Over the next five months, we are excited to take you “Behind the Scenes” by sharing with you video updates about the creative process of The Lion, The Witch & The Wardrobe. The videos will focus on different aspects of the production, from music and choreography to set design and puppetry. Our first video update focuses on the development week during early January at The Washington Ballet studios. Click

While the show’s creative team (made up of artistic leaders from both Imagination Stage and The Washington Ballet) has been working for many months to create the libretto and music, the January development week marked an important test for the material. After sitting around a table and seeing every moment of the production in our minds, we were finally able to gather the artists together in a week of intensive rehearsals to watch how the choreography, music, scenes, and puppets would all combine in order to tell the story of four children who famously find a magical world on the other side of a wardrobe.

 We had chosen to shape our version around the character of Edmund, the archetypical troubled “middle” child who cannot find his rightful place in his family. Through his journey into Narnia and his interactions with The White Witch and Aslan, Edmund confronts his demons and eventually finds peace and unity with his siblings. Edmund’s story and that of the other three children are embodied in our production by two performers for each character—a dancer and an actor/singer. We discovered during our rehearsals that this technique proves highly effective. Through costuming and gesture, we see that the audience will clearly understand that the two performers are trading off the story-telling from scene to scene in order to express the children’s inner lives and feelings, as well as what they say and do in the story.

 Another success was the work puppeteer and set designer Eric van Wyk has done with his prototype for the 8-foot-tall and 8-foot-long puppet of Aslan. Eric animates the puppet with two puppeteers inside the lion and a third positioned to one side operating his head. It took many hours of practice to create a believable walking and running gait for the puppet. But by the end of the week, our giant lion was rearing up, leaping about the stage, and performing a death scene to rival any Hamlet!

 As is always the case, the experience of seeing part of the play more fully realized and “on its feet,” inspires and clarifies the production ideas for the creative team in the next phase of the show’s creation. The set, costume, and lighting designers are now sketching out their ideas with a good sense of the practical as well as the aesthetic needs of the script in mind. We will be using Skype to bring everyone back together over the next couple of months as we hammer out the final choices for the production. Most of all, I think the benefit of this particular development week has been to demonstrate to the 14-strong performing company that they are now part of a magnificent project, one that allows them to tell an epic story with an unprecedented range of expression. We all feel as though our “The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe” is well on its way to being a WOW for children and families in the metro region this summer.

 Please check back next month for more updates on this exciting collaboration.

 - Janet Stanford, Artistic Director

The Lion, The Witch & The Wardrobe, June 20-August 12, 2012
Tickets and Show Schedule

Reprinted with permission by the New Jersey Performing Arts Center’s Arts Education Department

Vice President: Sandra Bowie
Assistant Vice President: Sanaz Hojreh
Associate Director of Performance: Verushka Spirito
Writer: Arthur Wilson
Editor: Linda Fowler

P.Nokio, a hip-hop musical written and directed by Psalmayene 24 for Imagination Stage, is a clever nod to Carlo Collodi’s The Adventures of Pinocchio (1883) and some of its original characters: the puppet of the title; Geppetto, a carpenter; the Fairy with Turquoise Hair; Fox and Cat; and the Innkeeper.

In P.Nokio, however, the boy puppet is a computer-generated figure come to life and G.Petto is a video game designer. The Graffiti Fairy’s magic is manifested by spray paint; Fox and Cat are disguised as muggers to defraud P.Nokio of his “street credits.”

P.Nokio is set in Hip-Hopia. The action begins with an audience call and response led by G.Petto to summon P.Nokio from a computer screen. (“He’ll be able to rhyme and dance … He’ll almost be real.”) When G.Petto realizes P.Nokio has jumped from the computer, his employment dilemma begins. The petulant Machine Master—G.Petto’s boss—arrives in a fanfare with his assistant, Crony, to view the design promised to bring him big cash!

Carrying a sacred “Book of Rhymes” presented to him by G.Petto, P.Nokio heads for The Old School to learn style, swagger and ways to help the community through hip-hop. In a series of comical raps, P.Nokio is pushed through a course of events that challenge his judgment, his ability to obey G.Petto, and his desire to stretch the truth. He plays hooky from The Old School and encounters a talking Fork in the road, whose alternate path tempts him toward Fun and the Land of Fools. As in the original story, when P.Nokio lies, his nose grows longer.

When G.Petto finds himself in danger of becoming Machine Master’s next profitable computer gimmick, P.Nokio learns about selflessness and forgiveness through a courageous act of sacrifice. This good deed, of a real boy, is accompanied by G.Petto’s words, “We all make mistakes … but it’s what we learn, and what we do after those mistakes, that count.”

