When we switched my daughter’s grade schools last year, one of the enticements we held out to her was that the new school would, like the old one, put on a student play every year. This little lure, along with the help of some new kindhearted friends, helped her transition from a little place she’d been attending since pre-school to a much larger and more demanding grade school.
Anyway, I thought the schoolwork was demanding until I saw the school play this past weekend! It was a huge production, all on the stage of the rented Portage Theater in Portage Park. There were 104 kids in the production, but that number counts the K-first graders and second and third graders, who came out in separate groups and sang “You Gotta Have Heart” and “Consider Yourself at Home”, respectively. Still, it was a HUGE cast to put on a stage.
Liesel played the co-host of a game show called “Marooned,” which suspiciously resembled “Survivor,” where groups of favorite childhood characters–from fairy tales, classic stories and video games–had signed up to compete. Apparently, everyone needed the publicity to keep their personal franchises profitable. Man, are we raising a bunch of market-savvy, world-weary kids around here!
Anyway, it was a terrific time, with seven original songs, plus choreography. The kids rehearsed long and hard, and it showed in some very spot-on performances. That’s Liesel in the front in white.
And this year, as in years past, I accepted the assignment to create or locate the props needed for this tropical showdown. (Thankfully there were a lot of other people working on the set itself.) The job ended up being a lot of banners and picket signs–no giant food like other years, drat the luck–but it was still fun. The pictures below show some papier mache skulls I made to top some flagpoles, plus large pieces of a puzzle emblazoned with the tiki icon for the winning team. I didn’t strictly freehand the puzzle pieces, but I was still pretty impressed with myself for getting them to look good.
