pleasantly surprised

Wow.  I have to say the kids really pulled through yesterday.  They are a really talented bunch with crazy tendencies.  And you know what?  The resisted their inner squirrels and brought their good selves to rehearsal today.  I was really proud of them and I told them so.  They were very frustrating yesterday.  Really low energy, constantly suggesting things and talking out of turn, but last night: poof! the awesome kids we saw on Monday came to play.

The mermaids are remembering their blocking really well.  The scouts are singly LOUDLY and mostly on key!  The seasiders actually remembered their lines, though Brendan and I were convinced they were going to look at us like we were crazy.  I think we're actually going to have a really show!

It was workshop day yesterday.  Here's the recap: Improv with 7th and 8th grade was AWESOME, though the kid's reply in the game "what are you doing?" of "trying not to act as depressed as I feel" was slightly disturbing.  Mime with the 4th and 6th grade was interesting...the teachers were taking a mental break and not doing anything to help keep the kids under control.  Creative Dramatics was wacky.  I've never seen a bunch get as restless as those kids!  We discovered in the course of it that we think one of the seahorses is mildly autistic (but he is WONDERFUL!) and that the really smart six year old we cast as a seasider who dropped out because rehearsals were too late for him was even more brilliant than I thought.  He went into a very detailed description on stage directions and the history of theatre architecture when asked "what sort of things did you see when you saw a play?", going so far as to explain that historically, stages were raked, and so "downstage" was literally down, as it was the bottom of the slope.  Meanwhile another child answered "your pencil" as answer to the question: "what are two things you have with you ALL the time?".

I thought my six year old cousins were brilliant, but they are brilliant on a normal level.  This kid is...well, I think he must be an alien or something.