The Theater

This morning, I feel slightly drugged from an overload of overscheduling and overemotion as I watched the end of my children's high school theater career.
I shouldn't be sad about the end. I should be thrilled that we got more high school theater time after Grace left. I never pictured Tucker throwing himself into theater productions.
He started off his sophomore year in the chorus of Oklahoma!
Combining theater with swim season is difficult.They practice three hours after school in the theater, then get to come home for about an hour before heading off to swim until 9.
But, Tucker's junior year, he accepted a role as the UPS guy in Legally Blonde. I thought that might give him the theater bug because he got so many accolades. He brought down the house every time he walked out in those UPS shorts and nodded toward the audience in his cool, nonchalant way.  Of course, he also had to wear a blonde wig in that production since he was bald from swim season. They usually shave their heads at the end of the season.
They announced the musical this year as Kiss Me Kate. Tucker didn't really have much interest in that. He'd never heard of it. He had to drop his vocal group class because it conflicted with his AP Stats class, so he wasn't singing regularly.
When auditions came around, he didn't go.
That's when the choir director started to pester him about trying out.
Tucker has never sung solo songs. Too self conscious? Too unsure of his voice?
He didn't think he wanted a big acting or singing part.
On the day of callbacks, that's when they bring in the students for specific parts, Tucker agreed to audition.
He sang "Hallelujah" and I like to think of him sitting on a stool with his hands strumming the chords of his guitar as his soft baritone voice sang the words.
Two days later, he told me he had the male lead -- Fred Graham.
The story of Kiss Me Kate is set in the late 1940s. Fred and Lily, an actress, are divorced and acting in the Shakespeare play The Taming of the Shrew. So it's a play within a play.
Tucker made it to States in swimming this year so his rehearsal time became sporadic. He caught the flu and missed a week of rehearsals.
He claimed he'd never be able to memorize all the lines, especially the Shakespeare lines.

And then the show opened and he amazed us. 

By last night, his voice cracked a couple of times, worn out by the fourth show, but he pulled off his role with aplomb.

At one point, one of the boys in the show told the woman in charge of wardrobe. "Tucker was really mad at me." She explained to him that Tucker was only acting because he was supposed to be mad in the scene.
Maybe he could pull it off.
Tucker wouldn't stand still for pictures, except this one of him and his swim friends.

I'm back at the high school today to strike the set and put away costumes. My last hurrah with the high school theater. 

Fun With Hats

Why didn't I take pictures today?
I went to work on costumes for the high school musical. The kids are doing Kiss Me Kate. Tucker is Fred, although I haven't seen the movie or play, so really don't know what that means.
Today, Jenny, the woman in charge of costumes, told me to find hats. They need 1940s hats and Shakespearean hats. Apparently the actors in Kiss Me Kate are performing The Taming of the Shrew, a play within a play.
Jenny searched for images of Shakespearean hats to show me. Mostly, I thought they looked like throw pillows on people's heads. Here's an example.
Then I had to decide whether to search through the throw pillow box or the hat box. I could take throw pillows, add feathers and cut holes in the bottom of pillows so they fit on the kids' heads.
Truthfully, a beret with some tissue paper pushed into the corners and some gold braid along the edge would work too and might be a little easier.
Letting me loose in a room with bins full of hats might have been her first mistake.
Within minutes I was back out in the hallway modeling hats.
Sometimes, when you see a hat, you just have to put it on.

This bamboo hat was awesome, but I couldn't convince Jenny that it would work. Although she later found a woman's hat from the 1940s with the same shape and covered with fabric. So we might make it work yet.
Jenny threatened to take the job away from me if I didn't get serious. So I went back and started sorting through hats.
I found a lovely olive green beret. I put it on and began to sing "La Vie en Rose."
I continued to paw through fedoras and driving caps when I heard Jenny call me from out in the hallway.
I hurried out there again, forgetting about the beret. Jenny and her son, Eli, started to laugh.
"Every time you come out you have a different hat on," Eli said.
Isn't that the point of finding hats?
A hat can definitely transform you.
We also pulled some fancy women's hats for the 1940s. Hats similar to this.
I also found a hat that had a scarf attached that ties under the woman's chin. Jenny threatened to remove the scarf part but I protested.
Someone else in the group reminded us that the Baroness from The Sound of Music had worn a hat like that.

