Produced by the Children’s Museum of Richmond
The Genworth Foundation Family Area is brought to you through the generous coordination of the Children’s Museum of Richmond. This special interactive area features a Family Stage, plus craft and game areas. The Family Stage showcases talented performers from Richmond and around the Nation. From puppeteers to clowns to musicians of every type, come enjoy the various cultural traditions, crafts and games from around the world.
2008 Genworth Foundation Family Area Special Guests
Glass Harmonica Player
Dean Shostak is a nationally acclaimed touring glass harmonica player, who has been featured on many popular shows, including PBS, Good Morning America, Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood and more. He began his music career in Colonial Williamsburg, VA at age 14 performing violin in the Music Teacher’s Shop. After college, Dean began exploring some of the more unusual instruments that were popular in the 18th century including the pocket violin and hurdy gurdy.
In 1991, Dean became involved in the revival of the rare and beautiful glass armonica, also know as glass harmonica, invented by Benjamin Franklin in 1761. The glass harmonica consists of glass bowls, mounted one inside the other and then tuned by size, with a cork on a metal spindle. By moistening his fingers, Dean rubs the exposed rims of the glasses to produce beautiful sounds. Jefferson, Mozart and Beethoven are only a few of the famous men associated with the armonica. Today, there are only eight glass armonica players in the world. Instead of using an electric motor to spin the glasses, Dean is the only glass armonica player since the 18th century to use a flywheel and foot treadle as Benjamin Franklin originally designed.
Dean’s solo recordings have received critical acclaim. His children’s recording, Colonial Fair has been named “Notable Children’s Recording of the Year” by the American Library Association. Recently, Dean traveled to Texas to make a recording entitled Davy Crockett’s Fiddle using the actual fiddle owned and played by Davy Crockett. His latest CD, World Glass, includes music and instruments come from all over the world.
Singer/Songwriter/Performer
Bob Zentz is a great songwriter and performer, who began performing professionally in Norfolk, Virginia, in 1962. Mr. Zentz has played with "The Troubadours," with James Lee Stanley. and was a founding member of The College of William & Mary's "Minutemen" singers. In 1966, Bob began a two-year stint as a sonar man in the U.S. Coast Guard, aboard the cutter CGC Sebago. He took a banjo & guitar along and the chanteys and tunes of working on the water came alive for him. During this time his songwriting took him to Hollywood, as a songwriter for the Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour.
After the 1971 San Fernando earthquake literally shook him out of bed, Bob packed up and returned home to Norfolk, to create Ramblin' Conrad’s Guitar Shop & Folklore Center – a special place for people who loved traditional music and acoustic sounds as much as he did. He named it for the man who embodied his ideal of the folk singer - the late Norfolk country singer William Conrad Buhler. It served as a concert venue that brought many of the world's finest folk musicians to Hampton Roads.
Over the years, Bob participated in many folk ventures, near and far. He created and ran the "Old Dominion Folk Festival and became a fixture at the Virginia State Fair, appearing for many years as resident performer in the Heritage Village. He appeared on PBS's "A Prairie Home Companion" in 1982.
As a performer, Bob is a prolific musician, playing several dozen instruments in a repertoire of more than 2,000 songs on his recordings and frequent live appearances. He spends much of his traveling-performing time in maritime museums and on ships, from New Zealand to Finland. As a songwriter he is celebrated by fans and peers alike; dozens of performers have covered his original compositions, three of which have been published in "Rise Up Singing," Sing Out Magazine's award-winning community songbook.
Bob is dedicated to a life of presenting, performing and introducing traditional music and its derivatives to listeners of all kinds.
Ship “Models in Bottles” Making
Jim Goodwin began building models of airplanes and boats in his teens in Charlotte, NC. As a professional geologist he worked for the oil and gas drilling industry for over 20 years. About nine years ago in his down time, he began exploring the world of making ships in bottles.
Now, researching, carving, sanding and painting the one of a kind ships, lighthouses and planes that end up in bottles of all shapes and sizes is a time intensive labor of love for Jim. His primary focus is recreating vessels related to the Carolinas, from 1585 to present. He particularly enjoys making Colonial and 1812 War period vessels including large, mantle-piece models. His interest in maritime history inspires Jim to research the story behind each of the ships he builds. Each model has the vessel’s history on the bottle’s base. His work can be seen in Museums and at festivals throughout the Southeast.
Jim’s fans always want to know how he gets his ships in the bottles. Jim’s answer is “Everything is made outside the bottle.” All the parts are engineered to carefully fit through the bottle mouth. He builds each hull from Carolina red cedar. It takes him three or four hours to build a 2-masted schooner with a lighthouse in a bottle. Don’t miss Jim’s amazing work at this year’s festival.
Drums No Guns
Youth percussion ensemble
Richmond, VA
Ram Bhagat directs Drums No Guns, a performing arts organization that promotes youth non-violence in the Richmond area. The organization utilizes the power of rhythm to strengthen individuals and communities and to inspire youth to build self-confidence and explore creative expression. As a chemistry teacher, Ram created the educational program “Science and Artistic Perception” that incorporates drumming, drama and dancing into the school curriculum. At the festival, a team of high school-aged advanced percussionists in Drums No Guns will lead hands-on drumming workshops for children and families in the Family Area. They will also perform on the Family Stage with a little help from local belly dancers, DJs and bucket drummers.
