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.