Reclaim the Thanksgiving spirit at a kid event near you
Submitted by Dr. Gwenn Is In
Thanksgiving is a great holiday. It’s a glorified pause from reality day with good food, family and friends and no present pressure.
As my girls get older, I become more and more thankful for the small gifts they bring to our lives. Watching them spread their wings and figure out what interests them is perhaps one of the best front row seats there is in life.
This past week, my oldest daughter was in a middle school production of Shakespeare’s King Lear. This wasn’t your basic “made for middle school production”, this was the real deal – the complete, unabridged real Lear. It’s an annual tradition for the 7th and 8th graders to perform a Shakespeare play each fall. Quite a task given most of these kids hadn’t known of Shakespeare except by name until they received their script.
Casting occurred last Spring and these kids have been working diligently all fall. My daughter loves being on stage and it does come naturally to her but she had never been in a Shakespeare play before and this was a challenge. Learning the lines. Learning the nuances. Learning to speak in the dialect of the time. Learn to act Shakespearan!
There were times the director wondered if he needed to whittled down the play – but he stuck to his original gut and kept it unedited, although he had altered some of the text to be middle school appropriate and changed a few parts from male to female.
There were times the kids, include my daughter, wondered if they could really do this – was it really coming together? It’s awfully long – would any one come?
Did they come? They sure did and in full force. Word spread quickly about the middle schoolers doing real Lear. There was the usual contingency of family, friends, teachers and towns people but as the show progressed over the 4 day run the auditorium slowly became more packed. The audience was rendered speechless. These tweens and teens put on a really credible Lear! Sitting in that auditorium, there were moments you honestly forgot you were watching a middle school production. And, you couldn’t help forgive the occasional flubbed line because of their age, too. If this is what they can do at ages 11-13, I can only imagine what the future holds for those cast members who end up catching the drama bug in high school and beyond.
As long as our plates are overflowing with many of these life moments, we’ll all end our lives very rich. These are the moments I’m thankful for. The rest is just fluff.
Have a wonderful Thanksgiving. Dr. Gwenn Is In will be taking a brief blogging break for the holiday but will return next week as we prepare for the deep freeze of winter and the rush of the winter holidays.
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