Three Plays in Three Days

April and May is performance season around here. Many of you know that last week our Cooperative performed two nights of Peter Pan Jr. and it couldn't have gone better. My daughter has friends from different school districts also performing. This mean looking at a calendar and trying to fit it all in this weekend. It was a whirlwind weekend.

On Thursday we drove to the local high school to watch Footloose. Many people in our community were involved in this production that we knew and wanted to support. Students that had performed with our drama group in the past, the choreographer we worked with while performing The King and I last summer, the stage manager was one of the "wives" with us from the same production and helped me cast Peter Pan Jr., plus a family from the Cooperative went with us to watch. The kids were truly amazing. It was a very difficult production to stage. Many moving parts. In my opinion it was definitely a PG - PG13 kind of show, but still outstanding. Grace loved it!

Friday found my husband and Grace traveling to a town about 40 minutes away to support a close friend that was performing at her church. I didn't get to go this time because I was at home babysitting puppies that were neutered that day. Anywho, Grace and Scott were both exhausted. Scott practically ran in from work, took a shower, and got right back on the road again to take Grace. They didn't even eat dinner till like 10:00 that night after the show. This show was an originally written piece about the Canterbury Tales with a Breakfast Club twist. Both Grace and  Scott thought it was incredible!

Last night we traveled to a different high school in the opposite direction of about 45 minutes to see Little Shop of Horrors. I knew going in to this one that it would be PG13 because I had at least seen the movie years and years ago. The students really were amazing in this production. They embodied the characters so well and their singing voices were spot on. I just couldn't quite get past the morbid storyline and a little too much cursing for my taste. Grace also thought the actors did an incredible job, but she definitely did not like the storyline of this play.

My biggest take away from seeing the productions is that there are a lot of kids in small towns that are incredibly talented. My second thought after watching the two programs - I was very surprised at the choices to perform, especially Little Shop of Horrors in a high school setting. I guess times they are a changing and I have kind of lived in my own little bubble. When choosing a play or musical to perform I always need to keep in mind how this material will be seen through the eyes of our audience. In our case we are a Christian organization so of course I am looking at material with my Biblical worldview glasses on. I certainly won't get on any soapbox here, just stating my opinion.

Grace's favorite hands down was Footloose. Now she wants to see the movie. Considering she will be 16 in a few weeks I don't have a problem with that. The original Footloose movie was a well loved moment from my time as a high school student.

My main point of this post was to point out how much talent is out there amongst all of these students and the fact that I am exhausted after all the traveling and watching. Of course now we have caught the theatre bug all over again after thinking we were done for a few months. After looking there are no good productions on the horizon through the community theatre, etc. for Grace to participate. So instead we are going to search out others to go watch. I might hear the Fox Theatre calling down in Atlanta.