Last Saturday was my 5-7 year old Broadway Bound musical theater performance of "Welcome to the Jungle" (not the Guns n' Roses version...)
We've been working on the show since November and the kids were over the moon excited to perform for their parents. Megan, my choreographer, and I spent about 3 1/2 hours late Friday night decking out the dance room into a jungle--complete with a giant poster colored by the kids, huge paper trees taped to the walls, streamers, "vines," palm fronds, leaves (that Robert helped me cut out...for 3 hours!). It looked awesome. We left around 11:15pm hoping that everything we taped would stay up. We really should have taken a picture.
I arrived at our venue about 35 minutes early to prep for when the kids came. I was surprised to see a few cars there--I thought I would be the first person there. I walked in and found the gym decked out--not as a jungle that we had worked so hard on--but as a wedding reception. All of our hard work from the night before had been ripped down, crinkled up, and thrown in the trash.
Apparently the city made a mistake with the scheduling and double-booked, unknown to either parties. It was the sight of the giant poster that the kids had spent the last few weeks coloring all crinkled and torn that really got me. Of course, I started bawling because I just couldn't hold it in. Those poor wedding people thought they had ruined my life :-).
Obviously, a wedding comes first in the series of important events supposedly happening that day. So Lori, the big boss, called in the troops and we frantically tried to come up with a plan B.
Fortunately for us, the Pleasant Grove library had their stage available that day in a few hours. So we just pushed everything back two hours. And went to get cupcakes in the half hour we had to wait to get into the library to set up.
A trip to the party store, the storage unit, and borrowed trees from Thanksgiving Point later we had a newly decked out stage. But the amazing part--a few of our "called in crew" took the time to get all of the ripped and crinkled parts of the kids' poster and tape it back together!!!! And it actually looked presentable and we were able to display it! Then we rearranged some of the staging, got the kids in mics, practiced, and performed.
It was crazy. But you know...it might have looked better than the original :-).
And everyone was so understanding. Thank you to the families who rearranged their whole days without complaint! I mean, what do you do?
Here are some pictures of our crazy fun day:
Apparently the city made a mistake with the scheduling and double-booked, unknown to either parties. It was the sight of the giant poster that the kids had spent the last few weeks coloring all crinkled and torn that really got me. Of course, I started bawling because I just couldn't hold it in. Those poor wedding people thought they had ruined my life :-).
Obviously, a wedding comes first in the series of important events supposedly happening that day. So Lori, the big boss, called in the troops and we frantically tried to come up with a plan B.
Fortunately for us, the Pleasant Grove library had their stage available that day in a few hours. So we just pushed everything back two hours. And went to get cupcakes in the half hour we had to wait to get into the library to set up.
A trip to the party store, the storage unit, and borrowed trees from Thanksgiving Point later we had a newly decked out stage. But the amazing part--a few of our "called in crew" took the time to get all of the ripped and crinkled parts of the kids' poster and tape it back together!!!! And it actually looked presentable and we were able to display it! Then we rearranged some of the staging, got the kids in mics, practiced, and performed.
It was crazy. But you know...it might have looked better than the original :-).
And everyone was so understanding. Thank you to the families who rearranged their whole days without complaint! I mean, what do you do?
Here are some pictures of our crazy fun day:
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| The fixed poster. Amazing! |
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| Random pole holding up the ceiling turned into a palm tree! |
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| Our group getting ready to perform! |
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| The big finale! |
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| Me, Corinne in the back (producer), and Megan (choreographer)...and of course Tommy |
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