The Story of Siddhartha: Part Two

Finally, the second part of our Story of Siddhartha is done! In this installment, Prince Siddhartha leaves the palace and sees old age, suffering, and death for the first time.

In case you missed it, here is part one:

He has killed me, mother: Run away, I pray you!

I love New Genesis Productions! They cast me as Macduff's son in their awesome teen-production of Macbeth. Last weekend, we did four performances at Woodstock's Byrdecliffe Theater. It was so, so fun!! I had to learn stage combat and I had to die on stage! (thanks to Ted Ojarovsky for all these great photos!)

And here are Macbeth and Lady Macbeth. Everyone in the cast was so great and really kind to me!

 

Wondrous Walt!

Me and Jojo and Baba like this poem because Walt Whitman shows that, even though astronomers can come up with a whole bunch of figures and tables and diagrams about the universe, nothing beats just going out and looking (and wondering) at the stars!

Truly Absurd!

Baba and I waited for Godot. He never came!

Check out our version of Samuel Beckett's classic play, Waiting for Godot.

Reading my Poem at Barnes and Noble

A couple of weeks ago, I read a poem I wrote - called "The Night" - at Barnes and Noble on the Upper West Side, NYC. This is the poem:

The Night

By Benny

You know there is a day.

But, the night stands it's ground.

Like life and death, they lead to each other.

If we live on our candle burning out,

We do not see our candle.

So, dear friends, love the day,

But, night will come sometime.

Homeschool History Studies: Part 3

After studying Ancient Greece and Rome last year, Baba, Jojo, and I moved onto studying the rise of Christianity. We read lots of the New Testament (and listened to a great dramatized version), listened to lectures, and saw lots of great movies! We are now onto studying the middle ages, but here's the book and movie list for our Christianity studies:

Books:

Gloria Fiero's Humanistic Tradition (chapters on the birth of christianity)
The New Testament
Treasury of Saints and Martyrs by Margaret Mulvihill
Jesus by Demi
Usborne Family Bible

Audiobooks:

Modern Scholar: 14 part Lecture Series: From Jesus to Christianity: A History of the Early Church
The New Testament in The Word of Promise: Complete Audio Bible

Film, TV, and Documentaries

Jesus of Nazareth (1977 Franco Zefferrelli)
The Robe (1953 Henry Koster)
Quo Vadis (1951 Mervyn Le Roy)
Peter and Paul (1981 Robert Day)
Life of Brian (1979 Terry Jones)
Jesus Christ Superstar (1973 Norman Jewison)
Peter and Paul and the Christian Revolution (PBS)
Jerusalem: Center of the World (PBS)
The Lost Gospels (BBC documentary)

Our Streets, Our Lives

We made this video with our homeschool documentary club! Check it out.

Benny = James!

Last week, I starred as James in New Acting Company's production of James and the Giant Peach. It was so much fun!

My fabulous friends came to see me!

The New Michael Moore!

Check out my first ever documentary! It is called "The Militarization of Boys." It's about how our culture wants to make boys like me into fighting machines.

Lost in Rome

Zoe and I made a new movie!

A Poem Shared...

I'm a member of a great homeschool coop. We study all kinds of things together, including great poets and poems. Here are our readings of Willam Blake's 'The Tyger' and Emily Dickinson's 'I Shall Not Live in Vain.'

The Lion, the Witch, and Me!

Yesterday, I was in my second Reader's Theater production at Woodstock Library. The play was The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe, and I played Edmund. He's a bit of a bad boy and a traitor, but it was fun to play a bad boy!

Shakespeare in the Fall

Over the last month or so, I have been watching lots and lots of Shakespeare! It has been super cool. A homeschooling mom (thanks, Emma Goldman-Sherman!) organized for a bunch of homeschool kids and their families to get tickets to 5 Shakespeare productions being put on in the city.

The first we saw was Love's Labor's Lost. The BBC version really wasn't very funny, but the production at the Public was super funny! I loved how the actors ran around all over the stage, but also through the theater too. We got to meet the director too and learned lots about how the production was put together.

Then we saw King Lear. I really like this play and the production was great. I nearly cried when Lear brought his dead daughter, Cordelia, onto the stage. 

