A Rite of Spring
Yamaraashi-chan tries to look tough. One of those interminable rites of fatherhood is attending your child's school play. I know they mean well, but even Dave Barry admits that this is basically a routine form of torture, similar to waterboarding but without the desire from either party for you to confess anything at all.
Yamaraashi-chan's class play was called The Castaways, and was not, unfortunately, an updated version of Lord of the Flies. Instead, it was a meandering morality tale about kids in the 1920s and how being homeless sucked so we should all band together and try to feed the homeless and voluntarily becoming homeless by running away from home is a really bad idea, mmmmkay?
Yamaraashi-chan acquitted herself well enough, although if she wants to ever sing professionally she'll have to learn how to belt out a song, not keep it high and sweet and all inside. She had a solo, although saying it was "the only solo," as she had claimed for weeks, was not entirely true-- two other kids got solos.
Kouryou-chan joined me, but she sat in the back row and read her book. This wasn't much to her liking anyway, and we could either barely hear the kids when they didn't have a mic, or were overwhelmed with volume when they did.
And there were three denouements! What sadist thought that up? The play-within-a-play had an ending, and you could see everyone thinking, "Oh, it's over. Yay!" And then the surrounding play had an ending, in which the teller of the tale and his audience (attempting to convince one girl not to run away) left the stage, at which point the audience again started to shuffle with "Oh, it's over now. Yay!" But the teller-and-audience shtick had it's own wrapper about them being part of an after-school program to help the homeless by putting on a benefit concert, so there was one more number for the whole cast to sing, and when the curtain finally fell the audience was in an "Is it really over this time? Really?" mood.
I love going to Yamaraashi-chan's events, but the ones she did with KidsSounds were so much better than this. She's slid back a little on her voicework. Ah, well. She'll find the thing she loves someday. But I doubt musical theater is it.