“Play Enjoyed By All”

I have a love/eye-roll relationship with theater. It’s something I aspired to as a girl, had some moderate success with in high school and college, and then just sort of stuffed under the bed in mild embarrassment for most of my adult life. It’s quite an experience to pour all that energy and passion into all those Waiting for Guffmanish endeavors, start to take yourself seriously as an Actor, and then gradually realize that you don’t have the ambition or the body or even necessarily the talent to go any further. Hello, desk job!

Maybe that’s why I was never that enthusiastic about those baby music/dance classes that seem to be all the rage among parents these days. There’s a baffling irony to it – all those alpha moms coaxing the rhythm sticks out of their babies’ mouths so they can learn to keep the beat to “London Bridges.” Meanwhile I’m sitting there all underemployed and out of place, taking part in the one free trial class and remembering how awesome I used to be at rhythm sticks. (Not much of a predictor of future success, those rhythm sticks.)

Even as a kid, I had something of a sour attitude toward theater classes. So much of it was just like that song “Nothing” from A Chorus Line, sitting around pretending to be inanimate objects and trying to really feel it, when all I wanted to do was be the next Jill Whelan. And all that mime. Sweet Shields and Yarnell, there was just So. Much. Mime. (It was the 1970’s, after all.)

So, yeah, I’ve got some baggage. And when The Boy insisted that he didn’t want to participate in the Big Elementary School Play, I wasn’t all that disappointed. For one thing, singing has always been a huge point of anxiety for him. At the last kindergarten concert he ran backstage and started pacing behind the performers, eventually knocking over some stuff and yelling “Ow!” in the middle of a song. So I barely gave it a second thought as I blissfully ignored the many, many e-mails from his school detailing rehearsal schedules, permission slips, and costume information.

The other parents didn’t share my cavalier attitude. Telling them The Boy wouldn’t be in the play was like telling them I’d decided to pull him out of school entirely. “Why not?” they’d ask, aghast.

And then one day, The Boy told me gleefully “All my friends think you’re weird!”

I’d been expecting this, although maybe not as early as kindergarten. “Why do they think I’m weird?” I asked, trying to sound breezy.

“Because you’re not making me be in the play,” he said.

“Oh . . . well, do you want to be in the play?” Silence. “You can be in the play if you want to, honey. Do you want to?” Tears. “Do you want to be in the play?”

“No! I don’t want to be in the play! You said I didn’t have to be in the play!”

Sigh. So that’s what counts as “weird” these days, I thought. Not forcing your anxious child to do something that freaks his shit out. I grumbled around in a somewhat misanthropic mood for some time after that.

And then, a few weeks later, I came to pick The Boy up after school and he ran up to me with a huge smile on his face. “Mommy, I’ve decided I do want to be in the play! And I need ten dollars!”

“He wants to do it now! He wants to be in the play now!” his friend joyfully informed me and the teacher, who was trying to line up the kids who were staying after school for the final dress rehearsal.

“I know all the songs! We learned them in music class!”

“He knows the songs! You have to let him!”

“Isn’t this wonderful?” his teacher marveled.

All I could think of were those dozens and dozens of ignored e-mails. And the fact that the play was tomorrow. But somehow, it was okay. The kindergarteners were in the chorus. All they had to do was get up and sing a few songs that he’d apparently already learned. So, I tracked down one of the harried parent volunteers and signed him up. Turns out that ten dollars he needed was for the post-dress-rehearsal pizza party. (Let’s hear it for the magical anxiety-healing powers of pizza.)

Next thing you know, Mr. Black, Little Girl, and I were taking our seats in the gym on opening night. Things weren’t off to a promising start. He’d had a bad day at school, melting down over some perceived injustice or other. And he was still sporting a black eye from a playground accident earlier that week. His teacher suggested I might try to find a seat in the front row and be prepared to discreetly escort him outside if he started to freak out and disrupt the performance.

Fair enough. But somehow, I doubted there’d be a freak out. Even though he was clearly nervous, he was so happy and excited too. All the kids were. It was palpable. And it took me back to those intangible moments that I loved the best about my own childhood experiences with theater . . . lining up backstage at the Jewish Community Center at night, hearing the piano music, knowing we were going on next, straightening our cardboard elephant ears.

The play itself, a musical revue based on the work of Shel Silverstein, was positively delightful. I hadn’t been able to snag my in-case-of-freak-out front row seat after all. In fact, I barely caught a glimpse of The Boy during the performance. But when I saw him and his friends during intermission, that’s all I needed to feel reassured that everything was a-ok.



He’s been talking about the play all week, singing the songs, asking us what our favorite parts were. I swear, the kid’s got an extra spring in his step. His teacher told me that theater can actually be a great outlet for kids with anxiety. Which, I suppose, I already knew, having tunneled my own way out of childhood anxiety with all that mime and chorus concerts and high school musicals.

And for the first time, I think I finally understand why parents make such a big deal out of all this performing arts stuff and want their kids involved. It’s exhilarating, it’s incredibly gratifying, and it unifies the kids in a way that regular classroom activities just can’t match. They work hard, learn the songs, face their fears, put it all together and become part of something that’s creative and colorful and fun.

And they get a pizza party. What more could you want?