I carried the pile of hats into the hallway for Jenny to approve or discard. Then she called a meeting of the wardrobe crew and everyone put on a hat as we discussed what needed to be accomplished to complete the costumes in three weeks.
At one point the music director walked into the hallway and started laughing. We all looked at him puzzled then he pointed out the hats.
We'd forgotten.

Saturday Snapshot -- High School Musical

To participate in the Saturday Snapshot meme post a photo that you (or a friend or family member) have taken then leave a direct link to your post on Alyce's blog At Home With Books. Photos can be old or new, and be of any subject as long as they are clean and appropriate for all eyes to see. How much detail you give in the caption is entirely up to you. Please don’t post random photos that you find online.
My son Tucker, 17, is a junior in high school, and this year the school is putting on the musical Legally Blonde. That is not a musical, or even a movie that I had seen. All I knew about it was Reese Witherspoon, so when Tucker told me he got the part of the UPS guy, it didn't mean much. All he told me was that the female character describes him as "walking porn."
Here he is, wearing a blonde wig, because his hair is still growing in from where he shaved it for the swim team state meet.

I got to see the show Thursday evening after work and Friday evening. It always amazes me how good high school shows can be. 

Tucker's part isn't huge, but last night, he literally stopped the show as people laughed and then broke into applause after his first line. He first swaggers across the front of the stage carrying a box. The musicians play some strutting music for him, similar to bow chicka bow wow... He nods his head and raises his eyebrows at a few audience members and they're all laughing before he gets to the other side. So when he walks into the salon and says, "I've got a package." Everyone howled with laughter. The actors had to hold their poses for nearly a minute while people laughed then clapped.

Here is Tuck with a few other cast members after the show. Those black eyebrows really stand out against the blonde wig.

Hope you all are having "yourself a super day."

The Three Musketeers -- The Musical

Somehow, Grace manages to find theater wherever she goes.

From last year's production
 of Pride and Prejudice

Last summer she was in a community production of Pride and Prejudice, the musical. Those same people who adapted Pride and Prejudice wrote music and adapted The Three Musketeers this year, and they told Grace they'd written a part specifically for her. She felt flattered, but worried that she might be reaching above her abilities.
"I've never been the leading love interest," she wailed one night after a frustrating rehearsal.
She plays Constance, who in this version, is the love of D'Artagnan and who is unfortunately married to D'Artagnan's landlord. The D'Artagnan actor is a dashing blond who just graduated from high school and strides across the stage singing his love for Constance.
The landlord, Constance's husband, luckily is supposed to be a "silly man" because Grace's friend Leron plays him. He's a 6-foot, 4-inch, gay, African American man and he camps it up. He might just steal the show.
Grace is lovely and sincere in the part, trying to stay true to her husband, to withstand the affections of a Musketeer, and to support her queen. In the end, she even gets to kill someone to protect D'Artagnan.
I wish you all could sit with me in the theater to watch and to laugh and to clap. After a few more performances, I might even be singing along to some of these original numbers.

