now starring …

Do you remember a boy named Bergen who was painfully shy in public?

This kid who doesn’t even desire to read his poetry out loud to his classmates at the safety of his friend’s dining room table?

Yes.  That fella.

Imagine this.

Our co-op has been working on a simple play entitled How Birds Fly for the past term.  At the beginning of the theatre class I asked all of the kids questions to gage their comfort level in being on stage for the performance.  Every child except Bergen wanted a role – some wanted only minor speaking parts – but everyone wanted to participate on stage.  I allowed the kids to voice their opinions and Bergen requested the responsibility of props and strongly expressed his lack of desire to be seen on stage.  No big surprise there.

A few weeks into practice.  Lots of laughter.  A script filled with bird facts and a few corny bird jokes.  After class he says to me, this quiet eight-year-old of mine, “Mom – I wish I could go back in time to the day you asked me if I wanted a speaking role.  I’d tell you I did want one.”

Shock and awe.

So with a little rearranging and shifting from several kids who wanted less lines, the boy got a few lines.

He memorized them quickly and delivered them enthusiastically during rehearsal but you know I was concerned about the actual on stage performance aspect.

When I asked him why he felt he had changed his mind and was ready to speak on stage now he just kept saying, “There won’t be many people there any way.”

All that led us up to last Friday afternoon at a children’s museum.  All of the kids anxiously took the stage and I held my breath a little, wondering how my boy would do.

Fact after fact, his little nuggets of bird lines came spouting out, loud and clear and with feeling.

That’s progress, my friends.  That’s real progress in the life of a boy becoming something else.

The play turned out fabulously I think.  Difficult to hear, for certain, over the noise made in the background of the museum.  But the kids rallied around one another.  They took their tasks seriously.  They felt the pressure and the tension of working together to produce an end result in a public forum.  They worked hard and I think they walked off the stage pretty proud of themselves.

The younger kids performed a version of Chicken Little wearing the cutest masks ever.

After the plays were finished a naturalist took the stage and brought out a beautiful barred owl – that one of our little wise students correctly identified – and the kids were able to see the owl dramatically turn his head and they were able to ask questions of the naturalist and to get a quality lesson about owls.

It was a good afternoon of seeing a project through to its conclusion and of my boy conquering fear and growing up, right on stage.