Stage Parent Much?

[fireheart]

OK, while this happened in my class, I wasn't there to directly witness it, hence a sighting.

Quick background: I'm at a Waldorf school for my placement. The students stay in the same class with the same teacher from Class 1-7, they just move rooms each year.

So I went into my placement school the other day to do some planning with the class teacher, and make sure I was going on the right track (I was ). I had already been with the class in the last week of term, so I knew the students and what they were doing.

This term, they are preparing a class play to perform to an audience. The play is based around a certain Middle-Earth story. Rather than allocating parts randomly, the teacher had the students write down 2 roles that they wanted and why they wanted them. (the second role in case they didn't get their first choice) Some of the students doubled up for certain roles (where the characters they were playing weren't on stage at the same time). They were all happy with the roles they HAD received.

Then when I go in the other day, I mention the play and how excited the students were. And my teacher mentions that one of the parents had called up saying that her kid hadn't gotten a major role and wasn't being challenged and blah blah blah and how upset someone was (wasn't sure if it was the parent or not). Now here's the kicker:

-the student in question has had major roles in every play since Class 3 and the teacher had given the student in question a smaller role (or roles?)
-the student had actually written down that he wanted smaller roles, rather than bigger roles.

Stage parent fail.

[LillFilly]

The play sounds awesome, I would love to see it.

Fail for trying to get your kid what you want or what you think they want, rather than what THEY want!

[Jay 2K Winger]

Didn't some actor (it might have been Harrison Ford) once say that he'd rather have a small part in a big movie than a big part in a small movie?

[Draper Mel]

I really believe in the saying "There are no small parts, only small actors." You can learn from any role, and learn a lot by watching others work. You just need to get over yourself. No one likes a diva. Or a stage parent.

[fireheart]

The play sounds awesome, I would love to see it.

Fail for trying to get your kid what you want or what you think they want, rather than what THEY want!

I asked the teacher the other day about seeing the play through and she said that provided that nothing too bad happened between now and when I finished my placement, I could come back and help them finish off the play. I've already seen Class 5's play (Ramayana) and Class 7's play (some King Arthur-esque type play which had the moral of the story being "don't judge a book by its cover" ).

And yeah, I had to laugh at that. I suspect that I know who might've complained but I can't quite confirm....some of the boys do take drama classes outside of school, but I know that it wasn't one of them, as they were all either given major roles, or had asked for multiple roles. (although a number of them had wanted one particular boy to play the man role )

[Jay 2K Winger]

When I took part in the theater, I was always just happy to get a role of some kind.

At the drama learning center I attended in elementary school, they had two casts to every production, so that each child could get a "named" role in one cast, and a chorus part in the other. I did two productions. An adaptation of "The Sound of Music" which had so few boys that I doubled up, playing Captain Von Trapp in one cast, and Rolf (Liesl's boyfriend) in the other. The other production was an adaptation of "South Pacific," which had enough boys that I played the Professor (one of the Seabees) in one cast and a random Seabee in the other.

In the high school I graduated from, students who weren't taking a theater class couldn't participate in the non-musical productions (and I couldn't get into a theater class despite my best efforts), so I ended up playing Commander Harbison in "South Pacific" one year (and had a lot of fun with it) and a chorus member in "Camelot" the next-- while watching one of the theater director's favorite students struggling to remember his lines and not so much singing as speaking his lines to the tune.

As I said, however, I always loved participating regardless of the role I got.

[AccountingDrone]

I always went for bit parts in HS. The school did 1 musical, 1 shakespear and 1 nonmusical [comedy or drama, didn't matter]

My favorite 'gig' was in Taming of the Shrew my senior year, I was one of the generic players in the induction, the tailor, one of the assorted ladies milling around as crowd, and a messenger. They loved it because I came with my own italian renn [I made it for an arts and sciences competition for an SCA event]

I also worked on making sets, costumes and all sorts of backstage stuff, we scrounged antiques from my moms collection [she was an antique pusher] for set decoration for lots of plays. We had a blast doing Arsenic and Old Lace, now that is a play that every school should do at least once every few years.