Cowboys

The wind came sweeping down the plain in our little town this weekend as the high school put on the musical Oklahoma. When Grace was in high school, I worked on costumes for weeks before the musical. This year, teaching 7 college classes, I avoided volunteering. But Earl went to work on the set and kept telling me how intricate it was. I finally got a chance to see for myself on Thursday night. One of the other mothers texted to ask if I'd help sell flowers. So I passed out carnations for a dollar and got to sneak in to watch the production.
Tucker tried out for the ensemble and in addition to being a cowboy, got to be a dancer, which meant throwing himself on the floor, learning the two-step, and flinging girls around the stage. As a matter of fact, at the end of the production, they gave him the "brute strength" award because much of the time he was lifting girls into the air. Not a bad way for a 16-year-old to spend nine weeks of rehearsal.
He says it was a lot of work and he doesn't know if he'll do it again. He had to juggle swim team with musical, and going to States to compete, and he has already started track practice. But I think he had fun, and I could tell he was having fun on stage. Who knows, next year, maybe he'll get the nerve to accept a speaking part.

Brush With Fame

My kids love when I tell the story about my brush with fame. They've built it up over the years -- "Didn't you go to prom with Woody Harrelson?"
"No," I'll explain again.
So here's the real story, saved for posterity.
I grew up in Lebanon, Ohio, a small town between Dayton and Cincinnati. And, in spite of the history that Woody grew up in Texas, he went to my high school. He was into theater, but the only show I remember him performing in was Li'l Abner.
Woody is older, my brother's age, and we spoke, but I wouldn't say we were friends.
Now switch focus to a couple at school. Paul and Alice were the kind of couple who dated forever. As a matter of fact, I heard they got married right after high school. Paul was always a guy who flirted with me when Alice wasn't around. One week during my sophomore year, Paul and Alice broke up. The tears from the break up weren't dry when Paul invited me to a party that weekend and I said yes.
He picked me up, I can't remember the kind of car he drove or what I wore, but we went to the party somewhere out in the country.
Everyone was at the party, including Alice.
You can imagine what happened. Paul and Alice got back together at the party, so there I was dumped and rideless. That's where Woody Harrelson stepped in to save me. He offered me a ride home.
I'm not sure why I didn't ask my brother for a ride since he was at the party.
So, I was feeling humiliated about being dumped by my date, and Woody was jovial as he drove me home. We parked in front of my house and talked for awhile.
I don't remember if he was particularly religious, but I do remember his confession that he felt bad, guilty, that he had kissed so many girls in his life. He said he had kissed 71 girls.
I can't remember how I reacted. I was probably awestruck because there weren't that many girls in our small town.
Before I got out of the car, he asked if he could kiss me goodnight.
That's when I laughed and asked if he wanted me to be number 72 on the list of girls he had kissed? He did. So he kissed me goodnight and he gave me his senior picture after he had signed the back: "To number 72."
I wish I knew what I had done with that picture so I could tell you what the rest said. I could even scan it and put it on this blog post, but I don't know where it is.
So here's a picture from his younger days, closer to the Woody that I kissed in his car in front of my house on Ridge Road. The picture is from http://www.triviatribute.com/woodyharrelson.html

As a reporter, I've interviewed Catherine DeNeuve and Al Gore. I even walked behind Ted Kennedy, but I've only been kissed by one person who became a star.
How about you? Do you have a story about a brush with fame?

Break a Leg!

