Through an innovative partnership, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Chicago Children’s Theatre, and Natalie Merchant have produced Cabinet of Wonder, an immense labor of love, several years in the making. The project features 16 music videos, a cast of 24 child actors, 27 musicians, a magic cabinet, elaborate costumes and sets, and shadow puppetry created by Chicago-based theater group Manual Cinema.
The series was created for the enrichment of preschool and kindergarten children, and as a useful resource for their caregivers and teachers. A delightful introduction to music, poetry, and the dramatic arts for young audiences, Cabinet of Wonder reimagines Mother Goose and her rhymes for a new generation of young children with modern interpretations of the classic child-centered canon.
In the series, Merchant plays a dual role: a modern-day fun and friendly librarian-teacher figure named Miss Natalie, who has a passion for nursery rhymes, and an eighteenth-century fashioned Mother Goose who introduces the children, through song and dance, to the characters in her rhymes. Children come to visit Miss Natalie and are transported by her stories, rhymes, and big blue cabinet (which houses a secret shadow puppet theatre behind its doors). This Cabinet of Wonder serves as a beautiful portal through which the children both view and become the inhabitants of Rhyming Town in The Land of Make-Believe.
“I’ve reached the point in my life where I’m considering what I’ll leave behind. I believe Cabinet of Wonder will be my legacy project.”
Natalie Merchant, Singer, Composer, Costume Designer, Seamstress, Creative Director and Mother Goose, Cabinet of Wonder
Cabinet of Wonder was inspired and informed by Natalie’s three-year experience as an artist-in-residence with a Head Start program in upstate New York where she volunteered several days a week in the classroom with over 400 preschool children.
As a result, she uses familiar teaching techniques on screen: circle time, show & tell, pantomime, and choral speaking. With creative, healthy modeling, the videos feature self-structured play with turn-taking, circle, partner, and line dancing, and graceful bows and curtsies.
Created with a handmade theatrical approach, the videos invite children into a world of painted wood and cardboard, simple paper shadow puppets, and lovingly stitched costumes.
Cabinet of Wonder offers a delightful introduction to orchestral music. All four families of the symphony are represented: strings, woodwinds, brass, and percussion with piano, acoustic guitar, and drums. Children will tune their ears to the organic sounds of these instruments arranged with deliberate simplicity specifically for them. There are as many different styles of music found in the Cabinet of Wonder repertoire as there are songs.
In addition to the video series, Cabinet of Wonder will provide suggestions for classroom activities for children, teachers, and parents by early childhood education specialists and arts educators. All materials will be freely available through a dedicated and dynamic interactive website.
“Cabinet of Wonder not only introduces children to the timeless beauty of music and joy of rhyme, it increases their exposure to rich, warm, and engaging language—the very building blocks upon which a child’s lifelong ability to learn is constructed.”
Dr. Dana Suskind, Professor of Surgery and Pediatrics; Director, TMW Center for Early Learning & Public Health, University of Chicago
