Hello butcher paper backdrops and cardboard sets. This week was the 5th and 6th grade music program at my school. For those of you who do not work with 5th and 6th graders, let me explain something. The 5th and 6th grade music program is often the most challenging to organize. Try finding a presentation that includes singing, dancing, and dialogue and, at the same time, engages 180 pre-pubescent young people. Then try preventing those same young people from looking like their teeth are being pulled sans Novocaine the whole time they are performing. This is my job every spring.
The typical 5th and 6th grade program week involves several adults saying things like, "Sing louder! Smile! Slow down your dialogue! We can't understand you!"
And in my head, I am saying, "It won't happen. You don't think we've been working on that for the last eight weeks? They won't sing louder, smile, or slow down their dialogue. Something happens between ages nine and ten, and children wire their mouths shut when you actually want them to use their 'outside voices!' It's called 'Selective Lock-Jaw.'"
This year was different. I should have know when, earlier in the month, one of my 6th grade classes begged to forgo the game day they had earned and practice the play instead.
Oh, I was still pulling my hair out the week before the program, urging kids to learn their lines. I had to put understudies on two of the roles because some of the cast members were not adhering to their "responsibility contracts." I even had to cast an understudy for one of my understudies, and one girl had to learn a new part last weekend.
But this week, something almost magical happened, something I have never quite experienced in my decade of teaching in the public schools. The only thing that has ever come close was when I music directed a youth show at asemi-professional local theater company.
Rehearsals ran as expected. My 5th and 6th sound guys freaked out a little because the CD player kept shutting off and going into power save mode between numbers. We heard the introduction to "New York, New York" about seven times during our first rehearsal. The two boys soon figured out a system though, and miraculously, the correct songs played at the correct times. Problem solved.
One of my 5th grade stage managers spent the first two rehearsals at the prop table playing with the hats. Finally the 6th grade stage managers, fed up with this tomfoolery, marched the kid to me and reported his behavior. I told the 6th graders to stand guard and told the 5th grader if I heard any more complaints, I would replace him on the spot. And the 5th grader pulled it together. Second problem solved.
One of the 6th graders forgot to turn in his wireless mic. The funny thing is, I could still hear his voice in the gym speakers overhead, like one imagines hearing the (unchanged) voice of God from the clouds. I went running up and down the halls yelling out his name (the kid's name, not God's). Defeated, I returned to the gym. He was calmly wrapping his mic at the back of the gym, having apparently been there all along. Seeing me run out of the gym, he had started calling, "Mrs. Duggan, I'm right here!" Final problem solved.
Right before our last rehearsal, a 6th grader asked if he could give a speech at the end of the performance the next day.
"Only adults give the speeches," I told him. "Otherwise, we would hear 180 speeches."
I am still not sure what kind of speech he wanted to make, but at the end of our final rehearsal, he said into one of the microphones, "Mrs. Duggan, we thank you." And suddenly, there was a chorus of thank you's echoing from the risers.
Something weird was happening . . .
Program day was a magical experience. The kids remembered their lines, got to "places" on time, and sounded beautiful. The stage manager and sound operators worked quickly and diligently and kept everyone quiet in the backstage area. I stood in the middle of it all and occasionally pointed to something or someone, but honestly, they didn't really need me.
In between performances, I returned from my lunch break to find five or six kids sweeping the stage and gym floor. They weren't goofing around, despite the potential of a couple of these kids, and I hadn't asked them to spend their lunch recess cleaning the gym.
"We just want the stage to look nice for our play," they said.
It wasn't my show anymore. It was theirs.
After the program, I found some of the younger students waiting in the cafeteria line "firing" each other. One of the characters in the play was a rehearsal pianist-turned-Donald Trump wannabe who shouted, "You're fired!" at various cast members.
I guess this was a popular character because the next morning one of my 2nd graders said, "That guy kept firing people, but he wasn't supposed to!" Then he added, "I love-ded that program!"
Several of the 4th graders who weren't even in the program wrote me thank you notes, thanking me for letting them watch the show.
The 6th graders also thanked me for letting them be in the program when they passed me in the halls, as though I had given them a gift. I didn't have the heart to tell them, "It's my job. I don't have a choice. I have to let you be in the program whether I like it or not."
One of the adults in the building said, "I think several of these kids may decide go on with theater or choir as a direct result of this program."
Another adult put it this way, "Now they are going to get involved in drama and music in junior high instead of drugs and alcohol!" One can only hope.
"Are you relieved it's over?" others asked me.
Normally I would have said yes.
This time I said, "I think I might miss it."
After the decorations were off the walls, the risers folded, the platforms dismantled, the chairs stacked back on the racks, I carted several loads of cardboard and butcher paper skyscrapers out to my Hybrid, prepared to store them in my garage (and makeshift scene shop). I stopped for a moment and wiped away a couple of tears.
I was mourning the end of this children's program the way I would mourn closing night of my own favorite theatrical performances. And I haven't done that in a while.
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