The Gift of Theater

 This is not a story about Jess specifically but certainly highlights the gift her Elementary School was. She learned that things do not have to be perfect to be wonderful!

Jess (arrow girl at the end) and her class had their play today. It was wonderful! Their incredible director Sara Carlson Tavernise had this to say: 

"Some days in the theater, absolutely everything goes wrong, and somehow, that makes everything perfect. Today was one of those days. There are some things everybody can agree on when it comes to theatre. It’s a collaborative art form. You need a story to tell. You need an audience. You need directors and actors and stage managers and sound techs and stagehands and costumers and set designers and musicians and and and… When it comes to a theatrical show, everybody matters. 

Since October, I’ve been working with Mulberry’s fifth grade class to create a show about an important social issue. Eventually, we narrowed down the issue we would tackle to prejudice and scapegoating. To write it, we did lessons on allegory, historical episodes of scapegoating, and script-writing conventions. We made a story map. We did character studies. And we wrote and wrote and wrote. Over winter break, I sat down with all their work and tied it into one coherent play. My own kids were the first audience, helping craft jokes and tell me what was flat. “The Dragons, the Mice, and the Disappearing Popcorn” took shape. 

Back at school in January, we did our first table read as a class, followed by a full rewrite. A few kids wanted more lines. Some had shifted their character concepts, and needed tweaks to redefine and refine them. Once we had a final script, we started to rehearse. Parents helped design sets. One stepped in as a fight choreographer. Costumes started to trickle in. During music class, they learned the song I wrote for the end, accompanying themselves on ukuleles and drum. 

There are twelve children in this class, twelve creative, funny, kids. Some are veteran performers. They led the pack when it came to memorization and blocking ideas. One has pretty intense stage fright. He helped keep us all grounded. Several are talented musicians. They carried the song accompaniment. Others are just plain good-natured. They kept it fun for all the others, never letting us slip over the line from hard-working to, ugh, hard work. 

As we went into tech week, a crew of six middle school kids joined us. Each had a job: light board, sound, prompting, prop master, and two stagehands. At rehearsal on Monday, they all learned their jobs. By Tuesday, they were getting good at them. 

On Wednesday, one of our actors got sick. We didn’t have rehearsal that day -- I teach music all day on Wednesdays -- but we hoped he would be better by Thursday. No. On Thursday, at our final dress rehearsal, not only was he still out, but another kid went down. So I asked the middle school tech crew if any of them would be willing to go on with a script for their younger cohorts. Two stepped up, and rehearsed the parts. It meant a stagehand moved to sound and we had no prop master, but that would be ok. I could help move sets, and the fifth graders could be responsible for their own props. 

The curtain was set for nine this morning. At 7:45, I got a text from the fifth grade teacher: both absent kids were still running fevers. We would have to go on without them. As I drove in to work, I thanked my lucky stars for rehearsing those middle schoolers. Our crew would be lean, but we could do it. 

When I got in, I found out my last remaining stagehand was at the doctor’s. She was the only crew stage right. Out of a group of 18 actors and technicians, we were down three. My student who was prompting offered to move to stage right and supervise the youngers. The parent who did the fight choreographer volunteered to move sets if I would just tell her where to put them. Sound check went well. Light check looked great. I took a deep sigh of gratitude for working with such a flexible, open-hearted group.

Just before the kids went out to the stage, I told them the story of the polar explorer, Ernest Shackleton. Shackleton led three expeditions to the South Pole a hundred years ago. He’s famous not for reaching the South Pole, but for saving the lives of his crew by turning back 97 miles short of his goal. He could have persevered, but people would have died. We all sent a beam of gratitude towards our absent classmates, thanking them for staying home to keep us healthy. 

As the director who doubles as the stage manager, it’s my job to make sure we have a successful show. That means solving the problems as they appear, keeping the audience entertained, and projecting confidence and calm. As I do before every performance, I went out and greeted the audience, then asked our facilities guy to lower the house lights so we could start the show. The house lights went down, but then nothing. The theatrical lights wouldn’t light. 

For a couple years now, I have been nursing our dimmer and light board along. They are pretty ancient, at least thirty years old. There are parents in our community who are younger than our lighting system. I’ve had lights flicker in the middle of a show before, but never die completely. 

What do you do? How many things can go wrong before you throw in the towel? Is there ever a time to do so? I believe the answer to that question is yes, but it would take a pretty extreme situation for me to call a show. A major earthquake or a fire -- that would do it. A medical emergency? Yep. Barring massive disaster, though, we persevere. I told the audience the trouble, and got them chanting, “The Show Must Go On!” Which is what we did.

We started the show five minutes late with house lights. I powered down everything lighting related, flipping the breakers, then brought it back up. Still nothing. Going channel by channel on the dimmer, I discovered I could still send full power to the instruments. So that was the choice: perform with house lights, or flip the instruments to one hundred percent with no capacity for blackouts. It would mean changing sets in the light and overexposing my set, but I decided it was better to have theatrical lights than house lights. 

Adrenaline, experience, and not second-guessing myself got me through the show this morning. The audience loved it. “That was the most Mulberry thing ever!” was the general consensus. The girl who played the princess now has a fan pack of five year olds who told her that she had the most “bootiful dress in the whole world.” 

But about an hour after the show, part-way through the strike, the adrenaline left my system and the tears hit. One of my closest friends took one look at me and sighed.

“Go eat,” he said.  

“But I have to finish strike,” I replied. 

“Go eat. I’ll help you finish strike. If you still need to cry after that, then do it then. But first, food.”

He was right. Food helped. We finished strike. And I still needed to cry. The stress of the morning caught up with me, all the decisions, all the near misses, and the utter success.

Three hours later, I’m sitting in the fifth grade classroom as they have a cast party. They are laughing and smiling, playing games and cracking each other up. Before we broke out the popcorn and free choice activities, we had a reflection circle. 

“It was super awkward not having any blackouts between scenes, but I got into it. I started dancing my way onto the stage.”

“I feel really good about this show. I wasn’t that nervous, because I made up my own character.”

“I forgot my prop because nobody gave it to me. But we just pretended.”

“That was the most fun play we’ve ever done.”

“I missed some lines, but I don’t think the audience noticed. Everybody just rolled with it.”

“Even though everything kept going wrong, we kept going.”

As a teacher, I don’t think I could ask for anything more. This could have been so different. When the actors were absent, their cohorts could have freaked out. When the stagehand got sick, we could have frozen in place. When the lighting system died, we could have given up. When the start was delayed, the audience could have started getting angry. But none of that happened. Instead, everybody just kept dealing with the problem in front of them.  

Isn’t that the definition of a successful show, not to mention a successful life? Deal with the problem in front of you. And maybe, when at all possible, eat before you cry."

#TheMulberryWay #LifeLessons #SaraRocks