DD (6) has recently auditioned for a local panto am-dram village hall type thing.
A few of her mates are doing it with her.
The lady running it from the start has had a slightly chaotic communication style, for example sending me messages full of random information in response to my simple questions about which part my DD had been given, like names and surnames of all of the kids who’d been given main parts (kids I didn’t know). Also forgetting to add various parents to the Panto watsapp group and expecting other members to relay information.
In the audition, the kids were given scripts full of dense text they’d never seen before and were literally sung at by the adults auditioning them with no context, just sung at.
They weren’t given any direction about what to do so obviously just stood there!
There was one part where the ladies auditioning the kids snatched their scripts out of their hands having just given them to them and said “you don’t need this now do you?” At one point they started dancing quite a complicated piece of choreography and shouted “come on, join in”, but hadn’t broken the steps down in to small chunks to teach them, so the girls were a bit taken aback.
The husband of the lady auditioning the children sort of laughed at how motionless the kids were but I completely understood the kids reaction as they weren’t being dealt with in an age appropriate way which would bring out the best in them.
Late one Saturday night before a 2nd audition that the children were invited to attend the morning after, the parents were emailed an amended script for the children to familiarise themselves with (it was bedtime at this point so no way my DD could have scrolled for ages at the large amounts of text despite being a great reader!)
At the 2nd audition the ladies auditioning the 6 year olds were asking them if they would be free for a few hours every Sunday in November and December Again, the kids didn’t know what to say as they don’t organise their schedules and know when they’ll be available in November!
A few weeks went past and we had heard nothing from the audition. I eventually text the lady running it and asked if my DD had been given a part and she said yes and told me that I should have known that. I asked if I’d missed an email but she didn’t reply.
Yesterday the children went to the first rehearsal. One of the children’s grandparents stayed for the duration of the rehearsal while we were told in the group watsapp to collect the children at 3pm.
At half past 2 DH and I received missed calls from the father of one of DD’s friends and when we called back he said that the rehearsal was over and that my DD, her friend and their other friend had been taken to the park nearby with DDs friend’s grandmother because the rehearsal finished sooner than they expected.
I work in education and my safeguarding alarm bells were ringing off the wall!
why had DD and her friend been given to their other friend’s grandmother to hold on to?
I sent the lady running the pantomime a screen shot of the time she’d sent me saying 3pm pick up and asked that she send us a schedule in future of rehearsal times to help us plan. she just casually said that the rehearsal had come to an end quicker than they thought it would. In my mind they should have called me at this point, not allowed my DD to be taken to a park with a random old lady in the rain!
When DD returned home, I asked how the rehearsal went and she said that in all of the hours she was there, her and her friends just had 3 minutes worth of doing anything and the rest was just sitting there doing nothing.
I asked DD if she wanted to quit and she said no because she likes seeing her friends and she wants to be on stage again (she’s been in a very professionally run production and has loved it. This is the first ropey one) I think I need to pull her out of it now because I don’t feel that proper safeguarding is understood by any of the adult members.
The tricky thing is that one of my friends is on the committee of adults running it, and she tends to get really angry if people quit when she’s worked hard to organise something creatively which I understand so think it’ll be better for DD to quit now rather than further down the line. I also just don’t feel they understand that children aged 6 need to be occupied!
AIBU?