Once Upon Skates–the play & the characters

OUS is a play for a family-home or an in-class school performance. Originally, it was conceived as a puppet play; instead I mounted

shows with kids without puppets in several San Jose schools, with great success. Children and adults loved the play–to watch and to perform. 

 Before the book, the play was a slide-show, which became an animated video. It can be downloaded here on the website & on Youtube. The video helps kids to visualize how to perform the play, and learn the "Apple-song."

*The Star-Dance video  teaches the dance to more kids like in a class-performance.

Kids from 7-10 y.o. get engrossed in the play. 

A two-year old in a store was crying "Apple, apple," just like Sanya sings in the play to lure the Applewitch outside on the pond.

Play's side-effect: children eat more apples! Doctors recommend it!

The book will be available on amazon.com shortly: $14.95,  video and the trailer are free to download on this website or on YT under: Vlasta Diamant (30 other videos)

The book is new to every generation of kids age 7-10 y.o. Sanya, the heroine, models to girls self-confidence and self-reliance. Characters belong to diverse ethnic groups (as illustrations show)–so the book appeals beyond borders and nations, and the Applewitch is vain and greedy–laughable, but not evil!

I wrote the play in 1992-93, when my native country–Yugoslavia, was in turmoil of a terrible war. I took a refuge in a familiar fairy-tale–Snowwhite, and turned it inside out for a different story outcome. The slide show and the audio part were done by 1995. The script in the book is revised to include more characters, songs and a dance number & one more act. Published in 2009, it is the final and complete play with an epilogue of ideas and suggestions to kids & parents. Whether read, watched or performed, OUS delights both kids and adults. Enjoy!