Grease

Emma has been excited to join drama in high school ever since she started going to the summer drama camp offered by the high school ages ago.  In the fall, she was in Mary Poppins and thoroughly enjoyed it.  We knew many of the songs from seeing the movie version, but Emma got well versed in all of the words in all of the songs.  Consequently, we were all singing (or at least having them played over and over in our minds) the Mary Poppins soundtrack ad nauseum.  

This season of drama was a family-friendlier version of Grease.  No drinking, drugs, or pregnancy scare.  Plenty of innuendo if you know what you are looking for, however.  As with Mary Poppins, we are all learning the Grease soundtrack from both Emma practicing at home, and then watching the show several times.  Between Ryan and myself, we attended every evening show.  We recieved complementary tickets last time and this time for helping with sets and building the "car" for the Grease Lightning song.  Truthfully, it did not look much like a car.  It was not supposed to be a fancy car, since the script specifially called it a hunk of junk at the beginning.  But I think if Ryan had had more warning to create and build, we could have done better.  Hopefully Mr. M will tell Ryan what he wants as he gets started with practices.  Not a week and a half before dress rehearsals start.  I also spotted a set piece in Grease that we built for Mary Poppins.  

Opening night went quite well.  A little hesitation with some of the lines, but the sound and mics were pretty good.  (Mics having been a little finicky for MP.)

 Mr. M came up with the best plan for bows I've seen in a high school play.  He added a song from the movie that wasn't in the play for Danny to sing while the cast went line by line doing a little dance move and their bows.  It flowed nicely and was interesting to see and hear.

At the end, Kendra's parents snapped this picture of the girls affectionately known as the Three Musketeers, or the Deathly Hallows if you ask Kaylee's older brother.  Emma and Kendra are frequently confused by their teachers and peers.  I don't think they look that much alike, but evidently it's enough.

This next picture was taken the night the youth went.  Elizabeth and I were really close to the stage, and we sat next to the bishop.  He asked where Ryan was, and I told him that he needed to put the twins to bed at their normal bedtime because Annie had a 45 minute long meltdown about pj pants, that Ryan conviently missed.  Preteens are very emotional creatures.  Bishop did make a crack about needing to talk to "Sandy" after she makes her appearance in her black outfit. Erica is in our ward.  I suggested he should also talk to "Frenchy" (also a girl in our ward) about wanting to drop out of high school.  

And finally closing night.  I have finally figured out how to manipulate my phone's camera to take decent pictures of the lighted stage.  Not that it takes the greatest pictures ever, but they are better than the too bright, too white pictures I used to get.  I'll blame it on the fact I still have an iPhone 5.

 You can see Emma and Kendra have a great time dancing in the next couple of pictures.

And done!  We survived another season.  It was really crazy running the play and science fair at the same time.  It meant all the kids doing both had to miss doing the local science fair because (even after I was assured by the science teacher that they would work it out) it ran at the same time as the Saturday matinee.  Since there were quite a few students doing both, you would have thought the teachers could at least communicate and work together to find a schedule that would accomodate both.  And because Emma is in band too, she can't go to regional science fair because the band has a festival to attend and her band teacher won't let her out of it.  So Elizabeth will be the only one attending regional science fair from our family. 

Lastly, here's a clip of You're The One That I Want.  Our high school really does know how to perform a good play.  See if you can spot Emma in her pink shirt and skirt.