Tamara and the Shadow Puppet Theatre of Java
Indonesian shadow puppetry
Northport, Long Island, New York
The traditional art of shadow puppetry, wayang kulit (why-young-coo-lit), dates back nearly 1,000 years on the island nation of Indonesia. Shadow Masters called dalangs traveled from village to village, entertaining people with epic tales of love and war – a 10th century version of the soap opera. They used intricately carved and painted flat rod puppets made of buffalo hide to play the parts of brave princes, evil brutes and willful heroines. The puppets' shadows danced and fought across a cotton screen illuminated from behind by an oil-burning lamp. Always accompanied by a gamelan orchestra and performed in temple yards or village squares, the average wayang play lasts from sunset to dawn without intermission.
The shadow play of wayang kulit (literally “shadow leather”) is rooted in the ancient belief that ancestors’ spirits return to the earth each night, inhabiting the puppets’ shadows. Thus the audience could experience the portrayal of the revered spirits on an illuminated story cloth. The stories transmit religious and moral lessons, mythology and ancient history. The Shadow Master speaks for each of the puppets and makes them dance, fly, wander, fight, grieve and love, retelling ancient Hindu stories or Javanese legends where good always triumphs over evil in the end. Today, the art form serves a vehicle for the telling of new stories with contemporary themes.
Shadow Master Tamara Fielding brings this ancient Javanese tradition to the modern Western world. She masterfully creates a cultural bridge from East to West, making this fascinating art form understandable and accessible. In a male-dominated art form, Fielding is the first Javanese-born female dalang to perform wayang kulit professionally outside Indonesia. Unlike dalangs of old, she uses a bright white halogen light to create her shadows. And most of her performances last less than an hour – not all night – and include an informative introduction to wayang kulit and its history.
Fielding was born on the island of Java to an Indonesian mother and a Dutch father, and grew up speaking both languages. It was as a child on her family’s rubber plantation that she first watched an all-night wayang kulit performance. Traditionally, only men and boys were allowed behind the dalang's screen. But 8-year-old Tamara could not resist slipping behind it, where she watched with awe as the Shadow Master manipulated his puppets and spoke for all of them. She was mesmerized. From that moment, the "magic and stories of shadow theatre were locked inside me,” says Fielding. This almost mystical experience proved to be a catalyst in the development of her later artistic life.
But the road to the realization of her artistic and cultural heritage was fraught with hardship and trauma. Fielding’s own life story is as dramatic and complex as the art form she practices, and her journey from Java to the U.S. is woven with the threads of war, politics, love, remembrance and home.
During World War II, Indonesia was a Dutch colony called Dutch East Indies and Indonesians were fighting the Dutch for independence, aided in this struggle by the Japanese soldiers who occupied the islands. During the war, Fielding’s family was imprisoned by the Japanese as people of mixed race. After surviving three years in a concentration camp for Javanese women, she faced prosecution for her Dutch heritage when the Dutch colonial empire collapsed. Her family fled to Holland with other refugees when Tamara was 12. As a young adult, she became a drama student in Paris and appeared in the notable films “Lust for Life” (starring Kirk Douglas and Anthony Quinn) and “Trapeze”(starring Burt Lancaster).
Following her childhood dream, Fielding immigrated to the U.S. She settled in New York, pursued her acting career, eventually marrying and raising a family. Some years later, she began playing with the old wayang puppets given to her by relatives many years before, and realized that she needed to share this beautiful expression of her culture and heritage. Now, over two decades later, Tamara is an international performing artist with over 400 puppets. Her varied cast of shadow puppets includes the shy princess Sinta, her brave husband Rama, a ten-armed bully, named Dasa Muka, as well as monkeys, tigers, elephants, birds, snakes and other animals.
The Shadow Puppet Theatre is accompanied by a family gamelan orchestra under the direction of I Nyoman Saptanyana includes his wife Ari Candrawati and their two sons. Eleven-year-old Putu Bagus Krisna Saptanyana and his younger brother Kadek Bhayu Saptanyana will also perform the traditional "Baris Dance" from the island of Bali.
JAMinc
Enjoy traditional music from a variety of Richmond bands. Meet Richmond area musicians and learn how their instruments create sounds.
MAKE AND TAKE ACTIVITIES
Music Shakers
Make a shaker and use the instrument you create to play along with performers in the family area and throughout the festival.
Watercolors
Let the artist in you and your little one surface while you paint a watercolor inspired by the festival’s beautiful views of the James River
River Hats
Transform an ordinary paper bag into a special hat that children can decorate and around the Folk Festival
Boats
Decorate a wooden boat and then let it set sail in the CMoR Waterplay Exhibit
Turtle Puppets
Make a turtle puppet and then put on your own performance in the CMoR Puppet Theatre.
INTERACTIVE ACTIVITES
Water Glass Music Laboratory
Experiment with creating your own water glass music sounds with Dean and Abigail Shostak
Puppet Stage
After making a turtle puppet, put on a live show in the CMoR Puppet Theatre
Write Your Name in Another Language
Join the Asian American Association of Central Virginia and write your name in another language on a bookmark
Stenciled Rice Bags & Button Spinners
Richmond’s Quilter’s Guild will be on hand to help you create button spinners and rice bags.
Quilt Block Matching Challenge
Children will match cards with the names of the appropriate Quilt block
19th Century Games
The National Park Service will take kids back in time to play games from the 1800’s. Learn to play cup and ball, French hoops, jump rope, cat’s cradle and the ‘gee-haw whimmy stick’
River Life
Explore James River aquatic life with VCU Life Sciences Outreach Education
Turtles
Meet a live turtle and learn all about them through the James River Parks System
Fish Prints
Create a fish print with the James River Association
Chesapeake Bay Foundation
Learn about critters in the Chesapeake Bay