P.Nokio: The result of rhyme and effort

As the playwright, director and actor in the title role of P.Nokio, Psalmayene 24 (a.k.a. Gregory Morrison) is a true triple-threat artist. Growing up in Brooklyn, he was immersed in hip-hop culture and was eager to combine it with his love of theater.

“Using a hip-hop aesthetic immediately makes the play relatable to the youth of today,” he says. “The rhythms and sounds of Hip-Hop reflect their pulse and energy.”

According to Psalmayene 24, there are three main lessons to P.Nokio. “A, you always have an opportunity to redeem yourself. We see this through P.Nokio’s journey in the play. B, unconditional love supports redemption. G.Petto exemplifies this as P.Nokio’s faithful father. And, C, when you are your authentic self, good things happen. When P.Nokio finally rhymes the truth in his heart, he is able to achieve transformation.”

P.Nokio is Psalmayene 24’s second premiere commissioned by Imagination Stage, a Maryland-based, nonprofit theatre arts organization that produces professional theater with an arts education focus. “My first project with Imagination Stage was Zomo the Rabbit: A Hip-Hop Creation Myth, an adaptation of a West African trickster tale,” he relates. “That experience, from conception to production to touring, was absolutely wonderful, so we decided to do another project together.”

A prominent figure in hip-hop theater, Psalmayene 24 (pronounced sal-may-any) performed at the first Hip-Hop Theater Festival in New York City. His solo play, Free Jujube Brown! appeared in the anthology Plays from the Boom Box Galaxy: Theater from the Hip-Hop Generation (Theatre Communications Group, 2009). “Psalm” was the co-writer and co-star of The Hip-Hop Nightmares of Jujube Brown and nominated for a Helen Hayes Award for his performance. His play Undiscovered Genius of the Concrete Jungle was commissioned by Arena Stage in Washington, D.C.

Psalmayene 24 also is founder of the folk-hop band PS24, which has opened for Erykah Badu and has performed frequently throughout the East Coast.

Two of his collaborators from Zomo are on board for P.Nokio. Musician Nick Hernandez is the composer and sound designer. Paige Hernandez, the choreographer, also plays the Graffiti Fairy. She is an advocate for hip-hop education and helps teachers understand and incorporate hip-hop culture into their curriculums. Also on the creative team are Ethan Sinnott (sets), Kendra Rai (costumes) and Andrew Griffin (lighting design).

“A brilliant person once said, ‘It takes a village to raise a play,’” says Psalmayene 24. “I couldn’t agree more.”

The real-life adventures of Pinocchio

Pinocchio’s coming of age exploits are probably best remembered by Walt Disney’s legendary animated film of 1940, Pinocchio, which uplifted audiences with an Oscar winning score (“When You Wish Upon a Star”) and a benevolent plot line. As writer Rebecca West put it, “Disney followed adaptations (of Pinocchio) much more than the original—as he modified the sadism and violence in order to bring to the screen a lovable, cuddly Pinocchio.”

In the Disney version of Carlo Collodi’s The Adventures of Pinocchio (1883), the large cast of characters is pared down to a few well-drawn protagonists and antagonists who interact in a morality tale of good triumphing over evil. Contrasting Disney with Collodi, essayist Derek White reasons that “Pinocchio is not nearly the moralistic tale that Disney paints it to be—for Collodi’s Pinocchio is far from innocent, but is more of a Huck Finn type, most of the time a mean-spirited brat … and Geppetto is not exactly the provincial model citizen but lives in poverty, on the fringes.”

This tendency to reinvent the original has solidified Pinocchio’s longevity—the character endures after more than a century of creative transformations—and the story’s substance continues to attract artists such as Hip-Hop theater’s Psalmayene 24. Adaptations of the Pinocchio tale have entertained generations of youngsters and the original book still ranks among the best-selling children’s classics.

Pinocchio has been portrayed as a comical character in the Shrek films (2001-2010), as well as on Broadway in Shrek the Musical (2008). Spanish illustrator Salvador Bartolozzi depicted him in a weekly children’s publication, Pinocchio, in 1925. In addition, The Adventures of Pinocchio has been adapted for television and made into dozens of English-language films. Countless other versions span the globe, in Italian (Roberto Benigni in the 2002 movie Pinocchio), French, Russian, German, and Japanese. Myriad philosophical and thematic differences evolved while moving this allegorical tale forward, but even in our age of quick-changing invention, a constant remains: Pinocchio’s nose grows as he stretches the truth.

