My Directorial Debut: The Three Little Pigs

First off (and this is way overdue), I want to thank all of you for the encouraging feedback and support. It's great to hear that everyone seems to be enjoying my weekly rants... especially since I enjoy ranting. I soon hope to part with my fear of making big purchases and buy a laptop- at which time you'll see alot more pictures posted, cause it'll be that much easier...

This week proved to be one of the longest/shortest/most frustrating weeks that I have experienced in Korea. I was given three short weeks to turn my five year olds into actors and mount a stunning perfomance of The Three Little Pigs. You can imagine how well that went over. It began with my lead- my wolf, Ryan declaring that he didn't want to play the wolf, because the wolf is a bad character. Admittedly I dismissed his issue as another excuse to whine- because I've learned, that's what kids do best. He didn't seem to understand, first of all- that this version of the little pigs was different. The wolf was the good guy and the pigs manipulated him into looking bad. He also didn't seem to understand that my casting decisions were made based on the reading abilities of the kids- and Ryan is the only one who can read with any expression whatsover. In any case, this is how rehearsals began. The ordeal resulted in three phone calls and two letters from Ryan's mom, two long talks with Ryan about my casting decision and my interpretation of the role of the wolf as it is written in this script, and finally sending a script home to appease the crazy mother... and just like that- crazy mother and whining child were silenced. And it only took up two of our three weeks of rehearsal time. Then little Cathy got upset (you may remember Cathy as the little girl who's mommy bought her dog because she cried at school). Little Cathy has such bad stage fright that the stress began two full weeks before the show went up. And of course, little Cathy's mom also felt the need to write letters and call the school. Calls and letters which, luckily, were ignored by the Korean teachers who declared her mother to be another crazy parent. Now, having said in the past that my boss reminds me of an adult version of Stewie Griffin (Family Guy) - I should perhaps clarify. My boss is not as smart as baby Stewie... not even close. And so my preparations for the play were further complicated by his lack of familiarity with learning and the arts- oh, and not to mention common sense. With all the whining and crying that was happening in rehearsal time, paired with the fact that we were only given three rehearsal weeks to begin with- it became clear two weeks ago that the kids would not be able to learn the lines, and act out play. So I talked to my boss about recording the script onto CD and having them act out the play in time with the recording. Brilliant, he thought- but kept delaying the recording until we finally started this four days before we went up. And it took us three days to do this, cause my boss insisted on running the show straight through- instead of pausing to make sure that the kids could properly read the line. If someone screwed up a line we started from the beginning, despite the fact that it was all recorded digitally and we could have even cut and pasted from other recordings. Anyway, as you can imagine- all this chaos resulted in the absolute worst theatre production I have ever seen. Now I know what you're all thinking- well, yes Stephanie- but they're five years old. That's true- but it didn't help that our show was sandwiched in the presentation by dance routines choreographed by our Korean teachers- who in my opinion cheated by doing all their directing in Korean and made the kids look like damn talented cheerleaders... Anyway- the moral of the story is that I expect this experience to serve as a reminder of why I simply cannot ever again try to produce a play with children of this age. My directorial debut was a flop.

Now I recently learned that while I thought our school to be over priced at 500$/month, the actual price of attending kindergarten at this fine institution is 780$/month + 50$ for the (shitty) food + 450$ registration fee. Having said that, I was very eager to see the parents show up to this presentation- just out of curiosity, really. Had I known, I would have played it up. We should have officially started a biggest bouquet competition. Now maybe a single rose I could understand... for the sake of tradition- giving flowers as a congratulatory gift. But in my humble opinion, no child needs a bouquet of flowers bigger than himself. Who in their right mind would spend upwards of 50$ on flowers for children this young? There were 22 performers altogether and it should be noted that there were more flowers in that theatre than at some weddings I've been to... nope- in fact more flowers than any wedding I've been to. As one of my four years olds was leaving, I went to say goodbye- and commented on her pretty flowers. She held them up, smiled, said "Here," and walked away. And that's exactly what a four year old does with an expensive bouquet. Gives it away to the first person who shows any interest in them. Perhaps a sucker would have been a better gift...

Despite my frustration, this week did prove to be full of intriguing observations about the Koreans and their artistic habits. My boss (a man with precious little creativity), was determined that everything look exactly the way it did last year. And that he should show off his students as being absolutely perfect. Because that's the way kids are, right? Perfect? He pulled up pictures of the decorations, the set and the posters from last year- and insisted that everything right down to the font type and size on the posters be the same. And we spent two full school days preparing the kids for the ordeal that was to be their year end presentation. Is it any wonder this culture is so lacking in creativity? The kids were drilled for two days. Stand. Right hand over your heart. Pledge allegiance. Drop your hand. Sing Korean national anthem. Sit. Be Quiet. No, I mean it, be quiet. Listen to the speech of the graduating six year olds to the remaining students. Look intrigued. Listen to the speech from the remaining students to the graduating class. Look intrigued. My boss seemed to think that it was ingenious for the kids to give each other advise on how to proceed in life, just like they do at University graduation, he told us. Apparently he failed to see the reality of the situation being that this was kindergarten, and not University. And he seemed to have trouble wrapping his mind around the fact that "Good luck in the future," to a six year old, means I hope you get pizza for dinner tonight. Each of the children were given an award- meaning of course, that many of these were bullshit. Some were legit of course, Hardest Worker, Best Attitude, ect ect. But for some kids, all I could come up with was Best Dressed and Best Whiner... and I wasn't allowed to give out a prize for the latter. In any case, the rehearsal for the awards presentation proved to be the most tedious. "Stand here, Sally. No, here. On this X. No, face stage right. NO SALLY, STAGE RIGHT!! What's wrong with you? Oh Sally, cute and smart as you are- if you can't get this right, the whole show will fall apart. Okay- got that. Good - finally. Okay, now Sally- when you're presented your award, you bow to Mr Choi, put the certificate under your right arm and return to your spot. Got it? NO SALLY, YOUR RIGHT ARM!!!" Is it any wonder that poor Sally is so afraid of making a mistake in her colouring? Why does her acceptance of her Most Smiley award have to involve such detailed planning? Not to mention the fact that it made me look like a liar as my Most Smiley student was focusing so hard on trying to get everything perfect, that she forgot to smile. It's a good thing we threw in all those complicated steps, because otherwise I'm sure Sally would have blown her nose in her certificate. Or made a paper airplane with it and tossed it in my boss' face. Maybe I would have been the only one, but I would have been ecstatic if any of the kids had done this. At least it would have shown independant thought, and more importantly- kids being kids. I realized last night that my littlest kids are the ones that you seen in commercials, or on Sesame Street. They are so happy and enthusiastic about everything. They just can't contain themselves. If another class got up to do their dance or song, my Jr Baby Class was right in there with them... despite the frustration and insistance of the Korean teachers that they sit nicely and be quiet. Most of us sit nicely and are quiet so much of our lives that we let go of joy and spontaneity like that. Is that why? Social conditioning? If we had been told to sit nicely half as much as we have been, would we be happier people? If we had never been told this- if we were allowed to fully indulge in all of impulses, would we be more or less disfunctional? In any case, I think that I'm learning that I would make an absolutely horrendous mother. Surely I would overthink the impact of every decision I made and my kids would probably grow up being the most disfunctional of all. But I can't help it. I've had some Cat Stevens lyrics in my head for two weeks now, "As soon as I could talk, I was ordered to listen". And it's true. Childhood is so short- shouldn't we be permitted to indulge in it? Why can't we just let kids be kids?