No one has ever, EVER accused me of being really good at working with young children in large groups. This is most definitely NOT my calling. This is a good thing for most young children in today's hands-off world.
Last night I took David Riley to dress rehearsal for the children's Christmas program at church. It started at 7 p.m., after most of the children had been in school all day getting over-sugared at their year end parties. In my experience (from having raised two daughters who were in every program our church ever did in their childhood), dress rehearsal usually took about 2 hours. That equates to one rough run through to perfect lighting and sound systems and one true run through. That way every one is comfortable with the program before they have to perform before a live audience.
This year we have a brand new person directing the production with her parents helping and the Junior Youth minister overseeing.
The first really rough run through lasted 2 hours. The second time they got it down to 1 hour and 15 minutes. This program is supposed to last a maximum of 45 minutes.
We have several children in this production who are bussed in from apartment complexes. Most of these children have NO concept of respect or obedience. Most of these children would be treated to a heavy dose of soap in mouth, if I were in charge of them for more than 5 minutes. Not to mention that I would be walking around with a LARGE roll of duct tape for instructing them in the art of sitting still.
Watching the poor (young, naive) director trying valiantly to keep control of children who want to be in control of something, ANYTHING, was absolutely painful. It was actually just about on the same scale as fingernails on chalkboards!
I had to force myself to stay on the back row and just keep my eyes on David Riley (he is one of the three wise men) to make sure HE at least was behaving, and keep Eva from running up to be with her "Dave-Dave". Abby was one of the scribes and, also, sings in the choir and looking about as angelic as she could. (She is a little ornery once in a while, contrary to popular belief.)
I have spent a lot of time praying today for tonight's performance.
2 comments:
Oy! That sounds...fun...
I was somewhat shocked to see that some of the bus kids had rather large & important parts. That took either a lot of guts or a lot of faith.
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