Homepage

“The fourth wall” originated as a concept in theater. Merriam-Webster defines the fourth wall as “an imaginary wall (as at the opening of a modern stage proscenium) that keeps performers from recognizing or directly addressing their audience” It sections off the fabricated world the actors are performing in from the audience.

People often think of play as something that only takes place within the confinements of a space closed off by the fourth wall. Yet the concepts of improvisation, play and acting are not always enclosed in the imaginary worlds of theater, television and movie production.

“(While) researching the topic, it became apparent to me how much improvisation and humor are used every day in so many ways that we don’t even think about,” said Laraine Newman, actor and original cast member of “Saturday Night Live.”

At 10:45 a.m. Friday, July 13, in the Amphitheater, Newman will speak to Chautauquans about how applicable play is to everyday life, from casual encounters to easing the stress of those affected by a medical condition, such as Alzheimer’s disease.

For more than three decades, Newman has gained experience in the entertainment industry.

A Los Angeles, California, native, she first became interested in improvisation, acting and humor as a teenager, which eventually led her to study mime under Marcel Marceau. She was a founding member of the improvisational and sketch comedy troupe, The Groundlings, in 1974 and became an original cast member of “Saturday Night Live” a year later.

From there, Newman has enjoyed a career in acting and voice animation, appearing in episodes of iconic television shows like “Friends” and “Curb Your Enthusiasm,” in addition to numerous animated shows like “Avatar: The Last Airbender,” “Fairly Oddparents” and “Spongebob Squarepants.”

Throughout Week Three, Chautauquans have been asked to think of play in a constructive manner. One area Newman will touch on is the importance of play during childhood, relating to her own experience of letting her children run free with their imaginations in the park.

“For a child, it affirms them,” Newman said. “I noticed in my own children when we’d play in the park … the self-confidence they gained from it was such a delight to see.”

Yet Newman plans to take a holistic approach to the importance of play, as Chautauquans have engaged in dialogue about the relevance of play in adulthood throughout the week.

For example, horror movies are often produced in response to public fear about a real-life event, such as war. During World War II, Vietnam War and post-9/11, there was an increase in horror films that related to each era’s anxieties. Newman said she will touch on how those horror films are “another form of play for people to deal and manage with stress.”

Another facet of Newman’s lecture will be about the benefits of play in terms of health conditions such as Alzheimer’s disease. By talking about these conditions, Newman said the discussion may make someone who has Alzheimer’s feel at ease.

“Much of the time, people with Alzheimer’s are told that their reality is not happening,” Newman said. “You can only imagine how terrifying that must be on a daily basis. To go along with what someone’s reality is … just a loving thing to do. For someone with Alzheimer’s, it relieves their stress.”

Newman said play has a number of benefits and real- world applications. She thinks play is not confined to a specific age group or professional field, and she plans to share the various ways play can be incorporated into everyday life.

Like those before it, Alexander Gavrylyuk’s 13th season at Chautauqua has been a busy one. The pianist can be seen whizzing around the grounds on his bicycle, teaching master classes and private lessons to 22 piano students at the School of Music, spending time with his family and preparing for concerts.

He’s performed two so far: a sold-out concert of chamber music in Elizabeth S. Lenna Hall and a solo recital in the Amphitheater that was described by guest critic Andrew Druckenbrod as “powerful” and “compelling.”

At 8:15 p.m. Thursday, July 12 in the Amphitheater, Gavrylyuk will take the stage for his third and final concert of the 2018 season. He will join Maestro Rossen Milanov and the Chautauqua Symphony Orchestra for “An Evening of Concertos,” which will feature Bela Bartók’s Concerto for Orchestra and Sergei Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 2.

The title of the Bartok can be a bit misleading: the term “concerto” usually implies that the orchestra will be joined by a soloist.

Instead, Bartok’s “concerto” features the entire orchestra as soloist. Throughout the piece, different instruments and sections are featured as the solo voice.

