Horrible theater seems to common these days...

[la_rainette]

OK, so I briefly bring to you the sadness of my Froglet, whom the stage manager forgot to send on stage for her Big Scene, i.e. the scene where she had 3 sentences to say. Being one of the youngest kids - which I didn't know, the goup is supposed to be 3 to 5 - she didn't have much to say anyway, and after they "forgot" her she almost had nothing left.

Her friend Myles didn't speak any of his 3 lines, but we never quite found out why.

I hated the whole thing. Really. What shone through was no creativity whatsoever. Great set, great costumes, a pretty good professional dancer who had absolutely no business being there, and a bunch of trained monkeys who said their text in the exact way they had been told to.

And I have of course, read Sam's account of his bad theater night and I now want to hang myself, or watch a Clockwork Orange until I throw up. My poor Froglet! She had learned so hard, she was so excited and happy, and so disappointed that it didn't go well. So sad. :o(

We picked Papy (my father in law) up at the airport on Friday, and as we waited in the terminal, Tadpole - who notices eveything - suddenly jumped up in delight and bellowed "Balloon! Balloon!" There was, indeed, a welcome home balloon floating right up there under the ceiling.

Froglet: can you catch it, mommy?
la rainette: no, it's much too high.
Froglet: maybe if you jump?

Oh, my Froglet, we're talking 30 feet there! If I could jump that high, I'd be wearing a stupid blue and red uniform with a cape and a big S on my chest. But thanks for trusting me.

I promise you one thing: it's the last time they bloody forget you off stage. *grim face*

Comments

[copperbadge.livejournal.com]

Ooh, poor Rainette. Childrens' theatre productions are exempt from judgement, as they are about teaching children how theatre works and not about making the audience laugh. (They are painful to watch, but the pain is forgiven *grins*). I'll accept a lot from a kids' theatre that I won't from a theatre clearly organised and focused towards grownups.

*hugs the Froglet* she'll have many other chances, I'm sure. It is sad though.

[la-rainette.livejournal.com]

Oh, I don't care about painful to watch, I expect them to be painful to watch. What I don't like is when they try to make it look professional, with pint-sized affected adult-like actors trying hard to do exactly as they have been told to do.

I mean, to me theater work for kids is supposed to be fun. Do as they're told and be good, they do that enough in school. My froglet, who was looking forward to being a lioness - and roars your socks off when asked to do the lion - looked very tame and eager to please out there (well, the little she got to be out there), and that is not what I wanted for her. You know, it's the same for crafts, when they come home with a lovely craft that can only have been done with adult intervention, my first reaction is always: "Well, someone has been holding her hand to do that. I'd rather they gave her the stuff to do it and let her do whatever she wants, becasue she LIKES that. I don't care if it isn't recognizable." *sigh*



I broke into a cold sweat when I read the thing about the 9-year-old pushed on stage, thinking "am I really that bad?" A little soul-searching convinced me that I was not :D, so far so good. But a good theater group for kids is really hard to find - and don't tell me using the kids' creativity in theater work can't be done, I know it can, I've seen my best friend (who's a drama teacher) work with kids.

OK, should calm down now ;)

[copperbadge.livejournal.com]

Ah yes, I agree with you there. I'm all for the idea of giving kids a lot of crayons and glue and popsicle sticks and letting them have at it (properly supervised, of course, by people who have learned that "supervise" and "take over" are not the same thing *grins*). When I was a kid my mum gave me a large paintbrush and a bowl of water and I would spend HOURS "painting" pictures on the pavement and brickwork outside our house.

Theatre should always be fun, though of course in professional theatre we have a very odd idea of "fun" sometimes -- which is why I forgive the Georgetown theatre for its awfulness (though not the jumproping girl. That was clearly some awful stage parent with something to prove). It was just a bunch of people who like to do theatre and don't care if you don't like it or not :D

We actually have a program at my undergraduate where some of the first-year students go out to a local elementary school and spend a day having kids "tell them stories". They write the stories down and take them back to the theatre and make short plays out of them, and at the end of the year the students all come to see their stories performed. Perfect example of what you were talking about -- kids are wonderfully creative, and most of them are rampant extroverts who love getting up on stage and strutting around :D

[la-rainette.livejournal.com]

We actually have a program at my undergraduate where some of the first-year students go out to a local elementary school and spend a day having kids "tell them stories".

Great program! That's a fantastic idea. See, that's the kind of thing I would like my froglet to participate in - I mean, same thing but from the kid's perspective. A program where they would take the kids' ideas as startpoint.

[http://users.livejournal.com/_skye_/]

If You were here, or I there, we would have you over and you could put on the Froglett Fairytales where she could be every princess, fairy and heroine in all the stories, and we would all jump in as the other parts (there are no lack of volunteers over here!). In fact, we'd videotape it and next week you could come back over and we'd have sundaes and laugh!

So sorry for the disappointment.

[la-rainette.livejournal.com]

:) sounds like much more fun than her theater class (see answer to Sam up there, if I start giving you the details I will rant again and really really shouldn't :D )

Oh, I would love to do the fairy tales with you guys :D But I think she would want want to be the princess and the fairy and the knight in shiny armour. She loves to wear her pink frilly dress, and her butterfly fairy wings, and THEN she brags the sword :D

How did the croissants come out? (I don't remember, when was your sister coming? No time to go on friend's page unfortunately, just froglet's last joke on LJ because I am so PROUD of her for being so smart, and then I'm gone: Museum with Papy today.)