Opening Night for the Girls

Tonight was opening night of Seussical: The Musical, DSU's fall theatre production in which Abigail and Suzanna each have roles (remember?)!

For most of the rehearsal process, the girls' obligation has been to attend rehearsals three nights a week. The first few weeks, I would stay in the auditorium throughout each rehearsal, reading and grading for my classes until the girls were done for the night (the director would start with the little kids and then let them go before moving on to scenes featuring only university students). This past week they had full run-throughs, so the girls had to stay from start to finish, just as with an actual show; during those most recent rehearsals, I simply went to my office across campus to work, and the girls phoned me when they were ready for me to pick them up at the end of the night.

A married couple in the cast play a married couple in the show: the mayor and first lady of Whoville (remember the Whos from Dr. Seuss stories?). Suzanna, Abigail, and all the elementary students in the show play Whos, too, and the mayor and his wife early on took on the responsibility of watching over the children backstage, keeping them quiet and occupied between scenes and scooting them onstage in time for their scenes. They even watched over the children after each rehearsal, waiting with them until the last child had been picked up by his/her parents at the end of each night. Isn't that awesome? All the kids love Mr. and Mrs. Mayor.

Well, Abigail and Suzanna were very excited for opening night, and they did a terrific job. Hillary was with me at most every rehearsal, and Susan took her share of turns, so we all know every word and note of every song in the show and didn't know if that would make actually seeing the show tonight something of a non-event. Nope, it didn't! We loved every minute of it. It was especially terrific to see Abigail and Suzanna performing, emoting with every lyric, dancing around on cue and in tempo, acting as well as anyone else on stage, and bringing a swell of pride to our hearts and to our eyes (as evidenced by the tears).

The show itself is pretty darned fun, especially for audience members familiar with Dr. Seuss, and the cast--a mix of students from the university and local high, junior high, and elementary schools--did a fine job. I had my eyes open for "triple threats" in the cast: actors who are equally good at dancing, singing, and acting. Surprisingly for a musical, there wasn't much for dancing in this show, so instead I looked for double threats, and there were a few. But even for those who were better actors than singers or better singers than actors, they were still notably good at one or the other--nobody too mediocre in the bunch.

The auditorium was pretty full (and word has it that the rest of the nights are nearly sold out already), and among the crowd were Roger (Susan's dad), Laura (Susan's grandma), Patty and Buddy (Susan's aunt and uncle), and Jerrett (Susan's brother) to show their support. Susan, Hillary, and I have tickets for every performance; and tonight we brought along Evan, a classmate and good friend of Suzanna. There was much congratulating and hugging after the show, and it was late once we got the girls home and got them into the shower to scrub off the makeup and remove the pounds of hairspray from their wacky Who hairdos. It'll be a sleepless weekend after many late nights this whole week, but this is an experience that the girls will forever remember fondly, I'm sure.