Bartok himself said that he intentionally wrote virtuosic passages for each instrument. As a result, passages from it are frequently asked for at orchestra auditions.

Rachmaninoff’s concerto, however, will feature Gavrylyuk in front of the orchestra as soloist. In a sense, the pianist has been building toward this performance of Rachmaninoff’s masterpiece.

Gavrylyuk began the season by including a few short Rachmaninoff preludes in his solo recital, then performed a much longer work of the composer’s on his chamber music concert, and now he will be joined by the whole CSO for the massive Piano Concerto No. 2.

To say that Gavrylyuk holds the composer in high regard would be an understatement.

“I find that Rachmaninoff, as far as I can see and feel, was a man of incredible dignity and strength of spirit which always searched for justice and truth,” Gavrylyuk said. “That’s why it never gets old. It doesn’t matter how many times you play it.”

It’s a good thing this piece doesn’t get old for Gavrylyuk; the pianist first publicly performed the Piano Concerto No. 2 in Tokyo’s Suntory Hall when he was 18, and he’s given a performance of it every year since.

That doesn’t mean it’s always the same, however. According to Gavrylyuk, the concerto effortlessly grows and changes with him as he passes through different stages of his life.

“It kind of does it on its own,” Gavrylyuk said. “When I came back (for this performance), suddenly it sounded completely different from the way I played it in Australia, just eight months ago. Great music has this kind of tendency of evolving on its own.”

Rachmaninoff wrote this concerto immediately following a long and deep depression, during which he composed very little, Gavrylyuk said. The opening of this piece — a series of chords played by the solo piano — marks the composer’s recovery and return to composition.

For Gavrylyuk, these chords represent a release at last of the composer’s inner world that had been kept inside for so long. That world, he said, is like a field of flowers: an immensely beautiful spectacle when viewed as a whole, but composed of individual flowers that are equally as striking on their own.

The challenge for both audience and performers, he said, is to not get bogged down by over-appreciating the small moments of beauty — the individual flowers.

“If you do that all the time, you lose the perspective of the field,” Gavrylyuk said. “And the field is actually the most impressive thing.”

Gavrylyuk is looking forward to this performance, in particular because of his relationship with the Chautauquan audience.

“They’re the dearest audience in the world for me,” he said. “Playing for them is like playing for family and friends — that feeling that there is absolutely no barriers, and there is just this direct connection and a mutual love for openness, sharing of music, sharing of the greatest things that human beings have composed and written and come up with. These are the most rewarding times for me personally, so I’m very grateful.”

During his lecture, psychologist Peter Gray promised it would be “the least happy talk about play you’ve ever heard” — and he delivered.

Gray spoke to the inherent need for, and the decline of, play among children at the 10:45 a.m. morning lecture Wednesday, July 11, in the Amphitheater, continuing Week Three’s theme, “The Art of Play.”

“The absence of play is depression,” Gray said, a point he argued extensively in his book, Free to Learn: Why Unleashing the Instinct to Play Will Make Our Children Happier, More Self-Reliant and Better Students for Life.

As an evolutionary psychologist by trade and a research professor of psychology at Boston College, Gray has focused throughout his career on the “curiosity, playfulness, sociability and willfulness” of children at a biological and social level.

Natural selection shapes the play of animals and humans alike, Gray said. Predatory animals play by chasing and pouncing to learn to hunt; preyed-upon animals play by running and dodging to learn to avoid being hunted.

“From a biological perspective … play is nature’s way of ensuring that young mammals practice the kinds of skills that they need to develop to live and thrive as their species in the environment in which they are growing up,” he said.

However, running, chasing, pouncing and dodging may not be “play” for Gray. He has a four-point criteria for what constitutes play: play is self-directed and self-chosen; play is intrinsically motivated; play is guided by rules; and play includes an imaginary element.

For play to be self-chosen, children cannot be directed to play by teachers, parents or superiors. Although games in school can be instructive and educational, it is not “play,” he said.

