Not everything involved in education is dead-on serious. Sometimes an event is funny. Sometimes an event is funny only if you were there. In the major scheme of things, all of the events are worth telling.
Over the course of my teaching career, I was also scheduled to direct school plays, because I was certified in Speech/Theater as well as English. Since 100% of my teaching career was spent in semi-rural school districts whose focus was always on sports and NOT the arts, it was a balancing act to find kids who were available to be in plays instead of on The Team. (Don't get me started!!) In all of the schools, there was a stage, which may or may not have been raised above floor level, and a stage curtain, in a multipurpose room. (Never an auditorium.) No other amenities even remotely resembling a real stage. And budget? Ha!
Picking a play was the hard part. I had to make certain that the required sets weren't above our capabilities and that the available "talent" was adequate. There were always more girls than boys that tried out. Then, too, I couldn't pick anything too popular due to royalties and cost of scripts, but I also didn't want to put on silly little school pot-boilers. Blah!
I can't always tell you which play was what in the course of the funny stuff, but here it is:
1. I was a directing a Gay Nineties Melodrama, complete with villain, hero, and sweet heroine. One actual performance night, the villain put his gun in the back of his pants instead of his pocket where he usually did. When it was time to draw his gun and aim it threateningly at the hero, he slapped his pockets but couldn't find the gun. Ever the trouper, the kid pulled a finger gun out of his pocket. What made this funnier than even I could have imagined was that the audience could see the gun in the back of his pants all the while. It was the biggest laugh of the show, and the poor kid didn't have a clue!
2. Another play, I enlisted the help of one of my ham radio friends. He is blind and had a lovable blonde labrador named Sparky as his service dog. He helped me with some of the technical stuff, and the kids loved both him and the dog. We coordinated by radio, with me in the audience area and him backstage. It worked.
On the night of the last performance, when every director of school plays has to be alert for pranks, a prank happened on stage right in front of me. Suddenly, my friend and his dog walked across the stage, stopped in the middle, and exclaimed, "Sparky, I don't think this is the restroom." Then walked off. I could have shot him! I accused him of throwing in with the heathens. He claimed that certain people in the cast had told him that, if he didn't do it, they would de-pants someone on stage. He thought he was saving me from embarrassment. Yeah...okay. Thank goodness, the audience laughed. Whew!
3. That same play, I had a set of non-identical twins in the cast in big parts. Unbeknownst to me, they had their tonsils taken out just ten days before performance. Ten days should be enough recovery time from semi-outpatient surgery, right? Wrong! Toward the end of dress rehearsal, one of the twins started spitting up blood into a waste can. Uh oh... His parents couldn't be reached to come pick him up, so I started the process of shutting down dress rehearsal so I could take him home. I was the only adult there--the only one with the school authority to be in charge. I couldn't just leave the other kids to find their way home. I scrambled to make sure everyone got out and on their way home, then took my sick kid home, out in the "boonies". And THEN, I had to figure out how to replace him in the play the very next night!
I had a student that was quite competent in front of people. I called and begged him to replace a cast member on less than a day's notice. He was willing, God bless him. I was able to get him excused from all of his classes except one that day. He spent his whole school day reading script and memorizing lines. At performance time that evening, his performance wasn't perfect but quite happily adequate! This whole episode wasn't really funny, but when I look back on it, I think it was. We all survived, and Rob (our young savior) got to take a special bow. I could do a Happy Dance!
4. On performance nights, I made it a point to be in the back of the audience rather than backstage. My rationale was that I had, by that time, done everything I could do for the show. The performances were now up to the cast. I always checked in backstage between acts to encourage the kids, etc., but I wasn't present there during performance.
This particular stage had an anteroom, used as a small classroom during school days, that had steps and a door leading up to the Stage Right area. The kids could use that room for their Stage Right entrances and exits.
During one play's final performance, I was in the back of the audience at my usual perch when I could hear rumbling noises that I couldn't identify. It was internal. No thunderstorm or anything outside. In the break between acts, I went backstage to ask what all the rumbling was. The slightly-older brother of one of my young actresses stepped in to say, "My sister and [insert female name] got into a physical fight, but it's okay, Ms. McNary. I took care of it." It was as if he were a cop, saying, "Move on. Nothing to see here, folks." Except I--the one in charge--was the one he was saying it to! It tickled me that I was being protected from the reality of what happened. Funny? Well...maybe just amusing.
After greeting the audience at the end of the performance, and breaking the set, when I thought everyone had gone home, I departed the school building only to discover the Sheriff there, talking with the father of one of the girls pressing charges against the other. Ugh! Since I was in charge of the whole event--although I hadn't witnessed the altercation between the girls--I checked to see if anything was required of me before I went home. I was assured that nothing was, so I left.
For weeks, I waited for the shoe to drop that I would, somehow, be held responsible for the fight between two adolescent girls, but it didn't happen. YEARS later, I was in a restaurant with my daughter and husband when I ran into the older brother who had taken control of the backstage fight. We both laughed about the ridiculousness of the whole situation. Love it!
5. One of the biggest laughs I ever had in my teaching career happened in an event with one really sweet fourth grade girl in my class. Her desk was right in front of me in front of the class. That day, I noticed that she had a small tube of Vaseline with her. She had it in her mouth, holding the crimped end between her teeth, and flicking it up and down with her fingers. In the middle of a lesson, I heard a *CRACK* and looked down at her. The tube had broken. The kid now had a big blob of Vaseline on her lip, and all she could do was stick her lip out and go "Duuuurrr..." and point to her face. It was hysterical! The child knew I wasn't laughing at her but rather at the predictable situation. I let her go to the restroom to clean up her face, but the student and I still laugh about it to this day. Nothing like a glob of Vaseline to make things funny!
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