Life inserts itself…

So I haven’t been posting the past couple of days. Not for lack of wanting to, I swear. Ideas have been floating around like flotsam on a swiftly moving stream. Sometimes I can’t get them down before they go floating off. Slinking away to wherever ideas go when they aren’t plucked up in time.

I’ve been firmly entrenched the past few days on Skid Row. No, not the slums of San Francisco, though it would be an apt description, I suppose. But this particular Skid Row is my granddaughter’s school production of Little Shop of Horrors. She goes to a elementary/middle private school in Marin County. The school pulls out all the stops for their year end school musical. This year it’s Little Shop. And because I have oodles of years in my past in theatre, I donate my time to help out with their production.

 

Little Shop of Horrors

Little Shop of Horrors Logo

 

The cool thing this time around is that they chose a musical that is very high on my list. Something that I successfully passed to my granddaughter. She isn’t old enough to have tried out for one of the leads (she’s a walk-on customer and a part of the plant – which was her second choice of roles (the plant, not the customer)). She plays the plant with real gusto.

So I’ve been assisting with getting the kids through hell week to opening night (which was last night). We had everything a musical production goes through as it gets mounted… lead actor meltdowns, inconsistent knowledge of the script, musical numbers that had to be woodshedded and cleaned up while the rest of the show was going through painful tech stop/start rehearsals.

Anything to get the show mounted and running. We ran right up to the doors being opened so friends and family could make their way in. In addition to assistant directing duties, I was choreographer, hair/makeup, costume master, prop master and just about anything else that someone wasn’t taking care of. I take time off from work (yeah, donate my vacation time where I could be doing something else, to the school play. I’m aces with my granddaughter. That’s cool enough for me).

Thank goodness they only run for two nights. So while opening was last night, we’ve got closing night tonight. Yup, three months of prep and meetings for TWO nights – and as Martha Stewart says, ‘that’s a very good thing.’  (Only because I don’t think I could take it if it went on longer…)

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