Acting, and great loves

We spent the last month, or I should say Calvin spent the last month, preparing for a stage production of The Wizard of Oz. He's been in several plays before this one, but this production was with a local professional theater company that we've had season tickets to for a number of years—Wild Swan. Though they do not usually cast children in their shows, when the casting call came up for a handful of the younger set, Calvin was excited to give it a try.

I'd be lying if I said I wasn't a little apprehensive about the whole thing. The schedule looked like a lot of long rehearsals, culminating in six shows over four days in what promised to be a tightly packed, large auditorium. Calvin's prior experience was limited to homeschool productions that, while they were really cute and very well done, consisted of weekly one hour rehearsals and a single showing in front of a very small and forgiving audience of friends and family. And they didn't pay for their seats.

Of course you know where this is going—I was wrong to have worried. When Calvin played his first part on stage with our homeschool group three years ago he had a tiny speaking part of about one line. He delivered it with aplomb, and in the next term's play was given a greater speaking part, and so on until this past term when he landed the lead (in Peter Pan, which is coming up in a couple of weeks). He has a mind for memorizing the lines, and a great love for playing make-believe, and those things translate well to the stage.

And here is where I get schooled...at least a little bit. I have always maintained that homeschooling for us was meant to allow the kid to bloom to his full extent. We wanted to give him a chance to learn at his own pace, and to pursue whatever loves he found in life when he found them. And he every time he excelled at a subject, or every time he demonstrated great interest or easy mastery, I've wondered if he was showing, by his achievement, the first steps toward discovering such a great love. But the truth is, I was missing the forest for the trees. Calvin's greatest love is really reading, but not just the reading. For him it's a matter of living the book. He acts out the chapters, he requests character costumes, he lives the books he loves. He acts the books he loves. For Christmas he asked for tickets to see A Midsummer Night's Dream and Alice in Wonderland, and for his birthday he requested theater camp.

Maybe it won't last. I remember when he was pretty small his great love was trains and I thought we were settling in for a life-long hobby, but the interest faded away. But right now this is his great love, and I am incredibly excited to be able to give him free reign to explore that path, and follow him as far down it as he wants to go.

The Wizard of Oz was fantastic. Wild Swan was fantastic in working with the kids. The entire experience was a wonderful one. He is already planning his audition for the next big show.

11 days: The last day of "school"

Calvin's one and only performance as the Cheshire Cat in the HAA stage production of Alice in Wonderland went off without a hitch this afternoon. His teeth have miraculously returned almost to their normal position and he was entirely understandable—loud and clear with all of his lines. Adorable, too, but I happen to be biased. Following the play it was play time, with food, crafts, and all around fun for the HAA holiday party. It was essentially our "last day of school" before the holidays, as we will not meet with the group again until two weeks into the new year.

Pipecleaner ornaments

Snowflakes

Kitchener, Stratford, and Port Huron

Our trip is over and we're home sweet home. Just in time for a low grade heat wave. But here's the rest of our vacation.

After we left Niagara we headed inland to Kitchener where Jon gave a workshop to a group of piano teachers. We could have done without Kitchener. It was a little like walking into Twin Peaks. Or the Twilight Zone. Odd, odd, odd.

Calvin and I went to The Museum (really, that's its name) while Jon was lecturing, but their idea of a museum was pretty lame. Best part? Working the animatronic dinosaur parts.

We got the heck out of Kitchener as fast as we could and landed in peaceful Stratford for two days. What a totally different experience from Niagara and its neon flashing lights. In Stratford we took a pontoon boat tour, ate at the local restaurants, shopped in the quaint shoppes, and stayed in an inn above a tavern right on the main street, a block away from the theatre and the river.

Ye olde fashioned accommodations.

We ate breakfast at the local bakery across the street (chocolate croissants and fresh coffee). We talked to ducks, geese, and swans by the river. We played pianos street side. We relaxed and took it in, two days in a row.

Of course the real point of our stop there was to take in a show, and we saw Pirates of Penzance on Wednesday afternoon. It enchanted us to end. Calvin loved it. We played the CD all the way home the next day.

Following the musical we walked across the street to a small museum of the Festival's 60 years of existence. Two rooms of artifacts and we spent over an hour in them. Mockups of models from costumes and sets through the ages, and some of the actual pieces as well. The girls working the admission desk were the best part. They fell in love with Calvin and basically gave us a private tour. They even let us touch some of the carefully guarded pieces.

To break up the trip on the way home we stopped in Port Huron to visit the lighthouse, train depot, and lightship museums there. Thomas Edison I could do without, but the other two were pretty good stops.

Home again, home again, jiggity jig.

A play, a talent show, and more

Today was the last day of indoor gathering for our weekly homeschooling group. During the summer we meet at various parks and eschew indoor activities in favor of learning from nature. It's a great arrangement, because while learning doesn't end when summer comes around, I think our desire and focus changes with the season, so why not follow them.

If I thought I might miss out on some of the cyclical nature of the public school system—the yearly plays, the parties, etc. that I always loved as a child—I have found instead that at HAA we seem to one-up them. Today all the kids gathered along with all the parents (both parents today in many cases) to share in food, games, a play performance, a talent show, and a "talented display". Calvin participated in all three, as a munchkin and a monkey in The Wizard of Oz, as a pianist in the talent show, and with a Lego display of ancient structures from around the world (Egyptian pyramid, Mesopotamian Ziggurat, Mayan temple) on the "talented display" table. 

I will never stop reveling in the camaraderie that exists between all the kids in the group regardless of age, gender, race, belief, yadda yadda, nor in the amount of time, effort, and interest the parents invest in their children, and in others in the group. There are about forty families in the group, and today's gathering was a joyful, raucous affair, without being either too big or too small. Although I barely saw Calvin once he was no longer on stage (a sign of our growing comfort with the group) I know we both had a great time because we came home tired yet positively filled with exuberant, happy energy.

Talented display...

Talent show...

This is the second play Calvin has been in through our group. The first one was Percy Jackson, which they did earlier this spring, but it really was nowhere near as good as The Wizard of Oz, which they put on today. Calvin's own acting ability had grown some, and he spoke with great diction and a loud, clear voice, he remembered all his lines, and I could tell he had a great time. Of course, doing The Wizard of Oz as a play was like a dream come true for him.

"Please take the ruby slippers as a thank-you gift."

"We're off to see the wizard, the wonderful wizard of Oz..."

"I don't have a heart."

"Please take us to see the wizard."

"Hooray!" (she melted)

"Dorothy, you have saved us from the evils of the Wicked Witch of the West. But what do we do with our lives now that we're free?"

"The wizard looked at us and said: 'monkies, you have already found your purpose in life. You said it yourself, you enjoy helping people and you can fly. Combining those two things should give you great opportunities for self-fulfillment."

We are linked up to Saturday's Artist at OLM.

Cricket in Times Square

Calvin loved the book, and today we saw it as a stage production.