“(Play is) how (children) learn to make choices,” he said. “It’s how they learn to direct their own activities, and when we take that away from children by creating the activity for them, directing the activity for them, we are taking away the opportunity for them to learn how to create and direct their own activities, solve their own problems.”

The lack of these learned abilities can translate into adulthood. Children who play in risky ways and try new, sometimes dangerous, forms of play are better equipped to handle the challenges adult life might throw at them, Gray said.

“All of us are going to face real risks in our lives, and it’s a good idea to practice with risks in relativity controlled conditions of play, so that the first time you are in true danger … you can keep your head together and not have a panic attack,” he said. “So that little girl that climbs the tree too high, what is she doing? She is developing courage.”

For play to be intrinsically motivated, Gray said it must be self-chosen and must “discover and follow passions.” While play is an act of passion, it must also be guided by rules — rules established, chosen and accepted by children. Finally, play must have an imaginary element.

Imagination is the only thing that separates humans from animals, Gray said.

“In some sense, in play you are always stepping outside of the real world into a fantasy land, into an imaginary world,” he said. “Even in a game like chess, it is an imaginary world where bishops only move on the diagonal — unlike the real world, where they can go wherever they want.”

Despite the abundance of opportunities for play, over the last six decades Gray has seen a nationwide loss of play — an epidemic he called a “national tragedy.”

“There has been a continuous, gradual, but overall huge decline in children’s freedom and opportunity to play,” he said. “There is no comparison between the freedom that children had in the 1950s and the lack of freedom that children have today.”

Gray reflected on his own childhood in the 1950s:

He was able to play outside, without supervision, throughout the day with other children in the neighborhood; he described having two hours of recess a day and not having homework in elementary school.

“We never carried books or worksheets back home. We did in school what school was, at home we played with our families,” he said. “Our parents were not supposed to be assistant teachers. They were not there monitoring your homework; for the most part they didn’t know how we were doing in school. They didn’t want to know, and we didn’t want them to know.”

Gray said he had two educations growing up: traditional schooling and a “hunter- gatherer” education (the hunter-gatherer education was more valuable). In “hunter-gatherer” cultures, children are encouraged to play, especially at critical ages when most western cultures are pushing the importance of school on their young.

“Today, if you go out in almost every neighborhood in America, if you find children outdoors at all, they’re likely to be on some kind of a manicured field, wearing uniforms, being directed by adults — that’s not play,” he said, stressing that social lessons taught by unorganized, free play are more important than the technique of a sport.

Gary attributes the decline of play to three reasons: the spread of fear, increased pressure on children and a “schoolish” cultural outlook.

According to Gray, “the world actually is not more dangerous than it was decades ago,” and crime rates are steadily declining. But people are still fearful of traffic accidents, and yet in places with minimal traffic, children are still denied play. People are fearful of child predators, yet they fail to acknowledge the rarity of the crime, Gray said.

“We are so afraid that we deprive our children of what they most need — the opportunity to get away from us and play with other kids,” he said.

Students have been reduced to numbers and admissions — parents think about college applications while the child is still in the womb, Gray joked. School and extracurricular activities absorb children’s time because people fear that without structure, children won’t succeed.

“We have in our society, by and large, what I refer to as a ‘schoolish’ view of child development,” Gray said. “That’s the view that children develop best when directed by adults, and that children’s own activities are a waste of time. … We want to control them.”

And the desire to control children has dire consequences. In the last 60 years, Gray said rates of major depressive disorder have increased eightfold; anxiety disorder rates have risen between five and eightfold.

“Should we be surprised by that?” he said. “We have put children into what I think even we adults would regard for us as anxiety-provoking divides where you’re constantly being monitored, you’re constantly being evaluated, you’re constantly being judged, you’re constantly being compared with your peers.”

Gray asked: What is society doing to this next generation that is making them the most stressed demographic in the country?

“I’m calling it ‘play deficit disorder,’ ” he said. “And the only cure is play.”

