The Play's the Thing...Just Not Sure What Thing It Is...

Our oldest 4 daughters and our 9 y.o. son, Noah, are all involved in Richmond’s Civic Theatre and, due to the "interruption" of baby, had to take a hiatus from any theater activities. It was especially hard to miss out on the current Stage 1 play (children’s theatre group) as it is a compilation of stories-turned-into-plays by area students and Corinne’s was chosen as one of the plays. It was actually a group effort with ideas thrown out by other students in the homeschool drama class but Corinne put them into story form and boy, was it a hoot. Betcha didn’t know Humpty Dumpty was pushed! Yep, a Nursery Rhyme whodunit. It was a scream. The play turned out pretty good- had me laughing.

Most of the stories performed took us back to the days of beatniks and poetry that you’re not sure what the point of is – high schoolers being artsy fartsy. Our youngsters kept asking daddy, "What’s that? What did he say? What is he suppose to be? What did she say? Why are they doing that? What did they say?" Craig just kept saying, "I don’t know." A couple were hysterical, though. Besides the Humpty thing, the 12 Days of School was a hoot as was a music video that had me rolling.
And, by dress rehearsal, everything and everybody is suppose to be completely ready by this time, a lot of folks didn’t know their lines. I bet the director is beside herself. There were a lot of newbies, though, and they didn’t do half bad. Okay, a couple did half bad, but they’ll learn. Stage One plays have always been incredible and even the ones that didn’t look like they were going to be ready have always come together. I hope this one does. Jillian and Natalie have gone back to work with this one as the only costume and make-up people and are getting ready right now to head out for the school performances. I feel for the kids and the director as they’re sure to be heckled. (Humpty Dumpty – The Other Side of the Wall was still funny, though). A few years ago, they performed "I Never Saw Another Butterfly," a very sobering play about children in a concentration camp during the holocaust. Very well done, very sad…and students disrupted that play! Of course, that school isn’t allowed to come to school performances anymore, but it’ll be hard for high schoolers to not make fun of this one.
The hardest part of having been out of the loop for awhile is we just found out yesterday that a dear lady and friend from theater passed away. She just loved Lenae, treated her special, and was always asking her to help with costumes or make up. She and her husband are special people and our heart goes out to this dear man.
We’ll miss you, Velda.