I Can't. I Have Rehearsal.

 

 

A few years ago I posted, "The Most Popular Door," about the excitement surrounding my school's fifth and sixth grade spring music program. Then COVID hit, and live school performances disappeared for a few years. 

Live elementary performances are back, baby! And even though these kids were only second and third graders the last time we had a spring program, the students are more excited than ever.

I didn’t sleep the night before I posted the cast list. 

 

Yes, I had given the students my "you-get-what-you-get" lecture prior to auditions. But I still worried about kids being sad or throwing tantrums outside my classroom (it has happened before) or parents sending me nasty emails or refusing to talk to me for the rest of the school year (also has happened).

 

 

It turned out I had no reason to worry or lose sleep. All of the kids (and adults!) were excited and gracious . . . at least around me, who held their casting in my hands . . . 

 

The first week we returned from break, students gathered around my classroom door everyday, checking out the cast list.

 

Then they started referencing their roles every time they saw me in the hall. 

 

One sixth grade boy walked by with a spoon balanced on his nose and said, “This is your stage manager."

 

One of the students I had worried about upsetting was the most excited.

 

“I get to wear a bun in my hair and be prim and proper!”

 

I kept hearing kids call out, “Mrs. Duggan”and “I’ve got a question!” over and over, whenever I ventured out of my classroom.

 

Their questions were usually along the lines of, "When do I come in for rehearsal?" or “Do stage managers come in today? Do we ever get to come in?” or “Can I just watch?”

 

 

 

Sometimes during that first week, as classes walked by my room to the cafeteria or gym, kids would say to me, “Can you just stay right there? I’ll be right back!”

 

As reality set in, and students realized they were going to have to hang out with me A LOT, I showed them this picture:

 

 

Every theater nerd knows this saying. We all have the T-shirt.

 

As we went over the rehearsal schedule in class, I made the kids recite it back to me.

 

"What if your friend asks you to play in a huge basketball game during your assigned time? What do you say?" I asked them.

 

And they all (in theory) answered with, "I can't. I have rehearsal." 

 

One sixth grade boy, my villain in the program, of course, started to joke, "I wish I didn’t have reh—" and stopped when he saw THE LOOK I gave him.

 

He quickly changed it to, "I wish I HAD rehearsal . . . "

 

 

The first time we put the blocking together with the music in class, I heard several of the sixth graders exclaim, "Today was so fun!"

"Friends, theater is so fun!"

 

 

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