The Alliance’s Acting I class for 3rd to 5th grades ended today and parents/interested parties got to come in for the last hour and hear a bit of what had been going on the past 6 weeks and watch a little skit. H.o.p. was *very* excited to have us there, introducing me to the entire class. “This is my mom!” Talk about feeling welcomed by your child. He was determined everyone should know who I was. He was just plain excited in general.
They showed us some of their loosening up exercises, working the old muscles, and face muscles too. Did a game of “Elevator” where each person who gets into the elevator improvises a character and the others have to follow suit and do their version of that character. Did a game where they split into two teams and the audience had to suggest a certain thing each team was to pretend to eat. One team did ice cream and H.o.p. ensured that his team did pot stickers. Then they had to act out certain emotions or characters suggested by the audience as they crossed the “stage”.
I kept a straight face when the teacher asked them to talk about some of the things they’d had difficulty with/had learned and the subject came up of what happens if the director gives you a role you’re not happy with and the teacher basically did a talk about how the director knows best and the director will give you roles that will give you an opportunity to learn and learn more about yourself. I thought well, you know, this is just fine that they’re teaching them to always do what the director says because it’s just prepping future actors for H.o.p., as his temperament has less to do with doing anything you ask him to do and more finding a way to do what he wants and expecting you to do what he asks and enjoy it…such as his making sure that they were going to be eating pot stickers and sometimes totally ignoring what he was supposed to be doing in favor of trying to figure out how to end up doing what he wanted to do.
H.o.p. did a great zombie at one point. And when one of the children prompted them all to be cats, he did a nice job with that. He hadn’t a clue at how to posture in the Elevator game (when posturing was prompted) and when one of the girls entered doing the Princess Wave, he just stood and stared, trying to figure out what in the world that was about.
The kids did a grand job. Some of them have obviously been doing this for a while and talked some about the other acting they do. The little play that they did was just the right length with just the right number of lines for both the experienced and inexperienced, giving each one opportunity to communicate a character. H.o.p. remembered all his lines and acted out reading a newspaper because of course somehow he failed to communicate to us that he needed one. What he’d really wanted for his role was a real honest-to-god hockey helmet (though he doesn’t care anything about sports) so he could put horns on it he’d seen at a theatrical store and pretend he was a fan of the Ice Dragons but somehow we never got around to doing that and I rue it…really rue it…though I admittedly wasn’t thrilled with spending money on a hockey helmet he would never use again…and I was thinking in terms of choices, if we do the hockey helmet then we can’t do such-and-such, and I really should have done the hockey helmet. Somestimes I’m just so damned stupid about these things. Seriously, when he brought it up I knew, knew, knew that he was right, that theatricality demanded the hockey helmet but…like I said, I’m a dimwit. Kick, kick, kick myself on that one.
I enjoyed watching them all but of course I particularly enjoyed watching H.o.p. and was excited that he was excited and happy that he was happy with it all.
If I had anything to suggest it would be that they had the lines printed out for the kids and notes printed out as well. I imagine that they don’t because they reason that it gives the children a chance to practice note-taking skills and their writing. But H.o.p. is dyslexic and he needed assistance with this…and I was hoping this would be an activity that relied very little on on-the-spot writing and reading, whereas there was a good bit of note-taking and writing involved. They were very good at helping him however and though I understand none of the kids treated H.o.p. differently because of it, he is sensitive to this. Such as tonight when we were doing our AVKO spelling, his Uncle David was visiting and he worried about his Uncle David hearing and had us do it very, very quietly because he didn’t want David to hear when he needed to correct a word.
What I did like is they stressed the idea of play, play, play.
H.o.p. is the boy with long brown hair and blue sweat pants, right there, seated between the girl in the denim blue jacket and jeans and the girl in the pink jacket. He does a spectacular bow at the end. He’s got that down for sure.
He had not one bit of stage fright!
H.o.p. is signed up for Acting II, of course.
Anyway, I’m just a proud mom and happy that he was happy with it all.
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