EIP Variety Show

One of the major events on the BCC schol calendar is the English Immersion Program Variety Show. This is supposed to be a chance for all the students to show of their English, acting, and musical talents.

I remember last time I was working here, that the Variety Show ended up taking precedent over everything else. Learning and teaching becomes overlooked in favour of putting on a good show. 4 years ago I did a greatly simplified version of The Jungle Book, and it turned out to be a time consuming nightmare of reheasals with sixty 7 year olds, prop making and trying to work out how to create costumes for 12 elephants, 8 monkeys, a bear, a tiger and worst of all a snake (a rather embarrassing outfit that somewhat resembling a giant green stripy condom with a hole for the face).

This year I figured it would be easier to steer clear of the animals and go with a people based story. Here lies the problem of the slim picking of stories for a cast of only boys that have not been done in the previous few years. After a bit of mind changing we decided to go with Pinocchio. Now I've never been much of a fan of this particular classic but we figured it to be an easy option what with all the characters being male (I conveniently overlooked the technical nightmare of an expanding nose, dancing puppets on strings and a segment of the story taking place in a whales stomach).

Getting ready for the plays seem to take over the majority of Semester 2, and when we came back from Christmas we began with our auditions and practices. This is always a little time consuming as every parent wants their precious little Faberge Egg to be a star but you have to give out the roles according to ability and character. Of course the annoying little 'know-it-all' who keeps running off and never does what he's told was forever destined to get the part of Pinocchio. It's quite hard finding roles for 60 boys just to keep the parents happy, especially when some of the boys are more likely to be able to stand on thier head than say the simple 3 word sentence you've given them.

We practiced nearly everyday for a month, and as a result I now have one or two more grey hairs and highly strengthened vocal cords from all the screaming. We only just managed to get everybody to remember their cues and lines in the final rehearsal, but on the day they couldn't have done it better. I have keep reminding myself that these are 6 and 7 year old boys who are performing in a languague completely unlike thier own in front of around 600 people. To be able to pull off an 8 scene 20 minute show is pretty amazing.

I didn't get to take many pictures, the ones I have were taken back stage while we were waiting to start.