My husband let me use his truck to haul away the last of the oversized items.  I always tried to go over to the school during lunch times when I knew the door nearest the stage would be unlocked and the attendant teacher would be willing to hold it open for me as I hefted boxes outside.  The last day, just as I was wondering how I would move the biggest props and set pieces, a bunch of 6th grade boys suddenly appeared.  

          "Can we help?"  

          "Absolutely!  You couldn't have come at a better time!"

        They were happy and energetic helpers.  They made short work out of loading the bulky props into the truck and moving the large flat sets down to the storage tunnel.  But, the payback for me was how excited they were to tell me how much they enjoyed the show.  When they looked at the set pieces, they were quick to tell me that they remembered the scenes that they were used in.  "I know what this is!" they would say.  Then they would proceed to sing the song they recalled from that scene.  "This is....There is too, too much to do!  There is too, too much to do..."  or "this is... Over the briny sea, boys! Over the briny sea!"  They even tried to do the sailor's little jig!

​        These boys had not been in the show, they had just come to watch it several days earlier when we performed for the student body.  I frankly was surprised to find that kids seated 'way in the back of the gym were engaged enough to follow the action of the show, let alone to remember the songs!  That really gave me a thrill.  They not only remembered the words, but got pretty close to recalling the tunes, too!  

          Kind of renews your faith in humanity, doesn't it?

          Last night I got to attend the performance of one of my shows performed by Upstage Theater for Youth, a Children's Theater Company based in Sandy, Utah.  They produced "Never Cry Wolf" with a group of 30 talented kids ranging in age from 5-15.  I was impressed by their infectious enthusiasm, awesome line delivery, and genuine love of the songs.  It made me very happy!  This image was on their cast Tee-shirts.  Each actor drew a self portrait.  Such a cute idea!
          It is always a revelation to see someone else's ideas imprinted onto your work.  The results are sometimes not as you envisioned, but somehow work just as well.  For example, their stage was quite small.  So they opted to have a very simple set with practically no scenery.  They just used white columns set against the black drapes to suggest ancient Greece. The actors brought on a few accent props and wore costumes suggesting the time period.  Other than that, the show was very simply staged.  In fact, the accompanist sat in full view of the audience at her piano (appropriately costumed, of course) during the entire play.  It seemed quite natural and not a distraction at all.  Besides, she played beautifully.
          Because the show was written for a very large cast (45+), many of the actors had to do double duty and play several roles.  With so few boys in the cast, some of the male roles went to female actresses.  It made a couple of scenes and jokes a little awkward, but the girls persevered and gave a good accounting of themselves.  That's the way it sometimes is in Children's Theater.  All in all, the show went very well and the audience was very receptive.  And, true to form, the little lambs stole the show!
          My favorite part was mingling with the audience and the actors.  Over and over they thanked me for creating such a wonderful show.  They loved the music.  In fact, even the audience members, many of them parents, confided to me that they had had the songs going round and round in their heads for weeks. They told me that they enjoyed the powerful messages of Sincerity and Work that were taught in the play.  One parent hoped that the wayward son that he brought to watch the show that evening would get the message! 
          Well, I certainly hope so, too.  After all,"Being sincere is a treasure."   

    So, once again, big KUDOS to the KIDS of Upstage Theater for Youth.  

          Well done!

         In the theater world, we call the preparation, casting, rehearsing, and doing all things related to producing a musical play MOUNTING a production.  To put on a full-scale production or even a scaled-back production involves many elements and takes time and energy.

          So, how much time should I allow to do all it takes to MOUNT a production?

          That will depend on a few things: Schedule, Budget, Helpers, and the Stage, well actually, the availability of rehearsal and performance spaces. 

          Schedule - My rule of thumb for doing a 20-30 minute children’s theater production is to plan 20 to 25+ hours of rehearsal time.  For a longer, more complicated show plan 30-35+ hours at a bare minimum.  Now, MOUNTING a smaller in-class mini-musical with fewer complications may only take 6-10 hours of dedicated rehearsal/teaching time depending on how many extra teaching activities you want to include.  Plan the schedule very carefully to work the children in short segments.  Vary the activities every 10-15 minutes so that they stay invigorated through singing, movement, doing worksheets, thinking/memorizing/lecture time, and acting segments and still be able to get much accomplished in each session.

          Budget – Most shows can be MOUNTED with any amount of budget depending on how creative the Director is.  Sets and Costumes can be very expensive especially when multiplied by the size of the cast.  Some productions do not absolutely require elaborate sets and costumes.  Find shows that have suggestions for alternate ways to MOUNT them.  Decide what you can afford and design the production accordingly.

