High School Plays are the Best

Being a grandparent is a great thing.  It is so much fun to watch the growing progress.  When you are a brand new grandparent, you look at that baby and feel so much love and hope.  You can't believe the feeling, and it continues with each grandchild.  They are all individuals with special talents.  My husband and I are introverts.  We get our energy from within.  Our daughters are mostly extroverts who can talk to anyone and are outgoing.  They like alone time, but flourish is a group.  Now we have five grandchildren who it appears are taking it one step further each in their own way.

This weekend was focused on the two oldest.  Dylan is 15 years old and is a sophomore in high school.  Melissa just turned 16 years old, and she is also a sophomore in a neighboring high school.   As it happened, they both had their high school plays the same weekend.  Both high schools have two plays a year.  One is a drama and one is a musical.

Dylan's fall play was a dark drama.  It had quite a small cast and was called Voice in the Dark - A Salem Story.  It reminded me a bit of our recent political climate.

Some of you may be familiar with this story.  It is not a happy ending which hopefully isn't the case in our world.  This took place in 1692 where there were reports of flying witches.  This event lead to people accusing other people of being witches to cleanse the community thus acquiring more property.  Females were mistreated by the male masters and mental health issues were unheard of.  These kids did a great job, but it wasn't very uplifting.  From February 9-11, 2017 they will be performing The Sound of Music.  I look forward to a happier and high spirited play.

The next night we saw our granddaughter in a production of Mary Poppins.  This was a huge undertaking by the director.  It had a lot of characters with set changes and costume changes.  They even brought in a company to set up the aerial wires so Bert and Mary could actually fly.

 My daughter did a lot of work on set painting and props.  It was fun for her to be involved especially making some of the props.  

In addition to working on this candy cart, she also made light sticks, ledgers and the measuring tape Mary used when she first arrived to take care of the children.

Melissa appeared in a bunch of different scenes.  She was part of the Cherry Tree Lane residents, she was a chimney sweep, part of the group in the park and in the candy cart scene.

 

Her main role involved being the doll named Valentine.  When the toys came alive, she came out of the dollhouse with a repaired arm.  This was her singing solo.  None of us sing, especially in public.   It is amazing to us that both Dylan and Melissa have wonderful voices, and they aren't afraid to sing in public.  If they are afraid, they don't show it.

I am not sure what they will be doing for their Spring drama or when it will be, but I am also looking forward to it.  Until then we have plenty of basketball and other kid events to look forward to.  I am so glad we chose to move closer to all of them so this can be possible.   It was a great weekend.