Issue date: 4/9/09 Section: News

Hannah Brinson, a freshman theatre arts major, plays a new mascot with first-graders from Monroe Elementary School in Casey after "The Commedia: The Princess and the Pea" performance in Doudna Fine Arts Center Wednesday. (Alycia Rockey/The Daily Eastern News)

For the first time in its history, the Children's Theatre program at Eastern will now have its own image and mascot.

The mascot made its debut last Saturday at the first of two performances of "The Commedia: The Princess and the Pea" for general audiences.

Hannah Brinson, a freshman theatre arts major, plays the mascot, which will serve not only as the new clownish face of the Children's Theatre, but will also play the role of audience ice-breaker.

"It's basically my part to go out and get the kids excited about theater," Brinson said. "Not really riled up, just to get some of the energy out so they're not sitting out there tense in the theater."

The idea for the mascot came from John Oertling, theatre department chair and director of "The Commedia: The Princess and the Pea."

Oertling described the mascot as "not the traditional type of clown, more of a commedia kind of clown."

This means that the big red nose and flamboyance of traditional clowns is replaced with a look inspired by the Italian street theater from hundreds of years ago.

The mascot is unnamed as of now, but if all goes according to plan, that will change soon.

"One of the things we're asking the children for is to come up with a name for the clown," Oertling said. "In the playbill, there is a picture of the clown, and they can color it and hopefully the classes can go home and name it."

In accordance with the play's theme of playing off of the audience rather than to them, the mascot's part was changed to better suit the older crowd.

"We changed most of what happened on stage for the adult audience," Brinson said. "We have a different, longer version for the children's show in the week. We actually have more of a 'stand-up, everybody-move-around' thing. We weren't sure how the adults would respond to that."

Similar to how the mascot changes performance to performance, it will also change year to year.

Oertling said the student playing the mascot will be different at each Children's Theatre production.

"It will provide an image," Oertling said. "We do a children's tour, and I can see this clown traveling with them to help introduce the plays and talking about what the theater is."


Doug T. Graham can be reached at 581-7942 or at dtgraham@eiu.edu.

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