After the conclusion of Gray’s lecture, Dave Griffith, vice president and Emily and Richard Smucker Chair for Education, opened the Q-and-A. He asked if there was a correlation between the decline in play and the rise in obsession with higher education.

“If we were seriously concerned about education, you would think about what are the things really, really important in our culture,” Gray said. “And I think what we would conclude is that things that are really, really important to learn, like being creative, like being self-directed, like understanding who you are, like being able to control your emotions, … none of these things are part of our education. These are things you learn in play.”

Griffith then turned to the audience for questions; one attendee asked if Gray’s research revealed gender difference in play.

Gray said that through ages 8 to 11, children self-segregate their play — boys playing with boys and girls playing with girls, something absent in younger children. However, Gary believes in the importance of letting children play with whoever they want.

To close, an audience member asked if video games were a form of play. Gray referred back to his four characteristics of play. He argued that video games fit each of those criteria and therefore are a form of play. However, he did stress giving children time outside as well.

“We have created a world where it’s not much fun for (children) to go outdoors,” he said. “There’s not much opportunity for them to find and play with other kids. Kids more than anything else want to play with other kids … and if there are other kids playing outdoors, they will go out and play, and they will balance that with their video games. … My feeling is that we just have to trust kids.”

Peter Gray thinks the best educator for children might not be schools or adults — it’s playing with other children.

Gray, who will speak at 10:45 a.m. on Wednesday, July 11, in the Amphitheater, has researched and taught about the psychology of children for 30 years. He is a research professor of psychology at Boston College and author of the widely used introductory textbook, Psychology.

In his lecture, Gray said he will focus on “how children learn in their own natural ways and how they can become educated that way.” He suggested that a forced curriculum common in elementary schools can actually deteriorate the natural way in which children inherently educate themselves.

“Children are biologically designed to educate themselves,” Gray said. “They are naturally playful and curious. We can maximize that instead of forcing them to do schoolwork.”

According to Gray, the retention rate for students who are genuinely interested in school material they’ve chosen is exponentially higher than that of students who are required to memorize and recite a variety of pre-chosen subjects.

The answer to the problem, Gray said, is the “natural play of a child” and a healthy mingling with their peers without overbearing adult supervision or correction.

“Over the past 60 years, there has been a tremendous decline in opportunity for children to play free of supervision because of societal fears,” he said. “As a result, we are depriving children of their ability to play and learn freely.”

Gray also said that schools have slowly become a much more “pressured community” in which children are rewarded based on performance. This, he suggested, might be one of the reasons why there have been incredibly high levels of depression and anxiety among children.

Gray’s remedy for this problem goes beyond expanded free play time. Gray is the president and co-founder of the Alliance for Self-Directed Education, which promotes opportunities for self-directed education over the traditional curriculum. Instead of children being forced to learn specific subjects, the group encourages children to learn for themselves in a way that advances their interests.

“We work to make it more possible for families to remove their children from school and let them learn on their own by facilitating the child’s own interests and not forcing a set curriculum,” Gray said. “We provide parents and communities with general information on how to do this and the legalities of it.”

For parents who can afford this alternative programming, there are a few schools that have taken this idea of self-directed education as their curriculum. Sudbury Valley School in Massachusetts, for example, recently adopted a schedule that allowed for increased amounts of free play and encourages it students to facilitate their own learning.

Additionally, Gray is a founder and board member of an organization called Let Grow, which works to promote free play for children outdoors and in public areas without the pressure of constant adult supervision.

“We are concerned with creating societal changes that will allow children to play without adult control,” Gray said.

Let Grow works toward these goals through the creation of “capable kids communities,” in which local communities are educated on how to create a safer space and allow children to be in public spaces alone.

“Things like walking to school or being in public parks without parents can be highly beneficial for a child’s emotional and intellectual development,” Gray said.

In March, Utah passed a law referred to as the “free range kids act” which states that children are legally allowed in public spaces without adult supervision. The law redefines neglect so parents won’t be charged for allowing their children to do certain activities alone.

