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On The Road Again

The Source

One of my great joys is being able to take my theatre students “on tour,” traveling to sixteen or so local elementary schools with a play designed to encourage, inspire, and we hope, entertain. It’s not the easiest way to do theatre, gathering at 7 a.m. for makeup then loading our scenery and sound equipment and hopping onto frosty van seats over often less-than-friendly road surfaces. I don’t know how long we’ve been doing this madness, but I know that some of the first little ones to see our show now have children of their own. As with any experience in live theatre, the tales of adventure have racked up steadily over the years…. The performance at Virginia where the Big Bad Wolf in our boiling pig’s pot got nosebleed and had to crawl on his hands and knees in search of the nearest restroom. When it came time for him to enter again, we had no actor, so one of his quick-minded fellow actors put on the plastic wolf nose and popped out to say the bleeder’s lines. Then this second actor had to make an entrance as another character so a third actor donned the wolfy prosthetic and popped her head out of the pot. I’m sure the children of Virginia Elementary learned a new lesson in chemistry. Every time you stick a wolf into boiling water, his face and voice change. Jefferson school was by the far the most audience-interactive performances we ever did. The gym at Jefferson was just barely large enough to hold the student body and when we added the bulk of our cast of twenty, scenery, a speaker system and props, we and the audience became one in a very literal way. In the same Three Pigs show, the little swine had captured the wolf and were planning to eat him for dinner when a cop showed up. The wolf’s wife had reported him missing. So as the policeman stood there taking notes and questioning the pigs, the wolf would keep raising his painful head out of the soup, each time knocked on the noggin by a pig. At one point the officer, played by a young man named Matt Beard, asked, “Where in the heck is the wolf?” A darling little kindergarten gal stood, pointed at the pot and shouted, “Well.. (expletive deleted)____! He’s right there in the pot!” A very embarrassed kindergarten teacher quickly whisked our new audience participant up and took her into the next room to talk about the difference between life and theatre, along with a few words about the appropriate use of language. For reasons known only to God and my bad judgment, we tend to take our show on the road during the worst weather of the winter. On one particularly icy morning we were headed toward an early morning performance at Winchester and when I put on my brakes to make the turnoff from the highway, I discovered that Scott County was covered with an invisible skim of ice. Our show was scheduled in Winchester, but I was still headed toward Pittsfield. I’m glad that the town has two exits. Added to the slickness under foot, the December wind was howling and when my cast of young ones started hauling our sail-shaped scenery into the school, one of my actresses took off north. I shouted for her to let go, but being a true professional, she held tightly to her big piece of canvas and we picked her up many yards down the road. It did the scenery no good, but I had to admire the girl’s sense of dedication. Anyone foolish enough to gather 300 kids in an auditorium then ask them to do a bit of audience participation deserves what he gets…and I’ve gotten it. We often ask our pint-sized theatre critics to name a character or give us the title of a fairy tale, and sometimes we actually ask for volunteers to come up on stage. This is the show business version of bungee jumping or sky diving…only the brave should try it. One of my actresses once asked the Washington School group if there were three people who’d like to come up and play marching soldiers with her. A sea of hands went up. Not wanting to disappoint anyone, she picked them all and we had an army that could equal the combined forces of several Third World countries. And meaning no offense to one of the hardest-working occupations in our area, but if you want someone in your audience to memorize lines and become a part of the play, don’t pick the principal. Perhaps they’re distracted by all the mandated testing. And so we hit the road again….dry or wet pavement…boiling wolves or murderous pigs….nose bleeds and tiny armies. I hope the wind dies down.