          Helpers – In order to do a musical, the main “helpers” are the Director, Assistant Director (or producer), musical director or vocal coach, stage manager, choreographer, costumer, and scenic designer, and they may even want helpers to help them.  If you do not have people to do these jobs, the few helpers available must do all of the jobs.  Depending on the size of the cast, try to use the 10:1 rule.  For every 8-10 children have at least one adult helper.  That way, the jobs can be equally divided and the children’s varied activities can be more easily managed.

          Stage – “It’s all about the stage” or lack thereof.  In the theater world, this is a common mantra.  Creating the illusion of the world in the story is literally a function of the stage and its limitations.  Sometimes a show must be MOUNTED in a portion of a classroom with none of the conventional perks (lights, sound, curtains, backstage prep area, space, space, and more space).  Sometimes a show will be MOUNTED in a gym with a stage, but the stage still has few of the conventional perks.  So, once again, the production has to be designed within the confines of the space available.  In order to be successful, Directors must be creative!  Sometimes the show won’t move to the stage until the last couple of rehearsals.  In order to effectively rehearse, the rehearsal space must closely match the stage dimensions.  Be sure to measure and set up barriers as necessary to make the practice space resemble closely the feeling of the actual stage.

          So get out there and start MOUNTING one of the Musicals on this site or one of the Mini-Musicals coming soon!  Break a leg!

         My mother was a very creative person.  She could sing and dance and play the piano.  She also was good at making things.  She could cook and sew and was quite artistic.  She always had wonderful ideas for her little children when they couldn't think of anything fun to do on rainy days.  I remember the little felt puppets she had made to illustrate the story of "The Three Billy Goats Gruff."  She taught us, my brothers and I, how to do a puppet show to act out the story.  My brothers always fought over who got to play the ugly, mean troll.  It was fun.
          As I was pondering how to write the script for my Mini-Musical of "The Tale of The Three Billy Goats Gruff," this memory flooded back to my mind.  I simply had to design the mini-musical around acting out a puppet show to this story.  I also remembered how she used to say "the grass is always greener on the other side" whenever we wanted things that we just couldn't get right then.  Seemed like the perfect moral for this story.  So, I started thinking of all the kinds of things we want but simply cannot have or things that are puzzling that we wonder about.  With these thoughts in mind, the opener, "Why Is Grass Always Greener on the Other Side?" was born.
          I also wanted to include musical themes borrowed from Norway's greatest composer, Edvard Grieg, to flavor this musical re-telling of the famous Norwegian folktale.  Music teachers may want to point out these little nods to Edvard Grieg's music.  I based the melody and accompaniment rhythms in "Why Is Grass Always Greener on the Other Side" on the "Norwegian Dance #2."  I borrowed the sneaky minor themes and chord progression of "In the Hall of the Mountain King" from the Peer Gynt Suite #1 for "The Troll Song."  And I used the haunting melody from the opening of "In a Morning Mood," also from the Peer Gynt Suite #1, as a motive in "The Billy Goat's Song."

          Elementary classroom teachers already use this story to teach many things, such as comparisons (Little, Medium, and Big), story elements, describing characters, retelling folktales with a moral, building vocabulary, idioms, and so forth.  This min-musical expands the range of experiences through use of music, art, poetry, and drama, with a little about the history and culture of Norway, and possibly, through extension into science, studying about why the grass really does look greener from a distance.  Now, perhaps, Classroom teachers, as well as Music and Drama teachers may use "The Tale of The Three Billy Goats Gruff" a Mini-Musical as a fun part of their curriculum.  


Coming in September 2014.

          My husband and I are learning the meaning of being "empty-nesters."  After actively parenting with children in the home for 35 years, this new station in life takes some getting used to.  We are finding that grand-parenting is actually a lot more fun and less stressful.  It is fulfilling to watch the new babies coming into the family and their parents going through the character-building adventures of raising them.  More cheap entertainment.  How nice that all of my nearly twenty grandchildren are the most wonderful, most talented, and most darling on the planet!  (No bias here. Just fact.)

          We did not realize, though, how boring mealtime can be with only two people at the table.  We don't feel the need to frugally budget to create an entire monthly meal calendar anymore, or discuss at length the weekly driving schedule of who needs to be driven where and picked up when and so forth.  (I do still have to be stocked with instant meals for 20 or more people at anytime, though, so I haven't seen our food budget actually decline yet.)  We find that we can actually have meaningful discussions on a broader range of topics or even break our standing house rule of never watching television during mealtime!  The best fix for boring meals, however, is getting together with family and friends as often as possible.

