Oh, those little ones...

This week has been a REAL wild one... A Friday morning show (NEVER had one) and a TON of 5 and 6 year olds with attention spans that would rival most small, furry animals.

At the audition we had 45 K-5th graders, which means we had to cast EVERYBODY, badly behaved, ADHD and those who have to pee every 6.6 seconds included. What made this week even tougher was that we had 21 5-6 year olds for just 18 sea horse parts! So we found the smartest 6 year olds we could and gave them HUGE upgrades. Then we had to cast 8 year olds as the King and Queen, a part usually reserved for 12 year olds and off we went!

Our greatest fears were realized when we started rehearsal and realized that these kids weren't retaining anything...Shirnest and I proceeded to greatly simplify choreography, cut songs, lines and even pair kids up to say lines together so that at least one of them might remember what to say...Still the kids struggled. We knew that our ridiculously early Friday morning show was 2 days away so we decided to extend rehearsals and really put the heat on to ensure that these kids would have a good show.

Then we found out that the actual stage was going to be at a completely new location and the audience on Friday was going to be the other 250 kids in the elementary school...So now, not only were they going to be nervous and disoriented by the new surroundings, the audience wasn't going to cut them ANY slack or give two craps how cute they looked in their costumes.

"All right troops! All of your friends are out there waiting for you to be brilliant! What do you think will happen if you say your lines quietly and act bored?" I said to them the morning of the show.
"They will get bored and quiet too!" said a sea horse.
"They'll fall asleep!" the 8 year old Queen shouted
"They'll throw things!" one of the older kids said
"That's right guys, ALLLLLLLLL of that stuff will happen. So how do we make sure they stay awake and excited during the show?"
"YELL ALL OF OUR LINES AND SMILE!!!" they screamed
"Exactly! so everyone think of your first line in the show and then yell it as loud as you can right now..."
"HEYMCAMS FIJDF AOJ FJAFGIR FJI AFGOIIVPQPARGIMERMAIDA!!!!!!!!!!!"

It was a deafening sound but I knew my little troops were ready to deliver. And did they ever!

Not a single line was dropped, not a single cue missed and what's even better, the audience LOVED the show hooting and hollering at their friends and laughed and clapped as loud as they could and our little Basin City, WA kids delivered a hell of a show.

I could have died....

Hopefully the title of this entry immediately pulls you in and your heart starts pumping, shouting, "NO, NOT CHRIS, I LOVE HIM!"
It has now been a week since my wild adventures in Redway, CA and I just found out yesterday from member of staff at the home office that I was in serious danger that night (see "WILD NIGHT" below) because it is pot drying season and they said it is common for people to set up heavily guarded barbed wire fences with machine guns and LANDMINES...yes, machine guns and landmines...sweet mary... I could have had my leg blown off that night by a landmine and NOT had a cool war story to back it up with.

This week we are in Mesa, WA where once again we have heard horror stories of badly behaved children and we have a 9:30am Friday show which means we have like 3 days to pull this one together.

Well, off to auditions I go!!! Thanks for reading!

Well I promised you pics and here you go!

We taught an adventure workshop to this entire school yesterday. (There was 8 kids)

Not a bad view for a playground view in a K-3 school eh?
The teachers actually cook home ade lunches for the kids.

Teaching a make-up workshop to a different school in Humboldt County, CA (Yes, that again is the entire school)

This is the cabin they forced us into for the week until we told them we could barely fit our stuff in it, let alone sleep!

Our wonderful day off last Sunday in Old Sacramento...she relented to give me her number.

SHOW PICS FROM OROVILLE, CA: (last week)

The crazy faced sea horse in the foreground is the family I stayed with all week...mmmm.

I told the sea horses that if they picked their seahorse noses on-stage they would be drop-kicked and cast into a blazing hot fire, so this little one decided to get it all out backstage...smart girl.

Our drive from Oroville to Redway was amazing...

WILD NIGHT

What happens in Redway stays in Redway...that is unless you have faithful followers who care enough to read your blog! So I will share with you an incident that I still haven't recovered from.

Firstly I will say that the audition was an unbelievable success! Shirnest and I went in there with our high heels (not really mom) and power shirts and LAID DOWN THE LAW. The kids were impeccably behaved the entire audition and the second someone got out of hand I said, "OH! It looks like you don't want to be in the show!" and she immediately sat down with her mother boring a hole into her head from behind.

