Payton is absolutely right!

It was time for the Varsity to take the stage and boy did they ever! Varsity--you guys are amazing! Today you acted like seasoned veterans! AND THAT coming off of a three day sprint of rehearsals! Who knows what you'll do after an afternoon and evening OFF!

Actually, I think you are going to pull some things out tomorrow that are going to be even funnier, even sweeter, even more fun to watch than ever before. In fact I know you are going to because each time you have been onstage so far, you've learned valuable lessons and you've applied what you learned the next time through. That's the beauty to theatre right?! See we don't have to settle for the last take like film or other actors, because we get to perform it all again! That means that nuances in your body language or your vocal inflection may change each time, bringing out a richer, more meaningful performance.

In fact, you may not know this, but that's exactly how the professionals do it and become so good (AND that's part of why we love theatre so much--because each performance can be a little different!). See, when a new show is created for Broadway, it is "workshopped" at a different venue for a while. They perform the best version they have for lots of audiences off-Broadway and use the feedback from those audiences to make the show even better for when they finally perform on that ultimate stage. This week during the school performances, that's exactly what we are doing. We're doing our best, and then modifying, tweaking, and enhancing each future scene through our discussions off-stage.

When I originally began planning our rehearsals, I actually had this very tool in mind. See, my hope had been that people who observed our rehearsals would give us ideas about what worked and what didn't--like the Crabbiness walk-ins, or the Baseball "strike 3!" In fact, I invited five special people to come specially to observe and help, but only one of them came. See I had hoped that at some point during our rehearsals you would get to meet the five other people who had made up my original 6 person Charlie Brown family. Each of them has gone on to do some pretty amazing things in theatre and acting, music, dancing, or public speaking. My hope is that they would inspire you to continue being involved and growing as young thespians and that their unique insight into playing these characters coupled with their years of experience would offer us some really awesome additions to our production's blocking, expressions, or just our general energy on stage.

So I'm very pleased to introduce you to my "Patti" (whose lines resembled Sally's most of the time in our version), Ms. Emily Smith. She went on to play the role of Ursula in Bye Bye Birdie at the Princess as well as many other roles in productions at home and in college too numerous for me to mention properly. She also won awards for her dramatic interpretation monologues at public speaking conferences across the country. Emily was a member of our audience during our afternoon performance yesterday. She was very impressed by ya'll, but I think she has some very neat ideas for us that we might like to consider giving a try tomorrow.

To that end, she will be backstage with us tomorrow morning and possibly even tomorrow afternoon. I hope that you will treat her with respect and openness as she kindly shares her ideas with us. Like I said earlier, the beauty of theatre is that we can make each performance better than before, and the challenge of keeping our performances fresh is part of the fun, right? And don't worry, I'm not talking about big, huge changes...so don't panic...we're talking about simple things, just like Mr. Gene talked to us about this afternoon, just small nuances that will make our performances more real, more comic, more poignant, which I know we all especially want to happen before Thursday night when all our parents and family and friends come.

I can't wait to see you in the morning! You are all so amazing that I couldn't stop talking about you all afternoon and evening, and now I can hardly contain myself til I see you again--what WILL I do when this is all over Saturday? I know I'll miss you all like crazy...I guess I'll have to do this again next year, huh?

Sleep Sweet,
Mary Bess