Your DCs always get crap roles in plays.. and the plays always have one main character

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OK: three DDs, first two very shy. Enrol in speech and drama classes after school and they build confidence (but still not fab). Each year the teacher chooses a play that has some little roles (4 lines), medium roles and then one or two big roles (say 80 lines). My kids always get the 4 line parts, incl DD3 who is pretty good. Do I say to teacher (who earns a tidy sum from us) that I don't want to pay for 2 terms for my kids to practice 4 lines? Or should I just accept they are crap actors and send them along as they enjoy the whole putting on a play thing? DDs are aged 11-8 and live in Dublin. PS DD2 counted lines, not me!

Save your money. It's always the same kids who get the big roles, and IME it's the pushy kids or the ones with pushy parents. I've seen countless productions where the kids with cameo roles are the real stars and just shine and create so much out of a minor role, and on occasions the kids with the big role have been really disappointing. Seems to be a thing among a lot of drama teachers though - they seem to go for the same kids and it aint necessarily the best ones! (apologies to good drama teachers out there!)

I have come to the conclusion that ds2 looks like a shepherd. Every year, every nativity play he's a bloody shepherd!

take heart chipmonkey my ds2 was a turkey ffs!!!!!

Interesting...I send my show-off DD (aged 4) to a theatre class and they were amazed on her first day at how "participative" she was...I apologised, as she can be very hyper-organised and not at all backward in coming forward or sharing her world views and they said "oh no, we love kids like that, they are so much easier to teach"!!!!!
Currently she is in the 5-7 class and they don't have "roles" they are doing poetry recitation with a good distribution of the single lines between the various children. I questioned them on the allocation of parts and they seem very egalitarian and let each child register what part they would like and audition and rotate role sizes for the shy ones.
I suffered at school from a very biased drama teacher who always picked the same people and I hate that sort of thing!

ds 1 is always the one with the comic line....what does that say?
ds 2 is the one who has the most lines out of the boys but they are always serious ones and usually the narrator type one
dd is always a dancer/swan or princess

My dc's tend to get fairly basic parts in school plays: shepherds mostly, dd has been the narrator once, never the starring role. They both go to drama school, where they've never had much of a starring part either, compared to some of the other children.

I have tended to downplay this, pronounce the usual platitudes if they're upset about it, but mainly I leave them to get over it themselves. I find that afterwards they still get an enormous buzz from being part of a production, and that 4 lines may cover a lot of training - learning how to walk, where to stand, how to support another actor on stage. Wouldn't dream of taking them away from the classes because they're not the centre of attention, my point is that every person who takes part is vital to a production.

It helps them to know that their greatgranddad was an actor who mainly did small parts, not always speaking ones, throughout his professional life, and that was considered a worthwhile life for a grown-up. But the main thing is the feeling that everybody is working together on a production.