The musical this past week was FABULOUS. I got to sit through it twice and a third time I was on costume repair duty so I scurried from backstage to the rear doors to watch various parts, especially Grace's scene which begins the second act.
When our French friend Marie came to visit this summer, she found it impossible to believe that Americans actually have "high school musicals."
"No, zhis must not be true!" she insisted. She also couldn't believe there were real marching bands. But, it's all true. These pieces of Americana make up the high school experience.
I'd never seen this musical before, so my expectations were low. But the music, the acting and the kids were amazing. The musical is called HONK! and it's based on the story of The Ugly Duckling. A number of the high school kids decided this was beneath them and didn't even try out. They apparently weren't aware of the sexual innuendo throughout the play. As Grace said, "Mom, what do you expect? It was created in England."
So no one should have been surprised when the duck mother was explaining to the Ugly Duckling that the island was too far away to swim. "Good gracious, no. It's farther than you'd think. I've only been out there once when your father and I were courting and I didn't mean to go that far then."
Grace, a hen, and Queenie, a cat, have a scene where the tom cat is chasing down the ugly duckling. The tom cat sees Queenie and a "love scene" ensues. She calls the tom cat a "scruff" but admits that when "you've had it easy, you like a bit of rough!"
So this was definitely no children's-only show.
Some of my favorite parts from the show: Grace was sick on Tuesday night so she stayed home while they were rehearsing. She was texting. I asked who she was texting.
"Carl."
"Isn't Carl rehearsing?" I asked. Carl played one of the ducklings.
"Yes, he's in his egg."
I loved the idea that Carl was on stage waiting to be hatched and busy texting.
On opening night, we were in the audience. The cat's goal throughout is to catch and eat the Ugly Duckling. A little boy a few rows behind us. Began to whisper in fear, "Oh no. He's going to eat him. He's going to get him."
His mother had to take him out of the theater. Then when the cat goes running out of the back door, as part of the play, the child and the mean cat came face to face. Kyle, who played the cat, scared children, and enthralled them every night.
In the final night, a little boy in the audience had the funniest laugh, kind of craggly. When Kyle the cat ripped open his yellow rain slicker (the one he'd been wearing to pretend he's a duck) the little boy laughed a big, raucous laugh. Everyone on stage had to freeze because the whole audience cracked up at the little boy's laugh.
At the end of the play Saturday night, Grace sobbed and sobbed. Theater and music made her high school experience worthwhile. Yes, she loved biology and she was an expert at English essays, but this was something she could not have gotten at home.

Feathers Flying

Last week, my 13-year-old picked up his backpack off the floor and gave a sigh of exasperation. "Everyday I go to school leaving a trail of feathers," he complained.
It's true. My house is full of feathers. And I don't own a bird.
The musical at the high school this year is the story of the Ugly Duckling and I am, once again, working on costumes. The borrowed sewing machine is set up at the end of our dining room table, right in front of a heating vent
When the heat kicks on, the cut off pieces of yellow boa feathers stream up in the air then float down like tiny jelly fish under the ocean. We'll be in the middle of a conversation when a little, yellow jellyfish boa comes floating down before our eyes.
(This may make a general statement about my housekeeping capabilities that may appall some readers.)
No one in the play is wearing a chicken suit, though.
Since the fall play, Little Women, Jennie and I have been going to the costume room every week and reorganizing it. We've removed, classified and folded every piece of clothing in there. Then suddenly spring musical was upon us. Luckily, with 35 cast members, some other mothers have stepped in to help, as well.
Jennie and I "pulled" the necessary clothes from the boxes then we set to adding feathers.
I'm in charge of the costumes for the four ducklings and the evil cat.
Every time I cut one of the yellow boas, the pieces flew everywhere, including up my nose. I've swiffered and vaccuumed, but those yellow jellyfish boas keep escaping, much to the consternation of the cats who thought the boas and yellow tulle were only for attacking anyway. They'll stare in suspicion at the piece of yellow feather flying through the air.
The ducklings are the smallest girls in the cast. I'm not crazy about their orangish tshirts and leggings, but I do love the yellow tutus. The male duckling has a tail with tulle and boas, but it is not nearly as poofy as the girls' tutus.
The cat is wearing a pin-striped suit and I had to add fur down his back. I twisted some pipe cleaners together to fill out the tail and give it a little shape. Then I added some fur to his lapels. He's supposed to have a sleazy, 1980s look to him.

The rest of the time, I've been hemming pants, shorts and skirts then sewing boas onto them.
Grace has a nice part as a domesticated chicken, which she plays with a thick southern accent. Her best friend is a female cat and they have a nice duet, along with a solo for Grace. I'm excited for this production to get on stage and then be over.
I'm so sick of feathers yet don't have the energy to clean up the ones that remain in my house. The show is this weekend, so after Saturday, I'm finished with feathers.