When children go to the Recycle Rally at the Chicago Children’s Museum, they can take a Scrooge-like journey into the past, present and future. Only this mind trip follows Wendy Waste on her way to environmental awareness in a performance called “Wendy Waste Meets the Recycloids.”
The Recycloids who accompany Wendy on this voyage of discovery are dressed in bright colored capes littered with crushed juice boxes, discarded snack-food wrappers and other pieces of trash. When she travels to the future she is taken to a landfill where she encounters zombies dressed in garbage bags. “They are about to throw Wendy into the landfill when she wakes up and realizes that it is time to change her wasteful ways and start recycling,” says Diane Lesniak, who wrote the play.
Members of the audience will be able to participate in the performance by playing certain roles, or chanting “Garbage, waste,” during one of Wendy’s nightmares and playing eerie sounds on musical instruments when she visits the landfill. “I want children to have a fun-filled experience,” says Lesniak, “but it’s also important for theater to have an educational element, so I want them to leave having learned something.”
If they come away with an increased desire to recycle, they are in the right place. During the Recycle Rally the museum will be a showcase of easy ways to reduce, reuse and recycle what might be called “garbage.” Instead of discarding books they have already read, they can swap them for other second-hand ones. They can shop for “recycled” toys at a Kids’ Garage Sale, and toddlers can discover the power and pleasure of taking care of the planet by building blocks out of empty milk cartons.
“We’re trying to stress the importance of reusing items rather than throwing them away,” says Peggy Stewart, who is director of programs at the Museum. “We want to show people creative ways of reusing items.”
Children will also get a chance to create recycle bins out of sturdy cardboard boxes that can be decorated so that certain items don’t get sent to the landfills.
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Recycle Rally, noon-3 p.m. Saturday and Sunday, Chicago Children’s Museum, 435 E. Illinois St., free with museum admission, $3.50 adults, $2.50 children and seniors; 312-527-1000.
