At first glance, it seemed wonderful. On Sunday night, the alliteratively skillful Traveling Treasure Trunk gave its on-campus show at Lewis Hall. For those readers sitting squarely in the back of the class, Triple-T performs children's theater for elementary schools in the Boston area.
With this show, the Tufts community got a taste of something many local ragamuffins have already enjoyed. They performed a mixed bag of short narratives with names like "Bugs in a Rug (or Possibly a Garden)" and "Choose Your Own Adventure" with games like "Buggalloo."
The first story portrayed a very important magical creature conference, called with the purpose of making kids believe in fairy tales. "Bugs in a Rug" followed a young beetle's quest to set up a surprise party for his Aunt Bee, while "Choose Your Own Adventure" used audience participation to construct a story in which two kids leave for school and end up on the moon (or a similarly remote location).
In a nod to the season at hand, the performers also provide their own interpretation of Dr. Seuss's "How the Grinch Stole Christmas"! Armed with clever writing, extravagant costumes and their whimsical demeanors, the Traveling Treasure Trunk performed no small feat: They entertained a college audience with what was essentially children's material. There is little doubt that they leave their grade-school audiences spellbound.
However, when one considers the dangerous content of their work, it is apparent that their boundless talent could have pernicious consequences. What the viewer at first gives props to, it should reclassify as propaganda.
At the show, your faithful correspondent sat with glee. When penning his review, he sat with ire. The inspired writing, cuddly acting and seductively charming demeanor of this children's group does not make them appropriate for children. It makes them downright dangerous.
A careful reading of yesterday's show is necessary to (falsely) justify this absurd claim. The narrative in which a young beetle earnestly desires to provide his elderly, yet literally "busy as a bee" working aunt with a surprise party teaches some very questionable messages to the group's impressionable young audiences. Not having engaged in a single iota of previous planning, the beetle is able to convince other bugs to provide all of the services necessary for a successful birthday event on the last day, thus impressing upon children that they can realize their dreams without diligent preparation. The fact that no money is exchanged for such valuable commodities as a cricket's music, a carpenter ant's furniture or a fruit fly's fruitcake, serves as a usurpation of the capitalist order into which children should be indoctrinated as soon as possible.
Beyond this, by providing an old bumblebee with such a heart-wrenching surprise, the protagonist teaches his audience to engage in cardiologically perilous behavior. How many of our beloved grandparents must have heart attacks from copy-cat surprise partiers before the Traveling Treasure Trunk stops their rampage of death?!
The troupe takes another unwelcome potshot at good old American consumerism in its "How the Grinch Stole Christmas" skit, in which children are depicted enjoying Christmas even without presents. Imagine the damage to our retail economy if the nation's youth actually embraced the dangerous idea that holidays could be fun in the absence of gifts. Without their demands for increasingly extravagant Elmo dolls and Nintendo games, one can only see impoverishment in America's future.
The skit works well as an allegory for Nazi Germany. The Grinch hates a race of people called the "Whos" (Jews), and is even richly ironic in this regard: the Whos are the very personification of Christmas spirit. However, while I applaud them for attempting to teach kids history, are elementary school students really ready to take on the horrors of Hitlerism?
Although curmudgeons such as this writer are always too busy working late hours at the stock exchange to ever have children, if he did, he would rather have them read J. K. Rowling's witches' coven how-to manual, "Harry Potter," than watch this. The Traveling Treasure Trunk ensemble is teaching pinko Marxist bleeding-hearted-liberal communism, AND NO CHILD SHOULD BE ALLOWED TO SEE IT.
The author has noted that those who lack an ear for satire often have an uncanny knack for deciphering Pig Latin, so he would just like to close by saying, I-ay oved-lay e-thay ow-shay. Reat-gay ob-jay, uys-gay!