Gray said the law’s passage is proof that organizations like Let Grow’s methods are receiving wider support.

“Free play offers the development of a lot of traits that can’t be taught to children: controlling their emotions, building people skills, and maintaining confidence in themselves,” Gray said. “Kids are born knowing how to learn — we just have to let them do it.”

Although the proverb “All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy” was coined in 1659, Rabbis Samuel M. Stahl and Zalman Vilenkin believe the current generation of workaholic Americans still need to acquire a great deal of wisdom from the centuries- old phrase.

At 2 p.m. Monday, July 9, in the Hall of Philosophy, Stahl and Vilenkin delivered a joint lecture on the importance of the Sabbath as part of the Week Three interfaith theme, “The Spirituality of Play.” Stahl’s portion of the lecture was titled “Sabbath: A Foretaste of Utopia” and Vilenkin’s was “Sabbath: A Gift of Rest.”

Stahl first came to Chautauqua in 1998, served as theologian-in-residence in 2003 and now spends his summers at the Institution. During the winter months, he advocates for interfaith work as rabbi emeritus of Temple Beth‑El in San Antonio, Texas.

Workaholism is not a new phenomenon in American life, in fact, it has been present for the past five centuries. It began with the Puritans in 1620 when they arrived at Plymouth Rock and established a work ethic they believed to be derived from God.

“They considered those who have been favorably successful to have been blessed by God and that they would be guaranteed salvation,” Stahl said.

However, instead of support from God, Scripture from two books in the Bible provide examples of workaholism. In both the book of Exodus and the book of Deuteronomy, the Ten Commandments are mentioned. These commandments are the moral code of Judaism and mandated the Sabbath, a day of rest that was highly controversial when first introduced.

“Critics of the Sabbath accused ancient Jews of being lazy,” Stahl said. “They scorned the Sabbath, and they failed to realize the dire necessity of refraining from mundane affairs for an entire day.”

The failure to see the need for a day of rest is what has carried over, and worsened, in modern-day America, Stahl said. Americans skip lunch, rush through dinner and cheat themselves out of hours of sleep in an attempt to match the quickening pace of everyday life.

“Today, we are enslaved to work,” he said. “I think workaholism has become a national addiction. We tend to work compulsively and aggressively.”

Stahl said the constant advancement of technology makes it nearly impossible to catch up.

“Many of us are chained to our computers, typing madly, claiming that our keyboards can’t keep up with our thoughts,” Stahl said. “Not long ago, our telephones were confined to our offices and our homes. Now, mobile phones are ubiquitous. We talk on our cellphones at restaurants, in public bathrooms, in our automobiles and even in lecture halls. It seems like our cellphones are appendages to our ears.”

Although workaholism can lead to destructive behavior, Stahl recognizes that the Bible displays another side of this debate in saying that work-based achievements can bring a mixture of personal satisfaction and a feeling of contentment.

“When we have profitably and successfully closed a sale, when we have published an article or a book or when we have performed a life-saving surgery, a warm sense of fulfillment and joy fills our hearts,” he said.

Stahl believes this sense of fulfillment is what causes an addiction to work, as people begin to intertwine their job and their self-image.

“We believe that by working longer hours, completing more projects and making more money, we are going to enhance our selfworth,” he said. “Unfortunately, we will discover that this approach is a terribly misguided one.”

According to Stahl, the sense of fulfillment received from these tasks is temporary and leads to a feeling of emptiness and despair as people consistently want more than what they have. As a result, the approach “distances one from oneself.”

“We are so busy we have no time to reflect, to involve ourselves in deep self-exploration or to engage in the kind of reflection that each of our religions obligates us to perform,” he said. “We have to search our souls, face our shortcomings and correct our errors.”

Without time to self-reflect, workaholism stunts spiritual growth, as people become unable to appreciate all of the blessings God has made available in the world, Stahl said.

