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This lesson uses video segments from Great Performances: The Little Mermaid from San Francisco Ballet to help students explore the role of the author in relation to his/her work. In the Introductory Activity, students discuss the structure of the original The Little Mermaid tale as they remember it. Students then read the original story and compare their memories to the original text. In the Learning Activity, students examine John Neumeier's artistic interpretation of the classic fairy-tale by looking at two video segments that feature the main characters of the ballet. Finally, for the Culminating Activity, students craft their own contemporary interpretation of a classic fairy-tale (e.g., Snow White, Beauty and the Beast, Sleeping Beauty).

Highlighted by songs in which women celebrate the murder of wayward men and a lawyer demonstrates the art of manipulating the media, musicals don't get much more cynical than Chicago. A ripped-from-the-headlines jazz-age play by Chicago Tribune reporter Maurine Dallas Watkins turned into a 1975 musical by songwriters John Kander and Fred Ebb in collaboration with Bob Fosse, Chicago enjoyed an initial run of qualified success, overshadowed by the crowd-pleasing A Chorus Line. It makes perfect sense, however, that it found a second audience on Broadway in the 1990s