OAHU: Day Three (September 16)

Wednesday - another two show day. Getting up so early is beginning to be a bit less hard, but not by much. Kai made eggs this morning, which was a nice change from the grab and go breakfasts of toast or granola that I've been having.

We went to two pre-schools today. Pre school audiences, I am learning, require a much different type of performance than older students. I have to be extra careful to not make the Ogres scary, because these young ones can and will cry at most any surprises. Today I jumped onto the stage and roared for her first entrance.... and consequently made many kids scream, and one little girl cry. Oops! from then on, Pink became a lot less menacing. She didn't laugh her evil laugh as much, and her voice changed into a more girly, cute, less threatening one.

Today was the first day I introduce Pink to the preschool audience before the show during my preshow introduction; the children had a visceral reaction the moment I brought the puppet out - they most always gasped, followed by laughter that started off timid and got more brave by the time I had put pink on and had her introduce herself. I wish I could see her through their 3 year old eyes. She must seem so real to them! I know she would have to me when I was three.
Our first show was at Rainbow School for about 60 young ones.

Rainbow School from the outside

We walk into the performance space, which ended up being a church, complete with a glowing cross, and an alter we had to move to the side to make space for our stage.

Daryl and Kai moving the alter

Then we set up our stage in it's place...

Other than the few tears I mentioned, the performance went very well, and no kids were crying by the end of the show.

Something funny did happen today though. When we got to Rainbow School, I went to take my perfromance shoes (black slip on shoes) out of my bag, and I had forgotten one! Woops! But as in all live theater, the show had to go on... so I did my shows today barefoot....

two feet, two socks, two slippers..... one shoe. Ooops

Our second show was at Kama'aina Kids in Mililani Town for about 100 kids ranging from 8 months to 4 years old.

The outside of Kama'aina kids
(Kama'aina means "of the land," which basically means, you're local to Hawaii - not a tourist)

Our set up at Kama'aina Kids - the audience sat on the mats.

This was probably our strangest audience yet. For one thing, as they came in to the space to sit down for the show, already at least 4 kids were crying, and no one seemed to be doing much of anything about it. They quieted down (less tears) once the show started, but mostly, they were still a very loud, talkative audience while we were performing. It think it was just because very young kids don't have the attention span for a live show yet, especially since our show is geared for kindergarten - fifth grade. The 4 year olds in the audience did fine and told me they LOVED it, but any child younger than 3 was pretty squirmy. It was pretty distracting, and kind of unnerving to be performing to an audience that was not very attentive. Nevertheless, we got through it.

KID Quote of the Day: “Woah! Woah! Calm down. Calm down!” –said boldly and loudly by a 3 year old boy in the audience to me while I was playing Devin. During the scene, Devin was sharing with his grandfather how upset he was about being pushed around and bullied at school.


After our shows were done. Once again we hit THE BEACH!!!! This time we went to Lanikai beach in Kailua. According to the travel network, Lanikai is the most beautiful beach in the world. I can't say for sure if that is true, but it was most definitely a beautiful beach. To get there, we had to park on a neighborhood street, and find a public access path to the beach.

This was the first public access path we found...

Didn't lead to the right sized beach. Curious. Why was there a sign for this small thing?


The second path we found led to Lanikai.

The travel channel is right about this though, Lanikai is a seriously GORGEOUS BEACH:

check these pictures out:







I tried to get creative with my camera:

There were these girls who were humorously trying to carry their dog into the ocean to wash it. Kai went and helped them (unlike Daryl and I, who just laughed and took a video of the situation - which sadly wouldn't load!)

We went home, ate pasta, and that was the end of DAY THREE.