P.Nokio flips the original story by dressing it in four elements of hip-hop culture: bboying (dancing), graffiti writing, MC-ing (rapping), and DJ-ing. The show abounds with these elements. Director-playwright Psalmayene 24 describes his P.Nokio as “a mischievous, hip, digitally-designed man-child with a heart of gold and a fantastic ability to rap and dance.”

To establish the puppet’s state of aliveness at the beginning of the musical, he has P.Nokio jump from the computer screen and hide from G.Petto by slapping a lampshade over his head. In comparison, Collodi’s Pinocchio assumes life even before being fully carved into a puppet and speaks as each of his extremities is whittled into shape.

Psalmayene 24 says he was attracted to the traditional story of Pinocchio because “at its core, it is a story about redemption.” He and his collaborators discarded Collodi’s tragic ending (Pinocchio is hanged), but maintain the heart of the fable about a misfit who wanders off the path, yet discovers self-awareness through education and personal sacrifice.

“Pinocchio goes astray many times before he finally matures and becomes a real boy,” says Psalmayene 24. “Redemption is the universal, timeless and ageless human impulse that runs through the story. That’s what motivated me as I wrote my adaptation.”

Arthur T. Wilson, a poet, playwright and co-publisher of Attitude magazine, has served as a residency artist at NJPAC from ground-breaking to the present. He holds master’s degrees from New York University and the University of London.

P.Nokio: a Hip-Hop Musical, February 1-March 11.
Tickets and Show Schedule.

Julia Krebs Patterson plays Amelia Mouse (left). Jasmin Danielle Johnson plays Nellie Mouse (right).

I am extremely fortunate and grateful for the experience to help create, and perform in, some of our My first Imagination Stage productions (specifically for ages 1-5).  When I was asked to write a blog about my experience as Amelia Mouse in Mouse on the Move, the first thing that came to mind was the wonderful, and often funny, things I hear from our youngest patrons on a day-to-day basis.  I thought it would be fun to share some of my favorite early childhood theatre stories, some from Mouse on the Move (I can’t even believe I already have a plethora of them, seeing as how the show has only been open a week) and some from Wake Up, Brother Bear! when I played Sister Bear.  I enjoy bringing these anecdotes to my colleagues, and I am glad to share some of them with you. I will begin with one that is fresh in my mind– one of the sweetest and most endearing things I have seen in a long time.

 In Mouse on the Move, I take a short break from playing Amelia Mouse to puppeteer a southern belle of a Ladybug who has lost her babies.  During the story, her babies are blown from their house and “sneak” inside the children’s suitcases (each child receives a suitcase of props upon entering the theatre). The children must help bring the babies back to Ms. Ladybug and put them in her new nest: a glowing tree right outside the circle of the performance space.  Once we receive a baby (a little ladybug attached to a clothespin), we clip them to the tree and then encourage the children to go back to their seat. There was a little girl who, upon relinquishing her ladybug, couldn’t seem to go back to her seat.  Ms. Ladybug, in her sweet southern accent, said “Thank you for your help little mouse.  You can go back to your seat now.” The little mouse just stood and stared at the ladybug, smiling.  “Alright, little mouse; you have worked hard to give me back my baby, now it’s time to take a seat!”  Nothing; she just stood and stared.  Then, all of a sudden, she reached out and took Ms. Ladybug with both hands.  Closing her eyes, she slowly pulled Ms. Ladybug toward her and gave her a soft kiss on the nose.  Then, smiling at Ms. Ladybug, she turned and walked back to her seat.

 We like to call “play” the “work” of early childhood, and our youngest audience members take their job seriously! At one point in Mouse on the Move we match colored flowers.  The first flowers I match are two blue flowers.  I walk up to one blue flower, point at it and say, “blue.”  The child holding the flower responds “yes.”  I then take the flower, walk to the other blue flower in the theatre, point to it and say, “blue.” One day, anticipating a “yes,” I reached out to take the flower and heard, “purple.”  Purple?  I looked at the child holding the flower, and she was dressed in purple.  “Not blue?” I asked.  When the teacher coached her that the flower was blue, she opened her mouth and said, “Nope, not blue.  This flower is purple!”  A slight script change was called for on my part.  When comparing the flower colors, what came out was, “purplish blue, purplish blue. The same!”

