, according to Aldamuy, is the only after-school program of its kind in School District 29. The organization received a $7,000 grant from the Queens Council of the Arts on Dec. 18.

TEEM produces two musicals and two plays a year at PS 15 and IS 192, which is at 132-55 Ridgedale St. in Springfield Gardens. The group's productions are a combination of plays and musicals, including original TEEM-written and produced productions.

“This is a wonderful person who is wonderful to the children,” said Roberta Mayerhoff, who has been a fourth grade teacher at the school for 21 years, pointing to Aldamuy. “Children who don't have success in the classroom have success here. It makes them see they are successful and see they can pick up and go one.”

The play written by Aldamuy – for her husband when he was a third-grade student teacher – uses characters from “Mother Goose Nursery Rhymes,” Walt Disney cartoons and Warner Brother cartoons. Some of the characters portrayed are Mother Goose, Goldie Locks, Henny Penny, Cinderella and Yosemite Sam.

The play, which takes place at the wolf's trial in a courtroom in Woodville where the crime was recreated, outside the courtroom and in the news studio, focuses on whether the wolf is innocent or guilty.

According to the wolf's version of the crime, he is innocent of any wrongdoing. He said he went to the pigs' homes to borrow a cup of sugar to bake a cake for his granny, but a severe cold caused him to sneeze. The force of the sneeze blew the pigs' homes down.

At the end of the trial a deadlocked jury asked the audience for help and the more than 100 second and third grade students watching the dress rehearsal found the wolf guilty.

Aldamuy said TEEM auditions children who want to participate in the program, which meets three times a week each semester and accepts between 25 and 40 kids, depending on the production.

“Each production is a 12-week program in which TEEM counselors teach the children all aspects of theater production,” she said.

The children who participate in TEEM get the opportunity to experience something special and their comments about TEEM highlight the experience.

Nia Price, 10, a fifth grader who plays the Honorable Mother Goose, was excited to be in a TEEM production for the first time. Smiling ear to ear, she said her experience with TEEM was great and helped her to decide that she wants to act when she grows up.

“TEEM is great to meet friends,” said Lisa Beazer, 10, the play's production assistant. Aldamuy described the fifth grader who was full of energy and constantly bounced around as an “awesome kid.”

Grandma Wolf, Angel Alston, and Breean Bowen-Allen, Cinderella, both 8 and in the third grade, said in unison that TEEM has taught them to “work hard and work together.”

“I have found over the years of doing this program that kids are kids,” Aldamuy said. “When I brought the program to 192, people said 'the kids were bad so bad.' They are not – kids are kids – they are cool.”