My son has been officially bitten by the theatre bug. After two months of long evening practices, he and his fellow choir students at his junior high school put on their rendition of the show High School Musical. Surprisingly, they played to a packed house on both Friday night's performance and Saturday afternoon's show.
If you're a parent of a child from the age of five to fifteen, you've probably seen or at least heard of High School Musical. It's become a phenomenon lately. And to be honest, it's really not a bad show, with some decent music (if a little "pop"-y for my taste), and the kids are really into it. And I have to say, I was very, very impressed with the quality of the production. It was on par with some high school shows I've seen.
I felt bad for my son at first. He had practiced and practiced for three weeks or so before the auditions, and had gotten to be very good at the assigned audition song. He was so excited. Music is a big part of our lives, and his mother's life as well, and both myself and his mother had a long history of musical performance in junior high, high school, and college. So he was excited about having a chance to make us proud.
And then came the audition. He came home having a panic attack, saying he couldn't go through with it. I talked to him for a while, and he decided he wanted to try, but that I had to go support him. I did, and he was sooooooooo nervous that he lost the tempo in his audition and blew the song.
And so he made the chorus. Better than nothing, but not what he wanted.
Over the couple of months of practice, he started to become disillusioned. He was working hard, spending all his free time on rehearsals, having to skip a lot of things he might rather be doing, and he didn't even have a speaking role. In the last two weeks before the show, he'd decided he wanted to quit, but I wouldn't let him. If he decides never to try out again, fine, but you can't quit once you've made a commitment to do something.
So the night of the show came along, and I gotta' tell you, he is SO glad I didn't let him quit. He loved it! He had a great time, both performances, and can't wait to try out for another show.
So I'm proud of him. He stuck it out, even though he didn't want to, and he found out that the payoff at the end was worth all the sacrifices to get there. If I'm lucky, he'll learn that as a fact of life and apply it to other things as well.
Yeah, I know, this is a blog about my life and not my writing. I don't do that very often. Don't hold it against me.
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