Dixfield Elementary School students competed at the state finals in Orono.
DIXFIELD – Here’s the deal: You’ve got 30 minutes to come up with a six-minute improvisational skit set to Chinese classical and Celtic music.

You’ve also got to make one or two musical instruments using cardboard, cardboard tubes, tinfoil, string, straws, spoons, duct tape, two-liter soda bottles, elastics or dried beans.

Then, you’ve got to add a characteristic to the mix, something such as dreamy, happy, sad, hot or cold.

That’s what seven third- and fourth-graders from Dixfield Elementary School faced earlier this month at the state Destination Imagination competition in Orono at the University of Maine.

And they did it with enough pizzazz, comedic talent and innate innocence to take second place, falling shy of first place and a trip to nationals in Tennessee by 30 points.

Third-grader Alexis Noyes said, “It was really, really amazing. We came in second place out of eight schools.”

“I thought they did very well,” said coach Pam Child. “They all came together as a team, and created a pretty comical family type skit, with a narrator introducing the scenes.”
On the upbeat
The Destination Imagination category in which the youths performed, was UpBeat Improv. Its focus was improvisational acting, music research and composition, design and construction of a musical instrument, theater arts, and teamwork.

The youths are third-graders Tyler Plante, Clifford Boynton and Noyes, and fourth-graders Joshua Turbide, Amelia Tacheny, Coral Howe and Makaila Statham. Coaches were Child and Pearl Snowman.

Prior to the regional competition at Edward Little High School in Auburn last month and the subsequent state meet, the team was given 10 types of music, from which they had to choose six.

At the competitions, Child said, teams had to shake and roll dice to determine which two music forms of the six would be the basis for their skit. The musical instruments they made also had to produce the music.

Every Thursday after school, they gathered to practice and study the six forms to develop skit strategies.
Hoping for rock ‘n’ roll
“Every time they practiced, they said, Let’s not get alpine or Chinese classical or Celtic.’ They would have liked to have had rock ‘n’ roll,” Child said.

But, at regionals they got alpine (yodeling) and Chinese classical. At the state meet, it was Celtic and Chinese classical.

“I was surprised when they came right up with a skit, but I guess the research helped them,” Child said.

Howe, who played the narrator, said the team made a mini-gong and drum, placing the beans in the gong to get the musical effect they needed.

Their skit for both competitions: teaching a musically inept child, played by Noyes, how to play music with a gong and drum, and a wee bit of magic.

At regionals, they mixed yodeling with Chinese music, setting it to a sweltering heat characteristic, and at the state meet, they threw in an Irish jig and performed in dream sequence.

“We don’t know how we did it, but we just used our imaginations,” Boynton said Thursday.
[email protected]