In Wake Up, Brother Bear!, a pesky fish follows us through the seasons, taunting Brother Bear who can never seem to catch him for a delicious dinner.  At the very end of the show, the fish again appears. Brother Bear pulls him up out of the water with a fishing rod and is about to feast in celebration.  You can imagine the kinds of things we heard on a regular basis from the audience.  “Don’t eat him!” “Eat him!”  “Give it to your sister!” “He’s making it move!”  But there was one day that brought out two comments that I will always remember when I think of this show, and the spontaneity of early childhood theatre. One child shouted, “You got to cook it!”  Followed by another child, confiding in her mother, “He is not going to eat that fish raw.”

- Julia Krebs Patterson, Amelia Mouse and Early Childhood & Casting Coordinator

Tickets and a performance calendar for Mouse on the Move, can be found here.

What stood out to me the most was that the story wove together the real world and the imaginary using set. Animals in the world of Dr. Dolittle were made up of gas masks, gloves, rope, canteens and other war articles. This touch was magical and chilling. When a bird would fly across the sky, something would seem different about it. Maybe, just maybe it was a glove. When the fantastical Push Me Pull You creature was introduced, were its heads gas masks? It showed that the imaginary, jubilance still had a slight over shadowing of the ominous war lying in the background.

The characters had clear objectives which made the world so enhanced and believable. They used their bodies masterfully. Every animal had a variation that showed their transformation from human to animal. Lofting’s wife also played Polynesia. When she was human she held her hands folded together in front of her. She would have flowy , graceful, birdlike arms playing Polynesia, yet she still held her hands in the same way as the wife from time to time, showing her parallel in reality. This parallel and that of Lofting’s son show the conflict not only in the imaginary world, but in the actual world as well. A great example is that Lofting’s son and Dolittle have trouble relating as do Lofting and his son in real life. Dolittle and the boy work it through by the end of the story. This shows when Lofting and his son meet at the end of the play for a reason that you will only be able to find out if you come and see this enchanting musical show.

- Samantha Louise Noland, Student and Member of Acting Conservatory at Imagination Stage

The craziest experience that I have had thus far (and that I am currently taking part in) is running the soundboard for Dr. Dolittle! When I first came to Imagination Stage, my theatrical experiences included arts administration, acting, directing, and playwriting…but nothing technical. In fact, I was frightened of technical theatre. But on the first day of tech rehearsal for Dr. Dolittle, I bit the bullet, came ready to learn something new, and conquered my fear.

My first time at the soundboard I felt like my brain was on overload. There were so many knobs and buttons! Sound Designer Chris Baine soon calmed me down by explaining that each row of knobs is connected to one microphone, and that I should think of the soundboard in terms of the actors wearing each mic rather than viewing them as impending buttons of doom. This truly helped my non-technical brain understand my task at hand.

During each Dr. Dolittle performance I’m in the Lighting and Sound Booth—a room in between the left and right sides of the balconies in the theatre—where I sit at the soundboard and watch Dr. Dolittle from a bird’s eye view. The stage manager also sits in the booth and this is where she communicates with the soundboard operator (me!) and the deck captain (who helps out backstage during the show) via headset.  As the soundboard operator I am in charge of playing sound cues when the stage manager directs me to, and also all of the microphones that the actors wear. Every time that you hear music or the whinny of a horse in the distance, that’s me! Of course, there have been times where you might’ve heard the whinny of a horse when you were supposed to be hearing a song…that was also me. I have definitely made some mistakes along the way, but the entire cast and crew has been incredibly encouraging during my first foray into technical theatre.

I have currently seen Dr. Dolittle 30 times, and my favorite part changes with every show! There are certain musical numbers that I enjoy every time, such as “Everybody Wants to be a Pirate.” But just this morning, my favorite part ended up being the comedic bits between King Jolliginki and Melvin the guard. There are also parts that are technically challenging for me during every show, such as making sure that the actor playing the garden horse can be heard beneath his full-faced horse mask. Also, the actors are constantly taking off and putting on hats and other costume pieces that can very easily brush against their microphones, which causes a chaotic cacophony throughout the monitors. This makes me anxious, but it also keeps me on my toes during every performance!

Working on Dr. Dolittle has made me truly respect and appreciate everyone that works in technical theatre—especially the technical staff here at Imagination Stage. If I, as the soundboard operator, did not do my job, then the actors could not be heard and the audience would hear no music to accompany the story being performed on stage. And, if the other technical staff did not do their jobs, we wouldn’t have any of the wonderful performances that Imagination Stage offers. There would be no beautiful sets, costumes, or lighting effects for our audiences to enjoy.

