Thursday, June 09, 2005

Peter Pan

ET, maybe NOPT2PN means No Pot 2 Pee In?

The PAC donated about 30 tickets to my mentor program to see a production of Peter Pan. Even though I didn't want to see it, Cathy Rigby (whoever the heck that is) or not, I went because my mentee wanted to go. What a crappy crappy production! Forget the fact that I didn't want to be there and that a majority of the time I was being "harassed" by kiddos around me. It just wasn't that exciting, the songs sucked and sounded out of tune and premade, and the dialogue was inaudible (it wasn't just me, either) and/or lame. A+ for flying effects and the seemingly endless amount of pixie dust that just somehow made it to Peter Pan's hands without my knowledge. It was so bad that my mentee slept for Act II and III. She did get to see some bad ass flying, though! Not all was lost.

Seeing a production of this kind and with the children involved (ALL of them have at least one parent incarcerated) lends itself to interesting discussions and the realization that they are growing up in a totally different environment than mine. First of all, only one kid I surveyed had ever been to the PAC. A little girl in the row in front of us said, "So, you mean it's just like TV only they really do the stuff?" Oy!

The little girl sitting next to Brandi and me is five. She took her mentor's hairbrush and was doing five strokes to her mentor and then five strokes on me. I minded this not because I love having my hair brushed! It was incredibly adorable with her saying "1-2-3-4-5. OK, now your turn 1-2-3-4-5..." After about the 5th time she did this, her mentor said, "Don't worry, I don't have cooties or anything." I replied back in a sarcastic tone, "Oh yeah? Well, I do!" Can you guess what the mentor said next? "Really? Well, you can have my brush now." She was serious. I guess it's good this woman's mentee is five because I'm pretty sure any child over the age of 8 would totally be able to pull some fast ones on her.

2 comments:

Lavaughn Towell said...

I remember Katie Couric saying that she took her daughter to The Lion King onstage and at the end her daughter said, "Rewind it, Mama!" Katie's hot, by the way.

When I was in Joseph at Theater Tulsa in the late 80s, people would find out I was doing it and say, "Can you get someone to tape it so I can see it?" They could, I don't know, GO TO THE SHOW, but they wanted it taped. So it's gotten worse now with home video and pay-per-view, but I believe it's a function of laziness rather than technology.

ET said...

You have cooties? That mentor sounds pretty childish and/or cannot take a joke. Assuming, of course, that you were kidding.

Hmm...I had decided that the NOPT2PN meant "no point to pun" but yours is just as good if not better! See, that's why I wanted a second opinion.

And I think if you are going to see something (unless it is free, of course) that bothers to come to Tulsa, it should be a BIG musical or some such. Those are usually pretty good. LT and I went to see Sam Harris's Christmas show at the TCC PACE center, and the tickets to that were not cheap! But the show sucked. The only memorable things were 1) Sam calling one of his singers a "ho" and 2) Sam dressed as a Christmas tree rollerblading along the stage. Pretty lame, but the tree part was cute. Still, I think it's really nice that they gave tickets to underprivileged kids so they could go to the theater.