My Romney has been deeply involved in the theater department at her high school since the first day of her freshman year. Her first play was such an incredible experience, so positive and she made so many friends. Since then, she has still loved the department and all the people in it, but there have been a few disappointments as far as the plays have gone. Foremost was the pandemic which caused the cancellation of the end of her freshman year including the spring musical, Cinderella. Most of her sophomore year was cancelled as well, though they attempted to do some online plays with some success. Romney wasn't very happy with them, though, and felt frustrated and disappointed. Finally at the end of last year she got to act in Sponge Bob Squarepants, though she had to wear a mask while performing.
Finally this fall, the start of her junior year, the theater teacher put together a pair of one-act plays that would be just perfect for a Halloween production. One was Dracula and the other was a play he wrote himself, based on the Hispanic legend of the weeping woman, a ghost who lures in children and drowns them. It was called La Llorona. I will say that Romney wasn't thrilled with the part she got, and was feeling a little fed up with theater in general after the covid-born frustrations of the past 18 months.
Then it got worse! Her poor teacher's family members got sick, which cancelled several weeks of rehearsal. He even got quite sick himself and we are still feeling grateful that he made a recovery and eventually made it back to school. It took so long, however, that the production eventually had to be postponed. Even then, there were alarmingly few rehearsals before the show took place. Romney was wishing like crazy that it would just all get cancelled. Her wish was not granted, however, and the plays opened half way through November.
Ok, there were a few bits that were a little rough around the edges. But when I went to see the shows I was quite pleasantly surprised. The students really worked hard, not to mention the parents who pulled together the sets and the costumes. The shows looked great and had a lot of wonderfully creepy Halloween-y effects. The weeping woman's eerie crying made my skin crawl and there was a lot of spurting blood in Dracula that made the entire auditorium full of people squeal and scream. It was pretty fun and I was sorry that it had been pushed past Halloween.
Also, I myself had a memorable experience during the show. One evening I volunteered to help out at the concessions table and though before the show and during intermission I was bombarded with people in search of snacks and treats. But during the show itself it was very quiet and I sat, expecting time to knit. However, three different times I was approached by a person who was either waiting to go in to the show at intermission or who needed to slip out for a moment, and ended up coming over to talk to me. I chatted with each of these three people pretty extensively and having rather deep conversations that I won't forget.
So though the show was not what Romney had hoped, we all ended up feeling glad that the shows did indeed go on and were fun to watch, and even a little fun to take part in, according to her. I'm hoping that her next couple of shows will be even better.
We are looking forward to 2022 as Romney gets to take part in the production of 5 student-written and student-directed plays, a show called Take 5, which has been a part of East High tradition since before I was born. Also, there's another spring musical scheduled based on a princess - Beauty and the Beast. May it all go well!!
No comments:
Post a Comment