It's A Wonderful Life

This week was our school play, and this year we did It's A Wonderful Life.  Once again we were able to use a community theater downtown.  Several years ago, I was more than happy to turn the reins of directing the play over to our (then) new speech teacher, and each year he has improved the production more and more.  He absolutely loves producing a play; I may have some of the "juices" of being a director, but do not have nearly as much drive and ability as he has.  He is an outstanding director/producer.

However, this year he asked me to help him, which meant a fairly big commitment of time.  We were at the theater all day Monday and Tuesday; then the performances were Thursday, Friday, and Saturday nights this week, and each of those evenings required about five hours.  I stayed backstage; we used walkie talkies to communicate and he could let me know things that needed attention from an out-front perspective.  During the rehearsals, I watched from the audience and was able to make comments from the perspective of someone who was seeing it new--not having worked with it for the past three months as he had.

We have a good group of students who worked well together.  They are also very talented.  The young man who played George Bailey was especially good, and close behind him were the students who played Uncle Billy, Mr. Potter, and Mary Hatch.  And the others did well also--especially the younger ones who were performing in their first OCS play.

We had a near fiasco tonight.  After a certain scene, a Christmas tree had to be rolled out on the stage.  A cast member girl and I were moving it out, and had it about three-quarters of the way to the right place - when it broke in two.  Then the gold and red balls began falling off, making a pop-pop-popping noise as they rolled across the floor.  We're trying to get the tree put back together, in the dark, and retrieve the balls, without laughing or making any more noise.  We definitely made a memory!

Sometimes I wonder why I'm still doing such things.  It would seem like only younger teachers should be putting Christmas trees together on Saturday nights with a group of teenagers.  But I'll hang on until I know it's time to quit.  And, it's a joy to assist with such fine young people who put on such a great show.