Next we saw Cymbeline. I wasn't sure if I was going to like this one. It's a really complicated story with tragedy and comedy and mix-ups and ghosts, but this production was awesome! Only 6 actors played all the roles and there was lots of great singing. I really liked the sword fight too.

Last night, we saw Titus Andronicus. It was super bloody - literally buckets of blood - but I closed my eyes in those parts. But I liked the man who played Titus and the boy who played Titus' grandson.

We have one more play to go - Henry V. I have the same birthday as Henry V (although I don't think I would start a war over tennis balls!).

A Midsummer Night's Dream: The Video!

This summer I played Snug the Joiner in a production of Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream. I had so much fun! Thanks to Lesley Sawhill and everyone else at New Genesis Productions.

Thich Nhat Hanh and me!

Last week, we went on a 5 day Buddhist retreat at Blue Cliff Monastery - one of Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh's monasteries. Thich Nhat Hanh (known as Thay) was at the retreat, so we heard his dharma talks evey day and did walking meditation with him. It was very cool!

The best part of all was when I got to ask Thay a question (I was one of three kids to ask him a question in front of 1000 retreat-goers!)...

Occupy Wall Street - We are the 99%!

This weekend we joined the Occupy Wall Street protests! We went on a march and hung out in Liberty square. I took all the photos at the end of this video. Rume the dog and I loved our first protest! Visit Occupywallstreet.org.

3D Drawing Class...Online!

Jojo and I recently signed up for this very cool website where Mark Kistler teaches 3D Drawing through online videos. It is really, really fun! Here are some of my pictures. A shark (above) and Fat Cat below:


Two simple houses:


A crazy house:

A sphere (with planets and rockets behind):

Space Hamsters:


Crunchinators:

Homeschool History Studies Part 2 - Ancient Rome

When Jojo, Baba, and I got back from our trip to Spain, England, and Greece in June (where we saw a lot of things we learned about in our homeschool history studies - part one), we moved on to studying the history, culture, and philosophies of the Hellenistic era and Ancient Rome.

We still use Gloria Fiero's Humanistic Tradition to start us off, but then we read and watch lots of other cool stuff.

Books:

Epictetus Art of Living: The Classical Manual on Virtue, Happiness, and Effectiveness
Seneca Letters from a Stoic
Alain de Boton's The Consolations of Philsophy (chapters on Epicurus and Seneca)
Marcus Aurelius Meditations
Shakespeare, Julius Caesar
Shakespeare, Anthony and Cleopatra

Films, TV, and Documentaries:

Julius Caesar (the 1953 movie with Marlon Brando as Mark Antony)
Anthony and Cleopatra (the 1980s BBC production)
I, Claudius (the 12 part TV series - we watched it all, and I loved it!!)
Alain de Boton's Philosophy: A Guide to Happiness - Seneca on Anger (30 min TV show on Seneca - available online)
Alain de Boton's Philosophy: A Guide to Happiness - Epicurus on Happiness (30 min TV show on Epicurus - available online)
PBS series (four episodes) The Roman Empire in the First Century

We're now studying the fall of the Roman Empire and the birth of Christianity and Buddhism...

Surreal Summer - Part Two

My surrealism camp (see the post below) was so fun and inspiring, Baba, Jojo and I went to see surrealist art at New York's MOMA.


Here's an exquisite corpse like the one we did at camp.

And, of course, Dali's famous melting clocks!


We sat in MOMA's sculpture garden and drew our own melting clocks:



And when we got home, we made some surreal sculptures. Here's a Pop-Lego-maker!


And "Sink with Light"!

And "Red Oven"!

Surreal Summer - Part One

A few weeks ago I went to a fantastic Surrealism summer camp at the awesome Painted Cloud Studio.

Here is my surreal collage:


And an "exquisite corpse" done my classmates and I (each person adds a part - head, torso, legs - to the picture):


My surreal firetruck-tree!


Decolamania is a technique used by surrealists where you spread paint on a surface, then press it onto another surface, and then look for imagery in the blots. Here's my decolamaniac monster:

And here are my surreal Bat-Cobras:


And a surreal poem!


We all did 3D surreal landscapes. Mine is the one at the right at the back with the orange stalactites and green stalagmites!


You can see more of my classmates and my work at the Cloud Kids blog.