For our second week on Oahu we went to 12 schools, and performed for about 1,780 students. (Wow! It didn’t feel like that many kids.)
MONDAY (three show day….. and a day I forgot my camera)
First Show: Waikiki School for 140 kids grades k-5.
- The morning traffic to get into Honolulu was terrible! I haven't been in car to car traffic like that maybe ever. What is this place, LA? (That's why Oahu has a bad reputation as the least special Hawaiian Island).
Second Show: Rosary pre school for 55 kids.
- At this school, the teachers wore full nun habits! I’d never seen that before. They also gave us fresh baked brownies after the show.
Third Show: Kalei’opu’u Elementary (pronounced kah-lay-ee ohpoo oo) for 135 kids all in 2nd grade.
We spent the rest of the day at home, a much needed respite for me after the crazy weekend I’d had. I did go on a very long walk to the ocean though. The closest public beach access I could find from my house was 3 miles away. I can't drive the rental car because I'm not old enough, so I decided to walk it. By the time I got to the (very small, not very nice) beach, it was surrounded by creepy guys, so I immediately left, and walked/ran the 3 miles home. It was a pretty uneventful adventure, but it was good to get out of the house.
TUESDAY (two shows)
First Show: Pu’ohala Elementary (pron. Poo oh holla) a huge show with 223 kids grades prek-6– This school was in Kaneohe again. We didn’t have to leave our house till 7:20!
Second Show: Mililani Presbyterian preschool for 65 kids)- This was a very small preschool. Once again we performed in a church. This is our set pretty much exactly half assembled.
These shows were so different from each other because the audiences varied so much in size and age.
After the shows, we spent much of the afternoon at Kailua beach. Then I went out to dinner with Sean King, an old friend of mine from the crazy days of high school theater. Beautiful sunset!
WEDNESDAY (two shows again!)
First show: Windward Nazarene Academy for 92 kids grades K-4.
- this one was walking distance from our place. (I knew exactly where it was because I’d gone past it a few times during runs.) Again we got to sleep in late :-)
- This is the only show so far where my Servant character has been fully appreciated and laughed at by the audience. One kid told me the servant was his favorite part of the play! Now if I can only figure out what I did so I can make the audience love him that much every time…
Second Show: Hongwanji Mission School for 242 kids grades preschool-4th.
- This was our first show in a Buddist temple. As you can see, it was a
beautiful white building.- The performance room was hard to get to. Lot's of stairs! We had to go up half of the front stairs, and then down more stairs at the back to get to the performance room. (At least the place we performed was air conditioned!)
- When the ogre puppets came out, we had a crying kid out break. Even though I’d introduced pink the puppet ogre before the show, one kid cried, which led to a chain reaction of five kids crying…. It was uncomfortable to be performing over a bunch of crying kids. But we had to keep going.
We went on a lovely adventure Wednesday afternoon through a muddy, mosquito-riden jungle to some beautiful waterfalls and pools that were deep enough to jump into (There were some Marine guys there doing back flips off the 30 ft. cliffs) I got very very muddy during this hike, so I decided to give in to my inner mud warrior.
After the hike, we went back to Kailua bay for a kid mud rinse off, and then back to the house to enjoy some delicious Italian food.
THURSDAY: (another three show day. Whew)
First show: Kanoelani Elementary for 112 third graders who thoroughly enjoyed it.
- One boy said it was the best show he had ever seen, and asked for the website.
- Ah yes, and right before this show, our ipod dock decided not to work, so we had to redo some blocking on the fly because we could no longer use the remote for the ipod.Second Show: KCAA Laura Morgan Preschool for 70 children ages 18 months to 5 years
- Honestly, this was the worst show we’ve had yet. The audience was just too young and talked and cried the whole time, ruining the concentration of the kids that were old enough.
The space was too cramped (we couldn’t even set up the black curtains)
Also, it was friggen hot, and outside, and we had to load our set pieces a long way from the car (through many gates) to get to the performance area.Although the people who ran the place were nice, they were the first place to not have water for us. AND our ipod dock was still broken. We were pretty glad when that show was over.
After this show, luckily we had about a thirty minute break. We went to a near by mall, got a new ipod dock, and got some jamba juice. Thank goodness too, because our third show required a lot of energy.
Third Show: Wilson Elementary for 270 kids grades kindergarten, first, and third.
- a delightfully very energetic, giving audience. AND since our first show the next day was at the same school, same stage, we got to leave the set pieces up for the night. (Especialy easy breakdown!) Sorry I didn’t take a picture of this one because we were going to go back the next day....
FRIDAY (two show day – and last day on Oahu… again, I forgot my camera. Sorry!)
First Show: Wilson Elementary (again) for 270 kids grades 2, 4, and 5.
- Not quite as energetic as the previous audience, but still very cute.
Second Show: KCAA Mother Rice Preschool for 100 preschool kids
- this was a sister school to the difficult preschool from the day before. Luckily, this one wasn’t as bad. The performance space was still a long ways from the car, and the performance space was still small (we didn’t use the black curtains again), but they had water for us, and at least the audience seemed older and was more able to pay attention…. Despite the construction noises from next door going on throughout the play….
That was it! We went home, packed our stuff, brought it to the airport, somehow got a porter to check in our TWELVE bags, waited two hours at the gate, boarded a plane, got off the plane at Hilo Airport (on the Big Island), found our new home in the Hilo jungle, and went to bed.
A few KID QUOTES of the week:
“Did you bring us tea? Why not?”
“Are there going to be Dinosaurs in the play?”
“I know what Ogres look like!” me: “yeah? What do they look like” “They look like slugs, but are bigger and have fur on them…..”
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