The School Show part 1

“I need the toilet miss”, every teacher has heard these fatal words during a school show, and every teacher has chosen to ignore these words and suffer the disastrous consequences. School shows are a bit of a disaster all round really aren’t they? A normal school show usually goes a bit like this:
3 weeks before opening night
Teachers start to put together a script for the performance, and let’s face it, the play is normally chosen because it has enough parts, not because it is any good. Otherwise teachers have an awful habit off adding parts in, Cinderella can have up to five ugly sisters and red riding hood can have have plenty of multi coloured sisters. Snow white is quite popular amongst teachers because plenty of parts can be invented and they still have the script from last year.

2 weeks before opening night

Rehearsals for the big performance have begun, as per usual the teachers haven’t left nearly as much time as they needed to practice, so as a result large chunks are removed from the play. In this particular production, snow white has 12 vertically challenged friends, new recruits include, thirsty, exitey and brokey (conviently played by a little girl with a broken leg). The children are already arguing about which parts they have been given, a boy is throwing a strop because he has been cast as grumpy, and the wicked witch is now staying in at break, for cursing at the teachers. Of course, the super enthusiastic headteacher simply puts this down to ‘getting into character’ the teachers aren’t to sure, especially when happy started using some rather colourful language. The script has had to be changed to ‘Hair as yellow as sand’ because the only girl in the class with black hair has gone on holiday.

1 week before opening night

The teachers have issued a letter explaining what the children will need to wear for the performance. Only two hours after the letter was sent out, a teacher has received an angry email from a parent saying she cannot possibly find a plain white t-shirt for her son to wear with only a weeks notice. The teacher emailed politely back, reminding the parent that the school p:e t-shirts were plain white, which is precisely why the children had been asked to wear one. The teacher has learned to keep costumes simply ever since Juliet broke her arm in her high heels a few years ago.

5 Days before opening night
With only ‘four more sleeps’ until the big performance the rehersals are getting pretty intense. The scenery is currently being painted by the students who have not got a big part in the play, this was a mistake because the boy who was painting the forest was colour blind so now snow white travels through a forest of pink trees and orange grass, not to mention the black sunlight shining upon her. The back end of snow whites horse has caught the flu so the colour blind boy has been promoted, before he paints anything else.

1 day before opening night

Tragically snow white has caught the back end of the horse’s flu and the only girl willing to step up to the role is ginger. So, yet again the script has to be changed, this time to “Hair as orange as an orange” doesn’t quite have the same ring to it does it? This change has caused great annoyance from the narrator, who spend “all of estenders” learning his lines. Fortunately for the teacher, he is to young to understand sarcasm. During the dress rehersal sleepy announced he had forgotten his dressing gown. The teacher said to him “You can’t just announce things like that! What would you do if this happened in the real thing?” The boy replied “Sorry miss, I would project my voice more” The teacher opens her mouth to tell him off, then gives up and goes to refresh sneezys tissues, who has been taking his role rather literally.

5 hours before opening night

Unfortunately, the new snow white is about a stone heavier than her predecessor so her costume has to be drastically changed, lets just say the safety pin business has nothing to worry about. The microphones have arrived and the main characters are 'miced up' the prince charming decided to test his by saying all the rude words he can, the teacher threatened to take his part away, but then had to revoke this threat as she realised that no one else knew his lines, or would fit into his costume. The twelve dwarfs have formed a gang and have started terrorising the 'dressing rooms' (two classrooms), unfortunately clumsy has to leave the gang as his hat kept falling off.

Keep reading to find out what happens when the curtain rises...