Along with workaholism, Stahl said Americans are living in an age of isolation and individualism that leads to a feeling of overwhelming loneliness. The day of the Sabbath can alleviate these feelings by providing a sense of community.

“The Sabbath provides (a) community where we go to a synagogue and we pray next to the people we love, people who love us and care for us, where we dine at each other’s tables and find a strong human connection,” Stahl said.

Whether for the sake of community or personal growth, Stahl believes it is more important than ever for Jewish people to take the purpose of the Sabbath seriously and to use it as an example of what the world could be.

“On the Sabbath, we are obligated to be and not to do,” he said. “We must reflect and not produce. We must contemplate and not create. The Sabbath provides us with a utopian vision and gives us a chance to gain a foretaste of what the perfect world of the futurecould be like.”

In Vilenkin’s half of Monday’s lecture, he discussed what God has provided through the gift of the Sabbath, also known as the “Shabbat.”

Vilenkin is a longtime Chautauquan and executive director and spiritual leader of Chabad Lubavitch of Chautauqua. He teaches Jewish philosophy and Kabbalah at the United Talmudical Seminary in Brooklyn during the off-season.

The purpose of Shabbat is explained by its very definition, which is “to rest” and “to return.”

“It is not just about working, but really an opportunity to return to oneself,” Vilenkin said, “to return to one’s origins and connect to God.”

Vilenkin referred to the same two passages of the Ten Commandments in the Bible, but focused on their differences.

In the book of Exodus, it says to remember the day of the Shabbat.

“For six days, the Lord made heaven and earth, and he rested on the seventh,” he said. “Therefore, the Lord was the Shabbat.”

In the book of Deuteronomy, it says not to remember, but to protect and preserve the Shabbat.

“You should remember that you are a slave of the land of Egypt and that the Lord your God took you out of there with a strong hand and an outstretched arm,” he said. “Therefore, Lord your God commanded you to observe the Sabbath.”

Vilenkin said these differing messages are not contradictory, but rather complimentary in the way that both affirm the Shabbat as an example of how God’s efforts are continuous and everlasting.

“God continuously is creating, sustaining and vitalizing the world,” he said. “When we rest on Shabbat, we are confirming our belief in God as a creator, but we are also attesting to the fact that God did not create the world within limitation, but that God is actually continuously involved and invested in our lives, the good and the bad. He is always there.”

Shabbat is not only a testimony of faith, but a test of faith to see if one will rely on God to continue to provide for his people.

“Although the world might appear autonomous and independent, the truth is that every additive, every cell, every weight of energy is constantly dependent on his existence,” Vilenkin said. “On a personal level, it is the acknowledgment that all of the talents we have, all the skill that we have, all of the work that we do is really a gift from God, a continuous gift from God for which we can’t claim credit.”

According to Vilenkin, this continuous effort shows God’s intent in making work a permanent part of life on earth.

“If God wanted to look at work just as means to an end, he could have created and designed the world a little bit better,” he said. “He could have created a world where we don’t have to work, where we can rest and celebrate Shabbat 24/7. Yet, he designed a world that is incomplete without work, that assesses human effort and human involvement because it is a part of the plan. There is a spirituality to work.”

Although Vilenkin stressed the importance of giving credit to God, he is still convinced that the greatest lessons learned through the Sabbath are through self-discovery.

“The journey of life is through our own efforts, our own struggles, our own turbulence and with our own free will, to discover the underlying truth of God within the devices of creation,” he said.

The audience of the Chautauqua Symphony Orchestra tends to form long-lasting loyalties to certain soloists, according to Music Director Rossen Milanov. Popular faces at Chautauqua Institution include Alexander Gavrylyuk and Augustin Hadelich — and perhaps in coming years, clarinetist David Krakauer.

“David is incredible. He has the potential to be a returning favorite at Chautauqua in the way that (Gavrylyuk and Hadelich) are,” Milanov said.

Krakauer will join Milanov and the CSO at 8:15 p.m. on Tuesday, July 10, in the Amphitheater for “An Evening of Klezmer.” It will also be an evening of mutual admiration: Krakauer feels as strongly about Milanov as Milanov feels about him.