I’m excited to see what other experiences and challenges are thrown my way during my year-long apprenticeship. But I know that Dr. Dolittle will definitely remain at the top of my list as one of the most fun and eye-opening opportunities that Imagination Stage has brought my way. I mean, it’s not every day that you can conquer a fear and have serious fun doing it at the same time!

- Katy Beth Cassell, Institutional Development Apprentice

At the Holiday Season, when most of us have the good fortune to gather as families and to count our blessings, let us also remember the extraordinary power of creativity and its special value in times of adversity.  It is the one human attribute that allows us to rise above life’s set-backs and to envision a better future. 

This season’s holiday offering at Imagination Stage, Dr. Dolittle, focuses on the creativity of Hugh Lofting, who invented his fanciful stories of high adventure and exotic beasts while mired in a muddy trench on the Western Front in 1917.  The play suggests that he rallied his men by creating a world of make believe and telling a story full of laughter, song, and puppetry.  The playwright imagines a world in which a pair of gloves is transformed into a sparrow with a guiding light, and a barbed wire fence twinkles like a Christmas tree. 

The backdrop of a World War I battlefield may seem an unlikely setting for a holiday musical, but this is not only true to the original circumstances of the author, but—we think—especially significant today with the drawdown of 40,000 American troops from Iraq happening right now, and many young service men and women returning to our communities.  Our theatrical version of Lofting’s classic novel, with its eccentric doctor who learns to talk to animals, should give parents a good way to talk to their children about military service.  For us this play honors the bravery of thousands of young American men and women who have put themselves in harm’s way over the last decade (and for hundreds of years) in defense of our democratic principles and ideals. 

Like the character of Hugh Lofting himself, in the script Imagination Stage is producing by Mark St. Germain and Randy Courts, many parents may believe that our children should be protected from all knowledge of war for as long as possible. Yet the fact remains that most of our theatre’s audience (who are between the ages of 4 and 10) was born—and has grown up in—a time of war for our country. And, their parents or grandparents may well have served in the First Gulf War, Vietnam, Korea, or World War II.  We think it’s important to let curious young minds know that in this life there are some battles that are worth fighting.  Our lives are defined, after all, by the challenges that we choose to take on and the battles we choose to fight—be they for country, for our fellow men, or for the planet. 

We cannot protect our children from all the sadness that haunts our world, but we can –and we must—inspire them to rise above it by sustaining their innate talent for creativity. Not merely to endure, but to triumph against all odds.

- Janet Stanford, Artistic Director

P.S. Check out our Family Guide for fun activities and talking points about the show! Or, view the Dr. Dolittle Show Program to read the Director’s Note and bios of the cast and crew.

As I began looking for actors for Aladdin’s Luck, I knew that I had only 3 actors in the show, at least two of which had to play multiple roles. Chris Wilson (who plays Aladdin) has done seven shows at Imagination Stage. I cast him when he first graduated from University of Maryland as Mowgli in Jungle Book. When we were having auditions for Aladdin’s Luck, Chris was actually out on tour with the Kennedy Center’s Bario Girrrl! He sent me a youtube audition for Aladdin’s Luck, and I told him I would wait for him to get back from his tour before making my final decision. I had already cast Katie deBuys who would play Leilah, the princess, but just to be sure, I asked Chris to come and read with Katie in order to ensure they played well together.  I am glad I waited for Chris because it turned out he was the right one for the role!  I love the fact that Chris is actually an adult, but he looks young enough to play a boy,  and he moves beautifully so I knew that he would give a great physicality to the role of Aladdin.

I had seen Katie deBuys in a wonderful play at Woolly Mammoth called In the Next Room. I thought she was excellent in that play and when she came to audition for Aladdin’s Luck, I recognized her from that performance. I knew she was the right person to be the female member of this cast, playing the Princess Leilah, the mother, and Aladdin’s best friend Omar. She has a wonderful facility for language, and I felt that she really knew how to speak the words of the script and make them sound natural but theatrically heightened. And, because she also moves well, I knew that she could play these many parts by subtly changing the way she moved as each person. While she loves being the princess in this play, she also claims to really like playing Aladdin’s friend Omar because it is a real challenge to play a boy!

