Four Years of Study- Worth Every Penny...

Gussied up for the Xmas Pot Luck

Once a year I pull my theater training out of the closet, dust it off, and put it to work. At least that is the case in my life here on the island. After Thanksgiving it becomes painfully clear that "wow, we don't have a lot of time until Christmas" and that the school's annual Christmas Show will not, in fact, happen on its own, and can't be canceled- however much we might wish it. Traditionally, the show is fobbed off on whatever fresh-faced and civic-minded newcomer has washed up on the isle's shores for the winter. Last year that newcomer was me, and really I had no way out since I had a degree in theater, and was being paid to be useful in whatever way necessary. This year I wanted a way out, but found that that particular Christmas wish was not going to be granted. This year's Christmas miracle turned out to be finding a staple gun when I needed it.

Thankfully, I was relieved of picking the material. We have a new music teacher who comes out once a week, and she brought in the script and canned accompaniment for "Christmas at the OK Corral." It concerns the town of Snowy Gulch, and one villainous grump by the name of Bubble Gum Bart, who threatens to cover the town in bubble gum if they carry out their holiday festivities. Logically, the townsfolk wire Santa a request for help, who sends the Candy Cane Kid; everything gets talked out, a saccharine ballad is perpetrated, and there's a ho-down. Classic New England Christmas fare. And it was my job to make sure it actually happened.

A few words about our school: we have eight students, spanning grades K-8. In this group of eight children we have two sets of brothers, and another student is half-uncle to one of those sets. The male to female ratio is 6:2, a vast improvement over last year's 6:1. You would think that working with only eight children would be a dream- with so few students and so many adults (two to four, depending on the day) surely the days must glide by in a pleasant atmosphere of scholarly inquiry.

You would be wrong, asshole.

It is like homeschooling the most disfunctional family of all time, except we have no control over their home lives. And the whole one-room schoolhouse thing is all very romantic until you realize you can't hit them with rulers. Eight kids will make the noise of eighty, and there's no handy principal with an office, or guidance counselor, or special ed room, or oubliette. Though perhaps we could find an old well...

The only thing to do, given the personalities involved, was to divide and conquer. I ruthlessly excluded one of my students from almost every blocking rehearsal, staging him fully upstage, behind a large set piece. His blocking was simple and, per his request, he never had to dance. He could be kept out of the tedious blocking rehearsals. Not typically a fan of exclusion, I will embrace it whole-heartedly when it means avoiding disasters and migraines. The process was still pretty ugly, but by the time I plugged the student back into the rehearsals with the other kids, the larger group all more or less had their act together. Of course, the little kids still loved to turn upstage to sing to the back wall, generally miss their cues, forget their lines, and totally lose track of what they were supposed to be doing. If they didn't come by those habits naturally, I guess I would've had to have staged it.

To get everything to come together, I had to move beyond the use of my teacher voice, and into the use of my director voice. My mother wondered what the distinction is between the two, and I think it was good to have the opportunity to elucidate the difference. A teacher's voice will be strong and angry, but will have a undertone of weariness and frustration that hints at her proximity to the breaking point, or at least incipient alcoholism. A director's voice promises that the director will crush the actor's ego, extract the blighted soul, and then have a nice cuppa.

Either my director voice is rusty, or the kids are semi-impervious. Nonetheless, we made it through, and there were moments when they paid attention, but by and large it was an exercise in controlling chaos. When set before an audience, they were adorable and didn't yell insults at one another across the stage. The audience laughed and cheered, and as I stood backstage to help with quick changes, I couldn't help but laugh and grin, and think "Oh, my kids are the loveliest lovelies!" Which is proof that the holidays render me somewhat soft in the head.

The Dark wanted special credit on the program for his efforts to keep me on an even keel: "It's just for the kids: I am doing it for the kids."