I LOVE theater, especially middle school high school theater. I end up teaching such a wide spectrum of life lessons and skills.
For example, today, within a 2 hour period, I:
Explained to 2 high school girls how historical fashion worked:
I was adding a bustle to the Dragon’s Dress to give her that “dragoness figure.” I explain that most historical ladies with “tiny waists” didn’t have very small waists, they just added to their hip and butt and sometimes boobs. Moreover, most clothing we have still intact are smaller dresses that young ladies GREW OUT OF so it didn’t get worn out like clothes worn every day for years. While humanity as a whole has gotten taller and bigger, it’s not nearly as much as you might think from pictures and sketches. We then talked about how we want the Dragon to be as big and intimidating as possible. The relief on this size 20 young lady made my day.
Held a small history lesson for 2 middle school kids about the Holocaust:
We are doing Shrek, they are Fairytale Creatures, and did not know what a “resettlement facility” was. 😬 So there was brief explanation. “WWII was started by Germany- it could have been any country, but in this case it was Germany. A terrible person rose to power in thier country- his name was Hitler.”
“Oh, I’ve heard that name.”
“I imagine you have, yes. Well, like Farquaad, he got his people to rally together and fall in line by having them hate another group of people. First in Germany, and then in every country he conquered, Hitler rounded up all the Jewish people, the Romani (had to explain who that was), all the black people, and anyone they could prove was gay. They took them away to a resettlement facility (used this word as this is the line from the play), then either worked them to death or just straight up killed them. Then, sometimes someone would stand up and say “no- those are people, you can’t do that” and also get rounded up. Many religious leaders under up there as well.”
I talked about how one of the girls was playing Alice in Wonderland- not inherently magical- so she probably stood up for the White Rabbit, and that meant she is buds with him on stage. We also talked about rounding up Native Americans for reservations (they had studied that). We talked about how some people for long periods of time were just used to everyone hating them, explaining how that affected some of the magical creatures in the show.
10 minutes later I was teaching those same kids how to dance with thier hips so they could be “blind mice” back up dancers. 👯♀️ 😂 Turns out not all middle schoolers know how to do a basic hip bounce- mostly cause they don’t have hips yet. 🤣🤣🤣
I checked in with Farquaad- “YOU know who Hitler is right? You know you are playing funny Hitler?” (They did know that, and Fiona came over to ask what the hell we were talking about) 🤣🤣🤣
Reminded Fiona that the younger versions of her do not have super strong voices and she needed to listen and blend with them.
Talked to Queen Lillian about how she could love her daughter very much, and in order to protect her from suffering (people finding out about Fiona’s curse), send her away to be trapped in a Tower by a Dragon. I am happy to say Queen L immediately understood that was just a shitty thing to do.
Introduced Gingy to “Mr. Bill” and animation voice acting videos.
This is one session of costumes and rehearsal.
I also end up teaching a lot about how clothes fit and work just putting costumes on people. A lot of kids don’t know how seams on your shoulders work. Or how to change a waistline. Or really anything.
I know I will end up teaching a good portion of them how color theory and stage makeup works.
