About school play

[HecateQueenOfWitches]

I probably am.

Or perhaps I am being honest.

I don't want to go.

My son has 2 lines. It's hours long and he's got 2 lines about 3/4 of the way through.

I don't want to sit through a couple of hours of other peoples kids.

I don't care about other peoples kids. I don't want to sit and watch them for 2 hours and I strongly suspect their parents don't care about watching mine.

I of course will go and smile and laugh along with everyone else, because that's what you do, isn't it?

So. AIBU. Am I wrong in believing that other people secretly feel this way too but are too polite to say?

I think that I am right, but I fear I may in fact be a heartless, unnatural cow and actually other people are interested in the toe-curlingly embarrassing performances of other people's children (the toe curlingly embarrassing performance of your own child is of course delightful )

Be honest. You know I can take it.

When I was at primary we did 'A day in the life of Ivan Disinovitch (sp)' Can you imagine My poor mum.

DD has just done her school play. Its just the year 6s acting, plus the choir. We've known most of these kids since they were in nursery so we enjoyed the whole thing (we went both nights!) and were delighted by the Other Peoples Kids who won the acting awards. They'd worked hard and put on a good show.

Was a bit scary though, some of the 11 year old girls are taller than me and in their makeup looked sooo grownup. Fortunately DD is still small and her part called for pigtails

You did Ivan Denisovich at primary school ? Bloody hell. That's seriously grim reading for an adult - were you all straight into therapy afterwards?

YANBU. I've recently sat through an interminable music concert to hear DS2 sing in the choir. i spent the bits in between playing scrabble on my iPhone with a friend. The strangling cats violins were particularly bad this year but i clapped in all the right places regardless of actual talent.

Earlier this year, I sat through a good 2 hours of dance performances, where DS1 was in the third dance, feeling sick and hoping I wouldn't throw up into my expensive Radley handbag. I was sorely tempted to bail out in the interval but, like a trooper, I stuck it out to the end.

I have only the Y6 play and achievement evening to get through now....

YANBU. I'll see your school play and raise you DNs drama club performance: one 5-minute play with DN being very sweet and knowing all his lines and stuff, 3 hours of other plays with other people's children, all mindnumbingly boring and written by the drama teacher who perhaps needs to step away from the delusions of authorship (a play about a package tour where all that happens is the invisible bus breaks down and they call a taxi?)

I thought the low point was the secondary school age group in an edge-of-your-seat extravaganza about some monsters (dracula, swamp creature, Elvis yes really Elvis) having a meeting and deciding to get jobs. They didn't remember their lines and were generally much more painful to watch than the word-perfect littlies.

But no, a lower point came with the prize giving: having to watch all the littlies who'd obviously given their all get paper certificates while the older ones who were frankly pants get bronze, silver and gold medals, because the 'award' isn't based on merit or effort but on how many years you've been going to drama club.

And this was in a 500 seat auditorium with the a/c turned off in 30 degree heat with no intermission. And it was £5 a ticket. And the seats were like rock.

And breathe.

hassled we didnt have a clue.

I remember all these years later (over 30 - gulp) our teacher warning us 'dont expect everyone to clap when we finish, its not that sort of play'

She wasnt kidding. Cue about a 100 stunned looking parents staring in complete silence.

I remember a song - Yes is was a musical 'Im just a number, you're just a number...'

I am not making this up.

We took our children to a proper theatre as part of a local schools concert, ours and two other schools. We were first on and ( obviously!) brilliant and the second school were pretty good too. The last school was very long! In fact they were on stage over an hour and most of our littlies were fast asleep by the end! So not only did our parents have to sit through all of our perfomance, they had to endure two other schools too!

I think there should be a school rule about plays being no more than half an hour!!

I utterly hated most of the school plays, apart from the Oscar winning capablilites of my own children of course.

