Bye Bye Birdie is HISTORY

I'm relieved to announce that our fall musical, Bye Bye Birdie is over - and I hereby swear, before all witnesses present, that I will never again subject myself to that show, regardless of circumstance (with the only caveat being if Harrison should end up involved with it somehow).

This particular production was fraught with trouble, further securing my conviction that the show itself is jinxed.

We had strange problems with students all along the way. Several kids, who last year were healthy and happy, showed up this year weighing nearly twice what they weighed last year, with attitudes that had deteriorated as badly as their health.

It was virtually impossible to get kids to show up on time for rehearsal, and both Deedee and I struggled with small groups of students who were seriously ADHD and apparently not medicated for the last part of the day.

Over the course of things, we had to kick out one performer, put another on probation, and several techies were kicked out or just stopped showing up, in at least one case because her dad decided she was done - with no explanation or apology.

Our student director lost her best friend to suicide early in the season, and basically checked out for the rest of our production time. She never even learned her own lines and blocking, let alone doing any actual student directing.

All but about 5 of our 60 students had some kind of problem going on in their families or with them personally. I spent more time counseling than directing this fall.

The auditorium was continually invaded by other groups during the day. Middle school football players and coaches even left their gear on the stage, on our set pieces, behind the closed curtain. Two weeks before the show opened, somebody wrecked half our set - walked on it, ripped cardboard pieces, set us back two weeks.

That sent Deedee over the edge, as she was already behind in construction. She had a major meltdown in front of the kids and the middle school principal. It was all I could do to not have my own meltdown, but the kids needed somebody to pull it together for them, so I had to put it off for the time being.

I had one pair of parents send me scathing emails when I sent a message to the students reminding them to vote early. Because of the damage to our set and the attention I had to pay to tech needs, we had to schedule rehearsal on election day.

I got reemed out by the parents of the girl who was already on probation for coming late and having serious attitude problems all through rehearsal. She didn't show up for 2 of the last 3 rehearsals and made no effort to contact me to tell me she was sick. (All the kids know the final week of rehearsals are mandatory and absence means automatic removal from the show.)

She then showed up to the final dress rehearsal, shocked to learn she had been kicked out of the show. That resulted in her parents storming into rehearsal a short time later, chewing me out in front of the cast and crew, her father using foul langage at the top of his lungs. Deedee had to take over the first hour and a half of rehearsal so I could get them to leave, meaning she lost her last chance to work on tech stuff.

Since September, Deedee and I had been pleading with the administration to fix the leaky roof which was pouring rain onto our sound/light boards, flowing over one of our suspended speakers down onto the entryway, where it was literally gushing down the entryway ramp.

They didn't fix the roof until late in October, and didn't inspect our electronics boards until the weekend before the show opened. By then it was too late, and anybody who was at Sunday's matinee (naturally the show that was taped) will tell you, it was a disaster. Imagine watching a show with no sound except what you can hear through an underwater cellphone that cuts in and out every other word. Then add to that an ear-piercing explosion of feedback every 15-20 minutes.

Deedee had put in her notice when the set was destroyed, so she wasn't particularly motivated to spend a lot of extra effort striking the set, so I had to recruit some enthusiastic parents to help oversee things, and redo the storage of big items, which the kids had just been dumping into our small storage room.

After strike, one of our "trouble techies" was sitting backstage doing nothing. I started to storm over and demand to know why he wasn't helping with strike, when I noticed he was crying. Turns out his Dad had promised to come to the show, then didn't show up and wasn't answering his phone. In one heart wrenching moment I got a lot of insight into that kid's attitude problems.

I've never been so overwhelmed and shocked by the sheer numbers of parents who so publicly demonstrate that they don't care about their children enough to even pretend to put their best interests first. No wonder the kids don't know how to demonstrate responsibility or work ethics.

I can't remember ever having such an unpleasant experience working on a show, and it's truly a struggle to try to motivate myself to continue forward with this program. It costs more than what I get paid, and it so far has just made me stressed out and miserable.

On the up side, Mom and Dad made some buttons using the face of our Conrad Birdie, and the last two nights of the show, we sold them to the audience for $1 and had Conrad autograph them at intermission. We made an extra $50 for the new curtain fund. Thanks, Mom & Dad!