The Herdman Kids Star in Another Play

So have you ever read THE BEST CHRISTMAS PAGEANT EVER? If you haven't...please do read it. Discover who the Herdman children are. You will get a chuckle. I'm not chuckling, myself, right now. But I will be in about five days. If I make it that far into the next week!

The past three months have been my yearly tango with middle school kids. We've been rehearsing for the all-school play. I'm the director. I have a cast of 45+ 7th and 8th graders who have been memorizing and forgetting lines, taking ordinary moments and making them funny, missing cues, tripping over scenery, breaking props, making hilarious facial expressions, and in general working hard and having fun.

I have to remind myself right about now (two days before show time) that this is a MIDDLE SCHOOL performance! I cannot take myself or them or this whole experience too seriously. Lending some perspective to my building stress, a friend encouraged me saying, "It's not like this is for a Tony Award or anything, right?" That is so right. When I find myself obsessing over how all my cast walks on stage and simply stays frozen in one spot (eventhough I have suggested perhaps 14,593 possible movements to add to the dialogue), or I get snippy about the feet I can see scurrying beneath the stage curtain, or when we sit in darkness between scene changes waiting for that one cast member to find the prop she forgot to place back on the prop table....(deep breath)...ahhhh. It's a middle school play. Middle school.

No real Tony Awards here, thank goodness. Then I'd have to be worried about what to wear on the red carpet! But I do think there will be some memorable moments. They won't play out all on the stage, and they really are not the scripted kind of scenes. It's for the following type of scenes that I do this each year:

When I stand at the stage door and give each of them a "high five" and they walk up the narrow backstage stairs to a pitch black backstage area...there's electricity in the air; the spotlight comes up and the student assistant director steps out with me and we make our welcome, blinded by the stage lights and faintly seeing familiar smiling faces in the audience...I leave the student out on the stage to complete the welcome...the cast backstage is still holding their collective breath; the utterance of the first line; the first laughter that errupts from the audience...every pubescent heartbeat quickens and then relaxes with a big smile; the first cast member who exists off of the stage and comes backstage, literally pulsing with excitement, whispering about how amazing it is to be on stage and how bright the lights are...all the others with sweaty palms lean in; in the crowd, proud parents and grandparents grow unaware of their gaping mouths and permanent smiles...they respond to their child on stage without any restraint; little sisters and brothers proped up, their knees upon the cold folding metal chairs speak outloud, "There's Josh, mommy!" and a giggle sweeps across the crowd...a controlled grin struggles to skip across Josh's face; after the show, friends will walk near and say, "great show"; mom's and dad's will take their actor/actress out for ice cream and siblings will want to stand in line next to the famous family member; before bed, the middle school kids will take a reflective pause in front of the mirror as they try to wash off the make up...and lying down in bed that night with the moonlight coming in through the bedroom window, I hope they pull the covers up to their chin, look out at the night sky, and think "I'm a star!"

Me? The exhausted director? You'll find me at home, asleep, lights off with the TV still on in the background, my limp arm hanging off the edge of the couch, half read newspaper in hand. If you look really closely, you might see the bluish-grey flashes from the television reflect off of a shiny gold statue on my mantel. It will be an award-winning night.