Betsy's Blog on Children's Theater | BaileyKidsMusicals.com - BaileyKidsMusicals.com

Resourcefulness

12/3/2019

My neighbors have a son about the same age as my youngest son. He has been a good friend to my boy from their High School years on. Now they are grown-ups. He doesn't visit his folks very often these days because his work is far away, but when he is here, he keeps himself very busy. For example, he was home for the Thanksgiving holiday working on rebuilding his truck transmission. I was visiting with them the other day and was curious about what he was making. It looked like knitting. When I looked closer, he WAS knitting. He told me that he needed a headband of a certain width and color and weight. So he decided to just make it. He did not have knitting needles, though, that would make the stitches as tight as he envisioned. So he took some tent stakes, ground the ends to points, and started his project. What a resourceful guy!

When working in Children's Theater, RESOURCEFULNESS is one trait you really need. Either you do not have funds to cover costs the way you would like, or the venue you have for performance is awkward in many respects, or you don't have exactly the talent pool you need for the show ... there is always something that is challenging. So, the best thing is to be flexible and very resourceful. Take stock of what you've already got and think creatively. It is amazing how you can adapt props and sets and costumes you already have for new purposes. And if you think about it long enough, you can usually come up with solutions to how to use the performance space adequately. And so what if you don't have the talent pool, the dream cast, you expected? This gives someone else a chance for a better part and an opportunity for growth.

All of the shows I have ever been part of had limited budgets. We scrounged around for fabric, old paint, furniture parts, old shoes, cast off craft materials, and anything donated that might possibly be turned into something for the show. We used a lot of found objects such as tree branches and cardboard boxes for props and set pieces. The funds we did have needed to be budgeted for the things we actually had to buy. Those things were precious. You just have to pick your battles and allocate your funds to cover costs for the most important things and be creative for the rest.

You may not need to grind down the points of tent stakes to make the knitting needles to knit your costumes, but you may have some other seemingly insurmountable problems. Remember, with creative thought and some elbow grease, you can be RESOURCEFUL and come up with a solution!

Neuschwanstein

10/21/2019

Bavaria in Germany is probably the most picturesque and photographed area of the world that I have ever visited. The mountains and valleys with forests just showing a hint of changing fall color and the fields still exquisitely green were almost too beautiful to be believed. No wonder this area became the backdrop for King Ludwig II of Bavaria's most ambitious castle --- Neuschwanstein.

At the time of the king's death in 1888, Neuschwanstein was not completed. In fact, the tour guide said that of the 200 rooms planned, only 28 were actually completed. Soon after the death of the king, this castle was opened for visitors to tour. It was an income source for the royal family up until the World Wars. It has been featured in movies and documentaries. It was the inspiration for Disneyland's Sleeping Beauty castle and many other castles that were renovated in the Romantic style. It has become a symbol of Bavaria in many tour brochures. This castle is very beautiful.

But Neuschwanstein was never really used as a residence. It was designed more as a theatrical set dedicated to the operas of Richard Wagner. King Ludwig was a friend and admirer of Wagner and he loved the Medieval mythology and folk tales brought to life in Wagner's Operas. The Hall of the Singers, Throne Hall, Drawing Room, Study Room, Dining Room, and Bedroom were all ornately painted with scenes from "Lohengrin," "Tannhäuser" and "Tristan and Isolde."

As beautiful as Neuschwanstein is, it still felt like a stage set --- beautifully executed fake history. The castle felt as real as make-believe.

Still, you can't discount King Ludwig's choice of a dramatic setting. The scenery was real and gorgeous.

Things We Do To Make It Happen

4/5/2017

The photo below is a cast photo of the Sego Lily Elementary production of Momotaro, a Tale of Bravery. You may notice a few things about the stage. There is a proscenium curtain and a few stage lights, but no other curtains or drapes to shield the lovely avant guard artwork of pipes and lights on the ceiling. And what you cannot know is that I had my son hang sheet drapes to provide a backdrop to hide the storage container, cubbies, P.E. mats and games, many odd boxes, a piano, and lots of other clutter that had to remain on the stage.

This stage has three options for getting performers onto it: the front risers, a side door leading out to an odd hallway on Stage Left, and a long winding ramp on Stage Right leading to the front of the stage. In other words, because all of these options for getting onto the stage are in full view of the audience, it is clear that once the actors come onto the stage, they must remain on the stage for the entire show.

When I inquired about removing some of the junk from the stage so that we would have some room to corral the kids during the show, and have room for costumes and props, I was told, "Sure, we can get some of that stuff moved for you."

And while it was true, that some of the bigger items were moved, the space was still rather tight backstage with 40 kids and all of their costumes and props.

The only comment I got from the overworked and rather put out custodian was that this was not an upscale Junior High or High School with a well appointed theater, it was just an over-crowded elementary school with every room doing double and triple duty! Well, I do understand that.

I have gone to several productions at this school and found that the sound system was dismal. So, thanks to my generous son, I was able to bring in a P.A. system to boost the success of the house system.

   Sadly, due to illness, I was not able to really finish painting the sets with the detail I had envisioned. But, the show must go on...