Musical concerts, esp where violins are concerned were the only thing worse.

thefirstmrsDeVere - I'm going to be giggling to myself about this for days. Giggling with a bit of hysteria thrown in - I wikied Ivan Denisovich to make sure I wasn't confusing it with some light, bright Solzhenitsyn I'd forgotten about but no, it really is as relentlessly grim and awful as I thought. And a musical version

I am a secondary school drama teacher. Obviously all my school plays are amazing and wonderful However, last night I went to watch one of my students in an am dram production of Oliver! It was bloody awful. My student was great, but he had a small part and was then one of Fagin's gang. He's lovely kid, and I do think he's good, but am dram in itself is bloody awful. It made me remember all the things I hate about amateur shows (crap acting, hoards of chorus, all of whom are crap at acting, scene changes which take forever) That's three hours of my life I'm not going to get back. The student was really thrilled that his two drama teachers pitched up for his opening night and I did, quite honestly, tell him that he did a super job (and he did - it was just the bloody awful adults who ruined it).

So anyway, it could be worse. My poor parents had to sit through many a school play (we did Brecht in the 3rd Year. Brecht! I ask you...)

ET I hope you did Brecht in original language .

Not to worry, as a teacher I drag MY parents along to school plays and performances to see my little darlings perform

LOL at MollieO. That would have been just wonderful.

ROFL at the lost 'light, bright' plays of Solzhenitsyn

They will be archived somewhere along with the cheerful songs of Snow Patrol

Absolutely but quietly agree with you OP. Last week, I missed the first five minutes of sports day, and (unbeknownst to me) the only race DS was in, and I felt really resentful that I then had to spend an hour standing in a field clapping children I don't really know or care about. But I suspect that makes me a rotter.

Hipflasks - definitely the way forward for any of these kind of things. Plus a swift drink in the pub to fill the half hour between dropping them off 'backstage' and the show starting.

My father took a hip flask and a shooting stick to all school events. I now see why.

bananaketchup That must be a StageCoach you are talking about - is it?

Even the mind-numbingly boring plays written by the drama teacher who thinks she is a playwright sounds horribly familiar. OMG I wonder if this is the same one my DD use to go to. It didn't also have a singing teacher who played the piano so loud he completely drowned out the kids did it?

The end of term performances we went to were always really dire and looking back I can't believe we paid for her to go to this for so long. But she said she enjoyed it and we could afford it at the time.

I think I can trump the 5 minutes out of 3 hours thing though. Once DDs StageCoach were taking part in a charity performance in a theatre. The drama teacher had written this whole thing and each of the three groups had a scene to do. They rehearsed all term and DD was really looking forward to it. When we went for the performance DD was on for 20 seconds of the opening dance then her group went off stage. They didn't reappear until the very last song when they were on for the final 2 minutes.

It turned out that in the dress rehearsal the useless blooming teacher realised that the whole thing would overrun so she had to make some cuts. Rather than trim a bit here and there she completely cut the whole scene that DDs group were in!! I mean how can you get to 2 hours before the performance without realising that you have gone so badly over? Poor DD and the other kids in her group were gutted that after working all term they never got to do their bit. We sat through a 2 hour show (which was mostly pretty bad) and saw DD for less than 3 minutes! Grr

You should have seen the performance DS & his friends put on in cubs last term!

They had a play first & kept on forgetting their lines, so one of the others would prompt them - then discussion of 'No that line is later, it is someone else who has forgotten'. Not to be missed was the 'Orchestra' one boy with a guitar who would just randopmly pluck a string every couple of minutes. This was followed by a presentation which hadn't been prepared at all so everyone would disappear for 5 mins then two boys would come back and tell us a joke followed by another empty stage.

I kept on catching my friend M's eye and we would both be having hysterics but trying so hard to keep a straight face.

5Foot5 not sure if I should names but I will - it was Helen O'Grady Drama Academy. I am strangely comforted by the thought that you have suffered similarly, but your poor DD having her moment in the spotlight culled at the last minute!

erm.

I thought I should report back that I went.

And it was really funny (not intentionally!) and I ordered a copy of the cd.

oh yes, and Jason - I never said for a second that I wouldn't go! Not going never crossed my mind.

I already had my ticket.

It is important that you know that.