Call Us Crazy, But...

...we have decided that despite our upcoming move...

Tonight our whole family, almost, is going to audition for our local community theater's summer musical, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe! (Yes, our kids were just in a slightly different musical version if it last fall).

Indulge me on a little ramble of explanation here:

Remember when we found the great voice teacher for Blondechick14 last fall? She was the Wicked Witch in the local community theater's non-musical production of The Wizard of Oz. We sought her out to talk to afterward and discovered that she lives three blocks from us, is a Christian, majored in voice, and gives voice lessons.

(She has taught Blondechick so much that I decided to ask her to give ME lessons. I've sung a bit in choirs; I have a decent range and a good sense of pitch, but I don't have a strong voice and I'm not really sure how to support it. It's been so helpful to have someone listen to me and tell me what I'm doing right or wrong. And it's kind of humbling to have to practice, just like my kids do; I figure it's good for them to see me still willing to learn, even at my age!)

Well, the voice teacher has theater experience too, and it turns out that she's directing The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. She's been strongly encouraging Blondechick--and our whole family--to audition, since they desperately need more talent that can sing. They usually pick two casts for these shows--possibly they'll have a kids' cast and an adult cast--so there will be two Susans, two Lucys, two Edmunds, two Peters, etc. She could practically guarantee Blondechick a lead role, and probably the boys too--which they would all love, for the experience. (They've come so close so many times in our other group!) Chicklet4 can be in it too--another plus--and of course my husband and I, which really excites the kids.

We've thought about doing these summer productions before. My husband used to get all the leads back in his high school productions; he has a big, beautiful tenor voice, and he always got lots of great coaching from his parents, who met in New York doing on- and off-Broadway shows! (His mom was a witch in the original Broadway cast of Camelot, with Julie Andrews and Richard Burton. They both did off-Broadway shows, too, and Shakespeare at summer festivals--so you can see where the family interest in theater got started!)

I'm the one who's never done much theater. I played oboe or sax in the pit orchestra for my high school musicals for three years, always wishing I could be in them, but knowing I was just too inhibited. My senior year, I finally tried out for The Wiz and made it into the chorus. Now as an adult, I'm a lot more comfortable with myself and I think I could see me doing this with my family.

And that's the draw--it would be so fun to do this together as a family. Six of us, at least. (Bantam16 prefers to help backstage, and Bantam2 is admittedly too young.) And why now? As I've said, we've considered this before, and this year seemed perfect--a show we all liked, a high probability of leads for my husband and kids, and a director who is bending over backwards for us. (She knows we'll have a lot of rehearsal conflicts till Seussical is over, but she'll work around that, and she and the directing team are doing a special audition tonight just for our family, since we can't come Friday night or Saturday morning--the kids have Seussical rehearsals and I'm gone overnight for a women's retreat.)

The only teeny problem is: now we have a house to get ready to put on the market, and a move to plan! But we've prayed about it and decided we'll still do it. It might be now or never, we think. It seems less likely that my husband will be able to do something like this after we move and he becomes the head pastor of a church--there's a certain amount of dignity he might need to preserve. Also, he'll be working at a job AND leading a church for awhile; he's not going to have energy to put into something like this. We don't even know if there will be a community theater there. And I figure the worst that can happen is--we're a little more stressed for the next couple of months. (I don't think it will delay our move, since we can't see ourselves closing on this house before the performances are over in mid-July.) Hopefully, we'll have enough fun together at rehearsals to offset the stress!

Well, I'm off to run through "Matchmaker" a few more times. This is certainly different than coaching my kids for their auditions!