     Fortunately, the show did go on to great success. The comments from the guests and the school principal were along this order:

   "This was the best performance we have ever seen at this school!"
"The kids were great and we could actually hear them!" "The dancing was so beautiful!" "Loved the story and the music!" "Everything looked so professional!"

   So, in spite of all of the extra effort it took to create a workable stage, having wonderful comments at the end makes it all worth it!

Summer Camp 2016

7/7/2016

Success!

The Summer Theater Camp 2016 experience turned out amazingly well for our 30 intrepid troopers. Usually, the month of June in Utah County has simply splendid weather -- not too cold and not yet the hot temperatures of summer and no fierce winds to contend with. But not this year. Most of our two weeks of camp, we experienced an unusual heat spell of temperatures above 95 degrees and some mighty winds! 95 degrees plus is hot by any standards.

But our kids stuck it out and put in the effort to make a fun show. They learned their lines and their moves and pulled it all together for an appreciative audience of parents and neighborhood friends in just two weeks!

We started out with both casts together singing "You Can Learn a Lot" which introduced the two Aesop Fables. Then the younger cast took their places for "The Ants and the Grasshopper." Here is the set for the Ant Hill.

After the Ants' last song "Pay Now and Play Later" and bows, on came the Country Mice to "sleep" in front of their big oak tree in the country. The Country Mouse sings "What Is It Like" as she dreams about the Big City.

Partway through the story of "The Country Mouse and the City Mouse," the location changed to the City Mouse's town home. There they were joined by the French Maid and some neighbors to sing "As the French Say" as they contemplated a night of feasting in the pantry.

When the City Mouse takes the Country Mouse to the pantry to taste cheese and other tasty delights, the mice have to sneak along a brick wall past the sleeping cat.

Unfortunately the Cat wakes up and chases them all over the stage and back behind the wall. The Country Mouse decides that she doesn't care about tasting cheese that much. She wants to go back to the country where she knows what to expect.

The Country Mice sing their last song "A Country Mouse" doing a hoe down dance and are joined by the Narrators and the City Mouse for the Finale and Bows.

Then, the Ants and Grasshopper came onto the stage and sang a Reprise of "You Can Learn a Lot" for the final bows.

Thank goodness we scheduled a morning show -- before the winds came up to blow our sets away! Yay!

Can We Help?

3/29/2016

So, getting all of the props and costumes and set pieces and extraneous stuff made, assembled, painted, sewed or otherwise collected and set up at the venue usually takes me the entire course of the run. And I do most of it by myself. But getting all of that stuff broken down and packed away after the last show usually happens very quickly thanks to a lot of useful helpers. This time, though, our last show of "The Adventures of Dick Whittington" was during the middle of the school day and not that many helpers were available. In other words, the few backstage helpers just had time to gather and box up the costumes. That left me alone to pack up my van to take things home at my leisure. It took me about a week to finally retrieve and transport all of the stuff back to my house. (Washing costumes, sorting, organizing and putting everything away may take another month!)

Library Set for "The List"

Cottage set for "Off to Seek My Fortune"

  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?

Unexpected Twists and Turns

1/19/2015

No matter how hard an author tries to imagine and plan out the script and songs for a new play, there are inevitable twists and turns as it goes into production. For example: I have always had good luck with getting many boys to come out for the shows at the elementary school I have been writing shows for. But this time, the ratio is roughly 4:1 -- girls to boys. Unfortunately, that means that some girls will have to play "Royal Guards" in some of the sequences. Although this is not unusual for Children's Theater, it is a complication and a big let down for the girls who see themselves as lovely "princesses or ballerinas." Fortunately, these girls can be featured as females in other scenes. That should ease the weeping and wailing.

Another twist has been figuring and re-figuring how to do the magical effects. In the story, "Parizade's Quest" is to obtain the three wonderful things: a Fountain of Golden Water, a Singing Tree, and a Speaking Bird. So, just how do you create a fountain of golden bubbling water, a tree with moving branches of shimmering "musical" leaves, and a bird (played by a human) in a glittering cage?

So, I think I have figured out how to create the Speaking Bird's cage out of very lightweight tubing from the plumbing department at the hardware store. It is the same kind of plastic tubing that hula hoops are made of. Once spray painted with gold sparkles, it ought to work.

The Golden Fountain will just have to be a painted cardboard cut-out, I'm afraid. We cannot afford the space to bring on stage a heavy cement garden fountain and we certainly cannot have real water! Not with elementary kids! I am thinking that the bubbling might be accomplished through some kind of puppetry, though.

And as for the Singing Tree... that might be created as a "flat" with bas relief trunk and hanging shimmering leaves with concealed mini wind chimes attached to strings. We might then have a puppeteer pull the strings from behind to work the action of making the branches of leaves shimmer and the chimes tinkle in the wind.

Another twist -- a terrific, happy discovery -- has been a young sixth grade student artist who has volunteered to design and paint the back ground scenes. She has already come up with some beautiful designs and is anxious to get to work. Happy happenstances like this make my worries and time all worth the effort!

Here's to expecting the Unexpected! Way to go, Ceilidh!

The Sultan's Castle as designed by Ceilidh Sharik, 2015

Kudos to the Kids!

10/12/2014

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!

Spur of the Moment Get Away

7/28/2014

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!

The Show Must Go On!

4/21/2014

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

3/31/2014

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!