          At one such gathering last week, we decided to up and go on a spur of the moment get away.  My husband and I and my sister and my father decided to go to Cedar City to see a play at the Utah Shakespeare Festival.  I had never gone before and was delighted by the prospect.  We booked our hotel and reserved some tickets for an evening play and also a tour the next day.  We saw "A Comedy of Errors" presented in a replica of the Globe Theater in London.  This theater was built in the style of the Elizabethan Age and was very similar in size and construction to what was used in Shakespeare's day.  The house sat about 700 people and was arranged in such as way to have very good acoustics so that the actors did not need amplification to be heard.  We sat in the balcony on the far left and still saw and heard everything perfectly.

          The acting was superb and the sets and costumes were excellent.  This production was unique in that the play was re-imagined in a new setting.  The original play was set in the areas in and around ancient Greece.  This production was set in San Francisco during the Gold Rush of 1849.  The actors spoke the original Shakespearean text with a Southern (or Western) accent.  I was surprised how well the situation comedy fit this new setting, and more amazed at how well the language adapted to the new dialect.  The story itself played on such universal themes and situations, it is no surprise that it could hold up to a change of scene.  But, who would have thunk to watch and hear Shakespeare performed with a Southern twang?

          I whole-heartedly recommend visiting the Utah Shakespeare Festival in Cedar City, Utah.  Visit http://bard.org now to get your tickets!  I think I could get used to these spur of the moment get aways!

Let me just say how proud I was of the cast of my show "Never Cry Wolf" during their performance run.  They endured Tech and Dress Rehearsals and Opening Night and the infamous Second Performance and finally got to just enjoy the Afternoon Matinee for the entire school student body.  They really took seriously the charge to be responsible for their own performance COME WHAT MAY.  And there were technical difficulties -- not quite spectacular disasters, but definite challenges.  These kids were real troupers and kept the show going!

We had been struggling with the sound system all through the Tech rehearsals.  None of us really were trained in using the house system.  No techies in our crew.  (sigh)  We tried studying the manufacturers instruction manual and going to the Audio store for pointers, but without hiring a sound engineer, we knew we were vulnerable.  Things were going pretty well until the second show in the middle of the main character's quiet, soul-searching, repentant solo when the light crew dimmed the lights AND also flipped off the switch to the audio box.  Suddenly his mic dropped out and so did the music!  But like a trouper, he carried on!  Fortunately, we were able to fix the problem, but not until well into the next scene. (What a guy! He will have quite the story to tell!)

Then there was the time when an actor went running behind the back curtain and nearly knocked down the scenery.  Fortunately, some of our quick-thinking adult volunteers braced it until it could be fixed.  Note to self, always have duct tape handy and at the ready!
          So, on the last show, we found that one of the lavaliers (body mics) had broken.  We frantically made some redistributions and came up with a new plan to trade mics around.  That would have worked fine except we were missing some essential backstage helpers.  So the directors ended up pinch hitting with working the sound board and taping the mics to the actors and trying to figure out who had which mics in which scene.  Somehow, we all carried on.  The audiences gave us wonderful accolades.  They seemed to really enjoy the show despite the few malfunctions.  They were troupers, too.  They even sang along with the cast on the finale songs!
          Seriously, there is never a dull moment in the amateur world of live children's theater.  I am just so proud that these kids - ages 8-12 - were seasoned enough to stay the course and carry on COME WHAT MAY!

          After all -- THE SHOW MUST GO ON!

        What I love about live Theater, especially Children's Theater, is that each production is so different.  Indeed, each performance can be so different.  The children are just learning how to make their performances consistent.  So, sometimes, what just happens can be brilliant but never happen twice.  That's what makes live theater so interesting!

        Opening night was happily a success!  This has been the fourth production of "Never Cry Wolf" that I have personally directed.  Different kids, different age ranges, different skills, different stage, different set pieces, different costumes and props, and still the show held up and delighted the audience. It makes me happy that the adults in the audience get the jokes even if the kids don't.  And, as I told the children, the Little Lambs are the real stars of the show.  They are so cute, the audience can't help but love them!  I was pleased that the children remembered their choreography and made their quick changes to make their entrances and only dropped a couple of lines throughout the entire show!  (That is a big, big deal.)  And the one mishap with the scenery was handled deftly by our quick thinking parent volunteers and avoided a disaster.  All in all, it was a fun and delightful show.  Let's hope we can repeat that energy for two more shows!

