Starring the Baby-sitters Club! Part 1!

[road_baby]

Well, well, well! So when I got up today I really felt like snarking. Yes, even more than playing Sims. I decided to tackle this Super Special because I've been wanting to do this one for a while.Don't get me wrong. I don't really have anything against Jessi though she may be a little egotisical and bland. But omg, do I love when the BSC's ego

Comments

[fairest1]

I went to a school that always put on kickass musicals every year; the fancy kind with the tiny microphones and lighting and everything. It wasn't like Glee, where only a handful of kids participated and everyone else hated them; about half the school was involved. The school band did the music (proper orchestra pit), the art classes painted sets, the best of the dance classes got pulled in for choreography in group numbers and were AWESOME at it, and if you didn't have any talent you could be an usher and help the numerous members of the community who bought tickets find their seats

[road_baby]

Wow. Your school sounds awesome! I grew up in the first city to declare bankruptcy in the nation so our schools were very poor. We didn't even have an auditorium in middle school. That's part of the reason I always loved BSC books, they had such a nice school.

[fairest1]

Oh ick. My experience mostly lead to me getting annoyed at the portrayal of productions in Glee. Even when they put on a full play, they didn't bother having auditions for dancing or acting, and no one outside the club wanted to try out? That's ridiculous.

And technically, this was my high school that had awesome musicals, not junior high. The junior high only had a stage on one wall of the gym.

[the1812overture]

I'd ask if you went to school where I did, but my town didn't go bankrupt. However, it does have a situation where a wall in the cafeteria of the K-3 elementary school crumbled down from mold, and hasn't been replaced in a few years. It's still being used. The middle school is a series of modular units like a long, wide mobile home.

The BSC schools sound like the private school I went to for a while in another town, where we had the budget to fly in a hula instructor for the six of us doing a single hula number in the school's annual Christmas musical.

[the1812overture]

My high school cast based on popularity more than talent. We didn't have a large budget for the theater, and most of the money for sets came from selling tickets. I asked the director why we didn't have fundraisers, and he told me because he didn't want some kids participating in them, some kids not, and those who did thinking that participating meant they were owed a role. I don't know why he thought that when there were kids, like me, content to to sets and costumes without expecting a role. So, rather than do something that made sense like having participating be a condition of being in theater at all, it was by ticket sales

[fairest1]

That . . . that's incredibly stupid. If someone thinks they're owed a role because they helped with the fundraiser, how would that end up being worse than someone who thinks they're owed a role because they're popular? At least the person working on the fundraiser demonstrates an interest in seeing the show go on.

[the1812overture]

His justification was that he was going to cast the people who'd result in tickets getting sold. What he didn't understand is that having fundraisers and even giving preferential treatment to the kids who participated would have freed up the thespian department from concern over ticket sales, meaning you can cast the unpopular kids and not have to worry about selling enough tickets to keep the next show on. That was a small town where people actually did pull into student-run car-washes and whatnot. When color guard did it, we couldn't keep up with the line!

I think it was just easier for him to not bother with fundraisers and just cast the popular kids. I think he was just lazy.

[fairest1]

I'd be more understanding if the casting went more like "My casting choices are entirely by merit and have absolutely nothing to do with whose parents helped fund the performance. No correlation whatsoever." *shoves wads of cash into pockets*