Go, Go, Go!

After the stressful and disappointing experience he had during this past year’s high school production of “The Sound of Music,” Nathan was good and ready for a better one. His beloved middle school theater teacher was directing our community’s summer show, so he was quick to decide to audition. The show this year was “Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dream Coat,” which is a super fun show (I know this from past experience) so that was a perk as well. Unfortunately, since this particular show is almost all music, the cast spend the majority of their time working with the music director and the choreographer. And they were somewhat unreasonable in terms of how late rehearsals ran, gave the cast tons of grief for missing rehearsals even though they had disclosed days they would miss prior to being cast, and were generally critical and irritable. I’m getting all this from Nathan, of course, since I wasn’t there, but they really rubbed him the wrong way. As a result, he didn’t enjoy the whole process as much as he had hoped. But to the credit of the cantankerous crew, the end result was really fantastic. Kev and I both agree that it is probably the best community theater production we’ve ever seen. So kudos for that.

Despite his unpleasant rehearsals, Nathan did enjoy the actual performing and he did a great job. I had a lot of people stop me to let me know how fantastic they thought his performance was. I thought he did great as well. I had no idea that he could dance as well as he did. He definitely has some moves. And honestly, his milelong bell bottoms and snakeskin shirt comprised my favorite of his costumes. He may have thought they were dorky, but it worked really well on him.

Nathan probably won’t participate in another show in our community (he did tech for last year’s show and had unpleasant experiences with that as well), but live and learn, right? I’m really, really, really hoping the new high school will bring him some better theatrical experiences.

A Young Musician In Action

As I mentioned last month, Matthew is having a love affair with the soundtrack to "Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat." We've had my parents' video of the production for several months because Matthew watches it almost every day. I'm pretty sure they're not missing it, it is a much higher caliber performance than "Bob the Builder" or "Jane and the Dragon" and is only about an hour long so I don't feel like his time is terribly wasted if I let him indulge.

Matthew has always been a singer (He started humming in sacrament meeting when he was three months old and by the time he hit one year the bishopric was hard pressed to keep from bursting out into gales of laughter at his exuberance.) and lately most of his singing had been either "I Love to See the Temple" or "Joseph." One day when he was supposedly napping I walked by his bedroom door and heard him belting out "Go Go Go Joseph!" And later on when he tried to convince me that he had actually slept, he wondered why I didn't believe him. I've been trying to get him to sing for the camera, but he is also going through a stage where I absolutely cannot take his picture unless he is completely unaware. He will seriously put his hand in between his face and the camera and tell me he can't do that right now. All he needs to do is learn to say "Talk to the hand!" and he will have his teenage attitude down pat. But last week I managed to sneak up on him in one of his very serious "Joseph" singing moods and capture some of the performance. He did catch on partway through and I had to quickly duck behind the cabinet so he would continue, but I managed to squeeze in a bit of on-screen time:



He got smart before too long (notice him eye balling me as he hums the introduction) but I was lucky enough to catch a bit of an encore as well:




(FYI: The book he is flipping through as he sings is the hymnbook. He would watch the music and sing for awhile, then flip the page and keep going.)