          I like to watch the audience during the show.  I can tell if all is going well by how intent the audience is watching.  This famous Aesop Fable is familiar to most of them, so they think they know what to expect.  It is fun to watch them as something unexpected comes along.  They lean forward in their seats and look around to try to take in all that is happening on stage.  As much is told through action as is through language.  The songs and characters performing them are new, too.  So when I notice the audience tapping their toes and unconsciously singing along, I know the message is coming across loud and clear.  And by the last chorus of the finale song, the audience is practically doing the choreography along with the actors.  That is a mark of smashing success!
          That's live theater!  Everyone takes part -- including the audience!  I love, love, love it!

          No Musical set in Ancient Greece could be complete without some authentic Greek instruments -- authentic looking at least.  In my enthusiasm to help the cast immerse themselves into the ancient Grecian world, I have spent the last month creating a Cheyl's Lyre, an Aulos, some Pipes of Pan, a Pandouris and Tympanum.  These have been fascinating to learn about and wondering how they would actually sound.  From what I can imagine, they would not sound musical to our modern ears.  However, I have great respect for the idea of using these unusual instruments as unique features for my upcoming production of "Never Cry Wolf."  In Scene 5, the artisan character Altair the Magnificent, brings his Muses and Musicians to help him get in the mood for painting a set of Commemoration Amphora (the Greek vases famous for capturing scenes of Greek life from the ancient times.)  The production number "Set It for Posterity" allows the Muses adjust the poses of the Politicians to help them look heroic for their portraits on the vases.  The Musicians, of course, play their authentic replica instruments during this wild and wonderful romp complete with demonstrations of1960's dance crazes and a rock 'n roll guitar solo.  Yes, the instruments are key to this number!   

            The Pan Pipes and the Aulos are blowing instruments.  The Pan Pipes were tubes of varying lengths blown somewhat like we would blow a harmonica today.  In fact, they are considered the first mouth-organ.  The Aulos is unusual because it is a double reed instrument with two sounding tubes.  One of the tubes provided the melody and the other the drone for the harmony (probably an open 4th or 5th).  It was a precursor to the bagpipes.  From studying the drawings of these instruments from pottery and museum pieces, I decided that I could make stage replicas just using bamboo.  I had my son cut up a bamboo placemat and a couple of bamboo tiki torch holders I scavenged from a thrift store.  After tying them together with twine and rubber bands, they make amazingly authentic-looking, though non-sounding, prop instruments.
          The Tympanun are simply variations of hand drums.  I decided that Quaker Oats containers were the perfect size and shape.  I painted them and added "skins" out of fake leather held on with glue and rubber bands.  Seems to work out well.  Sturdy enough for four performances, anyway.
          

         Being a musician, I wanted this Musical to incorporate the musical flavor of Ancient Greece as much as possible.  It was fun researching before writing the music and as well the script, and it has been fun now creating the musical props.  I am glad they will not sound, though.  We don't want them interfering with the soundtrack now, do we!

          The hardest part of directing a children's theater show is coming up with a working rehearsal schedule.  With the unpredictability of kids and their families and their school and sports and lessons and social obligations, as well as winter wellness and weather issues, we are having a dickens of a time keeping on track!  The few hours we are able to see the students each week makes forward progress an almost insurmountable task.
           I have done summer theater camps in 30 dedicated hours in a 2 week timeframe, and tuition-based Children's Theater shows in 30 hours of rehearsal time in an 8 week time frame, but doing a school show as an after-school club offering in 30 hours of stolen minutes spread out over 10 weeks --- that is more than difficult -- it is a nightmare!  I do not recommend it.  Thirty hours over a shorter period is much more reasonable, depending on how complicated the show is.  Our main problem seems to be that our 40 minutes here and there does not give us adequate time to string scenes together.  We might get one scene finished and then go on to work something else.  Then, by the time we get a chance to come back to it a week or more later, the kids have forgotten everything.  What a challenge!
          Hopefully, our longer Friday rehearsals coming up and our few 3 hour Saturday rehearsals can save us.  We are at the "five weeks to go" count down. Time to step it up and get things really set.  We haven't even started working with props and set pieces yet.  And then there are the awkward moments learning to wear and perform in the costumes.  Yikes!  Wish us luck!
          The good news is that the kids are adorable and are singing well.  Some of them are really starting to get into their characters.  The dances are almost finished with polishing yet to come.  Now if we can get off book and cut out the silliness we ought to make great strides in a short time.  For goodness sakes, the message of this show -- "Never Cry Wolf" -- is WORK.  We had better start practicing what we preach!