"Robyn, that was...unintentionally hilarious"

So, after what seemed like years of meetings, rehearsals, blood, sweat and shouting; Wednesday was the day of the Form Four mini-drama. If I havn't spoken about this before it's mainly because until about 2 weeks ago I was convinced we wouldn't have a drama and until about 2 days ago I was hoping for some kind of act of God that would mean we couldn't do it. Basically someone upon high decided it would be a fabulous idea to get some of the Form Four girls to perform a mini-drama for the rest of their year. Said person has obviously never attempted to get 15 year old girls who have never done drama before, have a million and one other things to do and are hormonal to come up with a play in a few weeks. In a foreign language. With the expectation that the play should be 'Hong Kong Perfect' (I think I'm going to copywright that term...)
Anyway, me and the NETs decided to throw sensible things like auditions and scripts out the window and let the girls choose the story and said anyone who wants to be in it can be. This lead to a rather motley crew of mainly low ability, rather enthusiastic but slightly mental girls telling the well-known love story of Pinnochio and Cinderella...what do you mean you've never heard the love story of Pinnochio and Cinderella? Fine, I'll fill you in...

Cinderella's mother is very sick while she and Cinderella are playing in a forrest. Cinderella's mother vomits on a tree and promptly dies. Cinderella's father does not want Cinderella to be lonely so he cuts down the tree that Cinderella's mother vomited on and makes the wood into Pinnochio (see above).

Cinderella's evil step-mother throws Pinnochio away. Cinderella and her step-sisteres are invited to a party being held by two princes. Cinderella has nothing to wear but luckily her fairy Godmother appears and magics her a beautiful dress.

At the party the princes argue over who gets to dance with Cinderella but they are so horrible that Cinderella runs away, loosing a shoe in the process...

While Cinderella is looking for her shoe she bumps into Pinnochio. Pinnochio has come alive because Cinderella's mother's vomit made the wood in the tree he was made from magic. Cinderella doesn't recognise Pinnochio and Pinnochio doesn't tell Cinderella who he is because he embarassed about how ugly he is. When the clock strikes midnight Cinderella kisses Pinnochio and runs home but Cinderella's kiss makes Pinnochio change into a handsome man!

Now he is handsome Pinnochio finds Cinderella and tell her who he really is. Cinderella agrees to marry Pinnochio. They live happily ever after!

Meanwhile, the princes find Cinderella's shoe and it fits both the ugly step-sisters, so each of the princes marries one of the step-sisters and they live horribly ever after!

See what happens when you tell students the drama can be about whatever they like?! This was entirely their storyline - my only job was to translate it into a script that could be understood by people other than 15 year old girls.

Anyway, as you've probably gathered the whole experiencewas entirely insane - sometimes in a good way, sometimes less so...Lack of rehearsal and general last-minute-ness meant we were expecting it to be a bit of a shambles, but we never expected that 30 seconds into the first scene the curtain would break.

I should explaoin that the curtain was somewhat intregal to the play - we probably opened and shut it about 10 times during the play to change set, costumes, find girls who have wandered off etc etc and much of the acting therefore took place in front of the curtain. So, basically we had unknowingly created a drama that revolved around the ability to open and close a very decrepid curtain. More fool us.

However, two quick-thinking students became the curtain mechanism grabbing one side each and for the rest of the play, on my shout, either sprinted to the middle of the stage dragging the curtain behind them or yanked the curtain back far enough for the audience to see, not only what was going on onstage, but also into the wings where I'm throwing a girl into a dress or stapling a microphone to someone's chest.

The climax of the whole debacle came when we had to change Cinderella into her ballgown in about 6 seconds behind the curtain(while the Fairy Godmother is waving her wand in front of the curtain) As Cinderella appears through the gap in the curtain fully dressed, we get her ready basically centre stage behing the closed curtain. However, as the curtain is now being controlled by mental teenages who don't know what the hell is going on, one minute I'm bending down shoving Cinderella's feet into sparkly shoes while Daphne is dumping the dress over her head, safely concealed by the curtain, the next minute the curtain has been yanked back exposing me, Daphne and a half-dressed Cinderella to the whole audience... After some rather venomous whispering on my part, something along the lines of "Would you mind awfully closing the curtain while we put some clothes on this girl?" the curtain was closed and it was on with the show!

To their credit, despite the unexpected turn of events all the girls soldiered on and didn't totally loose the plot. The title of this post is the first comment I got after we finished. The powers that be are yet to give me their opinion... However, the girls in the audience found the play both intentionally and untintentionally hysterical, as did the girls who were in it, so that's all that matters.

Curtain. Buggered.

Anyway, these fun and games took place the day before the mental fun fair that Ben wrote about in the last post. But it's now 3:14pm on a Friday. The last day of English Week (the rest of which has been eclipsed by the mini-drama but was also fairly insane by normal person standards). I'm going to go and hibernate somewhere until the end of May.

R x