-- Doris, in Holiday Follies, the holiday show for The Children's Theatre of Cincinnati, 2009
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We open in two days.
Rehearsal went so well last night that our emergency rehearsal, scheduled for tonight, was canceled during notes. Crisis averted.
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Today is the penultimate workshop at a local community center. The last few sessions have not gone well--in fact, I would go so far as to say that none of the sessions have gone "well." It's more accurate to say that the last session met basic requirements, though this was at the cost of a lot of things, including my confidence as a workshop leader.
Here's the rundown.
My boss told me that we had offered a workshop that, because of low enrollment, was changed at the last minute. Originally, the workshop was supposed to teach kids how to sing and dance, culminating in a final show for the parents. Only five children were signed up, so we told them that instead we would do a basic acting workshop over the course of five Thursdays. This would have worked just fine, except that the community center did a poor job (in my opinion) of passing on this information to the parents, who had paid X amount of dollars for their kids to have a musical theatre class.
Enter me. For the first two classes, I haggled with a mom who "just wanted to know" if her daughter (a precocious little snot who smiles at you and pretends not to hear the things you say to her) had "what it takes" to be a singer. I told her that because I am not a voice instructor and cannot read music, I did not feel comfortable teaching music, but that I would try to include a warm-up game that involves singing, just to see if the girl took to it. I did, and she didn't. The mother, embarrassed, apparently complained about me after the second workshop.
So, because of pressure from my boss and the community center, I changed my plans for the third class. I came with a CD and a vague intent to teach them a dance (keep in mind, I had at most four hours to prepare for this). As I began the class, I told them the little bit I know about singing and proper breathing technique. And when I asked them, "Do you know what it means to support your breathing?" one of the mothers, sitting in the corner, scoffed and said, "They're six!"
Now, all of the parents were in the room for this class. This made me feel like I was being ganged-up on, and it didn't help to curb my growing frustration. One of them left and got the coordinator of children activities at the center. Because none of the children were participating in the singing or the dancing, this coordinator had to prod them along. At one point, two of the girls--one of them is that precocious little snot I talked about before--decided that their hands were glued together and began running around the room. I asked them three times, politely, to stop, and then looked to the mother for help. And instead of shooting her children warning looks, she was simply watching me: what's he gonna do, how will he handle this, what's he doing wrong this time, etc. So I met her gaze and said, calmy, simply, and quietly, "It's okay. I'll wait."
She was unable to restrain her own children, which says something to me about why she wants them in this workshop. She is a flustered mother who has lost control of her daughters. When her peers tell her that one of them might have "what it takes" to be a performer, she imagines that the secret to controlling her children is to give them a creative outlet. And when they fail to participate, obey simple commands, or socialize with others, the mother projects those feelings of inferiority onto the inept young man who happens to be running the workshop. Me.
Or maybe I'm being unfair. Perhaps it is I who is projecting inferiority onto the mother, I who does not have control of children. I have only been doing this sort of thing for a half a year, after all, and she has been a mother for at least six years. Maybe it's me.
Whatever the problem is, I will no doubt continue to be frustrated by it tonight. 4:30pm, two hours from now. I have to find another song to use.
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Some silver lining, now...
The new laptop came yesterday, the computer to replace the one that was stolen. It's not exactly the same one--Sony stopped manufacturing mine shortly after I bought it back in March--but it runs pretty well and is much better than the ancient desktop provided me by TCTC. It's black instead of silver, and it runs Windows 7 instead of Vista. The latter is the best, because I've never really liked Vista.
The first thing I downloaded onto it? iTunes. The setup program is running now.
Before I run to that workshop at the community center, I will stop at the nearest Wal-Mart and buy myself an external hard drive. Gotta learn from your mistakes.
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And maybe that's the sand in the glass, right? Those mistakes are only justified if you learn from them. The previous three workshops were only worth it if this fourth one is an improvement. And getting better replacements takes the sting out of being pilfered.
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A quick note before I go.
My solo in Holiday Follies was the "Blue Christmas" number, in which I was--oddly--dressed as Scrooge but impersonating Elvis. Long story, and the short of it is: It was cut last night. Not just for time considerations, but because it's a complicated joke that lasts a while. And with an audience filled with little people who haven't heard of Elvis, Paul Newman, or Cher, it's a joke they'd never get.
I'm glad it was cut, mainly because I felt that the Scrooge/Elvis costume, on top of three layers of clothing, made me look like Humpty Dumpty leading an Episcopalian eucharist. I don't even know if the Episcopalians have a eucharist ceremony, but, ah, there it is.
So it's gone. So it goes.
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