But I have promised you an adventure and here it is, EXACTLY as it happened:

The other evening I set out after rehearsals (11pm) to find my new home stay.(the family I would be staying with) Directions had been given to me by the mother herself and I was sure that I could find it no problem. This was not realizing that in Humboldt county blinding darkness and poorly marked street signs are a norm. I soon found myself so deep into the woods on a bumpy dirt road that I knew I was lost. A few more minutes of driving soon found me at a little house which I thought may be my family, but upon peering through the window of my little red truck I saw that a mother and her H.S. aged daughter were looking perplexed at me through the kitchen window as though no one had ever made it this far into the woods except for them.

"Uhhh, Hello." I said, more terrified at what they were thinking than anything else.
"I think I'm lost." I continued, stupidly.
"Yes, yes you are." the mother said, making things more uncombfortable by the second.

She asked if I would like to come in and make a phone call as my cell phone was utterly useless at that point and I did. After calling my family several times I was pretty sure I would be sleeping in the truck that night until the woman said, "I think you may want to consider sleeping here tonight."
I could not believe that a random mother living among the tree people would offer such a thing to a complete and utter stranger...
"Oh, really? Well, ok then." I seriously didn't know what else to say and the H.S. aged daughter was in disbelief that her mother had just offered such a thing and that I had actually accepted.

"Allright, well you can sleep in Sienna's room because she is at her Dad's this week." she said.

Just then the phone rang and sure enough it was Sienna who was calling in tears. At that moment the impossible happened and the mother said these EXACT WORDS:

"AH! They didn't cast you! Oh honey you must be so upset!"

In my adventures I had forgotten about the audition that day and could never in my wildest dreams have imagined that I would stumble into a house where they not only had heard of Missoula Children's Theatre, but of course, I had failed to cast their little girl in the show.

I apologized incessantly for not casting the kid and asked if I could still stay the night. She laughed and said of course and there I slept, in the little girl's bed who's dreams I had just crushed probably changing the course of her life from wildly succesful actress, to janitor of a strip club.

The awkwardness would have ended there if the next morning the mother hadn't strolled into the kitchen completely NAKED forgetting that she had invited a 23 year old boy into her house the night before.

TRUE STORY.

A trying week...

Sorry about not posting last week in Oroville, CA, but it was such a small town that finding internet was nearly impossible...The show was great though and the head of the company randomly showed up for the show and loved it!

This week in Redway, CA should prove to be an interesting one. Every former tour actor we have asked has just laughed and said, "GOOD LUCK!" when we asked them how it was in Redway. First of all, no one has ever heard of it. People 200 miles south of here in Sacramento deny it's existence and even I was starting to doubt it until we pulled into our tiny cabin late last night. ( I will be posting pic's of just how small it is)

The last MCT team that came through here last year has forewarned us about the behavior of the kids and they felt that the parents don't really believe in teaching their kids about respect and discipline so they just sort of run wild. WELL, our auditions are in 3 hours and we are expecting in the 80-90 kids so I'll let you know!

Thank you to all who read this and either make comments or email me...it's very encouraging!

Meet Jason

At the audition he didn't do anything to impress us. He was the 11 year old boy who was too scared to speak loudly and seemed more interested in his shoe laces than much else but Shirnest and I agreed that he looked like he might be able to handle a large role so we gave him Gil, the young merboy who is heavily sought after by the other mermaids.
He struggled all week to learn his lines and even up till show day he couldn't seem to memorize them. We were a bit worried but he had come such a long way with projecting his voice and embracing his part as the young merboy in love that we weren't too upset with him. The day before the show we were informed by the principal of the school that Jason's dad was highly abusive to him and Jason was more or less a "door mat" (as the principal put it) for the kids at school to step on and ridicule. I got goosebumps when I learned this information and then suddenly it all made sense...the countless times he asked me how he was doing with his part and how his voice sounded (even though he didn't really sing), the way he would get embarrased when the other girls would say "HI GIL!" (his character's name) in their flirty teenage way on-stage and how every 5 seconds during the show when we were backstage he would ask me, "Did I do my lines right Chris?!?!"

After the show was over and we were packing up the set he came over to me with his mom and little brother a few steps behind and he just stared up at me with the brightest smile I have ever seen as though expecting me to say something...so I looked at him and said, "Do you have any idea how proud I am of you Jason?" He just giggled, gave me a extra hard high five and said, "I did it!"