“He’s an astonishingly amazing conductor. I just love working with him,” Krakauer said. “His version of the Liszt Hungarian Rhapsody — he just does so many delicious things with the rubato and the timing. It’s really incredible.”

Liszt’s Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2, which will close the program, and Johann Strauss II’s Csárdás, which will open it, are the only two pieces that will feature the orchestra without Krakauer. The pieces are suited to the klezmer theme in that both are orchestral settings of traditional Hungarian folk dances that were popular among Eastern European Jews.

Krakauer will join the orchestra for four pieces. Two are recently composed works that incorporate the klezmer tradition, and two are traditional klezmer tunes that he has arranged for orchestra and solo clarinet.

Krakauer’s involvement with klezmer didn’t start immediately in his musical career. He grew up studying classical and jazz music, and throughout his 20s performed as a freelance clarinetist with prestigious groups like the Aspen Wind Quintet and the Marlboro Music Festival.

Then, in the early ’80s, amid the fall of the Soviet Union and the opening up of Eastern Europe, Krakauer began playing klezmer as a way to explore his own cultural heritage.

“I’ve taken a big Jewish journey,” Krakauer said. “I call it a Jewish journey because I happen to be Jewish, and I was learning a lot about my own cultural heritage, things that were sort of buried under the blanket of  assimilation. Learning about myself, my culture and my family — and just meeting people and visiting places — it’s been really amazing.”

Krakauer began his involvement with klezmer while living in New York City, where he joined the group The Klezmatics and began what would become a long-term collaborative relationship with avant-garde jazz composer John Zorn.

While with The Klezmatics, Krakauer recorded two albums — Rhythm + Jews and Jews with Horns — and toured Europe, playing for audiences more than aware of the historical context surrounding Judaism in 20th-century Europe.

“From the minute I began to play klezmer music in Europe, (it’s) been seen as a statement about multiculturalism and about openness,” Krakauer said. “I feel really proud that this music represents something about tolerance and about social justice.”

As a kid, Ellis Paul said his report card had A’s in music and English, a C in math and B’s in everything else.

“It was pretty clear when I was young where my strengths and interests lied,” Paul said.

Inspired by “Schoolhouse Rock,” the folk singer decided to write children’s music of his own. Paul will share songs from his 17th album,  The Hero In You, at 5 and 7 p.m. on Tuesday, July 10, in Smith Wilkes Hall as part of the Family Entertainment Series.

The album consists of 14 songs that tell the stories of historical figures like Thomas Edison, Rachel Carson, Jackie Robinson and Woody Guthrie. Paul said he wants kids to be able to see themselves in these heroes.

Paul said one of his favorite heroes to sing about is Rosa Parks.

“The thing I love about her is that she was sitting down to stand up for her rights,” he said.

Benjamin Franklin is another favorite hero of Paul’s because the man was not only an inventor and politician, but also a writer, musician and illustrator, just like Paul.

In addition to his children’s music, the folk singer- songwriter also celebrates the Empire State Building and Boston blue-collar musician Dennis Brennan on his latest album, Chasing Beauty.

Paul performed a set for adults on Sunday afternoon in the Amphitheater.

Paul said he wants kids to hear songs from The Hero In You and ask their parents questions about the heroes, creating an opportunity for them to learn.

In 2015, Paul’s songs became an illustrated children’s book, The Hero in You, published by the Albert Whitman & Company. The book ranked No. 1 on Scholastic Magazine’s “Must Read” list that winter.

His second children’s book, The Night the Lights Went Out on Christmas, tells the story of a town in Massachusetts that causes a worldwide power outage after a Christmas light competition.

Paul also visits classrooms, libraries and community centers to perform private concerts and workshops. He said that his songs are applicable to English, music and history classes.

“Every teacher can play the music in their classroom and have it make sense,” he said, “except the math teachers.”