And last but not least, I wanted to find someone to play the villain Alzarnati who was evil but also a bit funny. Michael Glenn was in our 2009 production of Lyle the Crocodile as the evil, Mr. Grumps. I thought that  he would have the right feel for the evil sorcerer in Aladdin’s Luck. Michael has performed in lots of theatres all over Washington, and I most recently saw him in the Pulitzer Prize winning Clyborne Park at Wooly Mammoth, this past summer. Mike has a wonderful, resonant deep voice that makes him perfect to play Alzarnati, but he also has a marvelous sense of comic timing. He is a very smart actor and approaches each scene from a very thoughtful point of view, thinking about all the circumstances that lead his characters to make the choices that they do.

We are having a wonderful time in rehearsal, figuring out the blocking, dancing, performing fight choreography, and working with playwright Janet Stanford, who is also the Artistic Director at Imagination Stage. We look forward to performing this show for our audiences Sept. 23-Oct. 30^th.

-Kate Bryer
Associate Artistic Director, Imagination Stage/Director, Aladdin’s Luck

In my adult life, the most significant example of my parents’ party influence can be seen in an annual Halloween party that my husband and I throw. We are now in our 12^th iteration and the parties have grown from 30 people to 150+ people in our smallish house.

So, when I joined the staff at Imagination Stage in July of 2009, I was thrilled that part of my job would be creating unique community engagement events that reflect the creativity we have on staff, on stage, and in our classrooms (in 2010, I worked on both a 1979 Dance Party and the Pirate Treasure Hunt for our 30^th anniversary). I couldn’t ask for better collaborators. Imagination Stage has some of the most fun, hardworking, thoughtful, and creative people I have ever encountered. This is a group that knows how to have serious fun (not just a tagline…we walk the walk).

This year, we are kicking off the Imagination Stage season with a new style of open house on September 10, 2011: ImagiFest. The goal is to get people excited about both our education and theatrical offerings for the coming year. We created an interdepartmental team to make this the best open house ever. Lilly, Chad, Scott, McKenzie, David, and I have been working on this event for more than three months. We’ve had good ideas, bad ideas, funny ideas, etc. In the end, we think we have come up with something appropriately outrageous to kick off our 32^nd year.

Riffing on the themes in Dr. Dolittle, we decided we need to have a safari through the building that takes you to all the exciting worlds of our theatre season. Kids will get a passport for travel, and we will go from the desert in Aladdin’s Luck, to Hip-Hopia from P.Nokio, to a land far away in Rapunzel, and lastly to Narnia from The Lion, The Witch & The Wardrobe. Each location will be an appropriately decorated for the environment (designed and fabricated by Jared Davis, local set-designer and my husband/party co-conspirator).

I have included a couple preliminary designs for the event. In addition to this safari, we have more traditional sample classes; previews of Aladdin’s Luck and a new early childhood piece, Mouse on the Move; a chalk art wall (inspired by the Graffiti Fairy in P.Nokio); behind-the-scenes tours; and more. If you would like to see a complete schedule, you can click HERE.

In my opinion, great events (for kids or adults) require a good balance between structure and free play.  I think we have struck that balance with ImagiFest and hope that this is an event we can, and will, repeat annually. Grab your pith helmet, binoculars, and imagination…an interactive adventure awaits you.

-Kate Taylor Davis, Director of External Relations

When I was a child, we had a toad who lived on our patio.  He, like all toads, was nocturnal and would begin to hop about searching for dinner as the sun set.  During the day, he would sleep.  However, during the day, I was awake. Thus, I would, on a fairly frequent basis, impolitely wake him up to say good morning or introduce him to my friends.  Wouldn’t you want to show off this guy to all your friends?  (This handsome toad lives in my sister’s garden.)

Want to pick him up? Toads do not bite, but they do have a natural defense system and will release their bladder into your hand should you try to pick them up, which of course you should not do as they truly prefer staying on the ground.  Mythbuster:  While toads do have warts – they are NOT contagious! You will never get a wart by touching a toad.

I loved having a toad living outside my home. Little did I know I was lucky! A great reason to have a toad on your patio or in your yard is that he likes to eat things like mosquitoes and other insects that might be irritating.  He can eat THOUSANDS.  If you have or want an organic backyard – the toad serves as a natural pesticide.

How can you attract a toad to your house? Here is a guide to the whys and hows of attracting a toad to your yard:  http://www.toadilytoads.com/gardentoads.html .  They do like to have a house (just like our Mr. Toad) and they look like this photo on the left.

If you want to see a toad NOW you can go to the Reptile Discovery Center at the National Zoo!  Of course, the ONLY and BEST toad for this summer is our MR. TOAD as he has fun every day with his friends here at Imagination Stage.

-Brett Ashley Crawford, Imagination Stage Managing Director