Those Who Can't.............Teach

A little confidence can be a dangerous thing.
Following the success of my directorial debut a couple of months back, I now appear to be a drama teacher. My acting skills must be better than I thought, since I not only managed to convince an actress I could teach drama, but a handful of kids as well!
It all started in April. I had heard a lot about Kidz Kabaret and was intrigued. A children's stage school where no one had to audition to get a part in a show sounded like my kind of place. I arranged a meeting with its founder, actress Kandiss Hernandez, who started the venture five years ago.
Their premises on Quincy Avenue, Naperville, is a den of organized chaos. Costumes and props fight for position in the entrance hall, desperately escaping from their proper homes at the back of the building. The whole place is painted a lurid shade of purple, with photos and posters of past productions decorating the walls. In the middle of this I found a cleaner in sweat pants hard at work vacuuming.
"Excuse me," I said, side-stepping a rack of costumes. "I'm looking for Kandiss. Can you tell me where she is?"
"Hi, pleased to meet you," she said, snapping off the vacuum. If the cleaning staff were this friendly, I thought, this must be a good place to work.
"Come on through."
She led me into an office with a 'We love Donna' sign on the door. We sat down with another lady, and the two of them joked around and made fun of my accent for a few minutes before I realized the cleaner was in fact Kandiss herself, and Donna was another drama teacher.
I started thinking. If someone who I thought was a cleaner actually ran the place, maybe I could persuade them I too was not quite what I seemed.
"You know I'd be happy to teach here myself," I heard that pushy woman in my head saying again. Sometimes I wonder if I am schizophrenic. I can't stop offering to do things I've never done before.
Kandiss seemed excited. It's amazing how many Americans link the British accent to Shakespeare and therefore dramatic ability. If that's what they choose to believe, it would be positively rude to persuade them otherwise.
"I could teach a script-writing class, where the children write their own comedy skit and then perform it," the woman carried on. "I've had experience of this before in England. It would be easy."
Which is how I came to spend the next three weeks on the Internet trying to find out how to actually write a script so it looked professional.
Eventually I cobbled together a six week course for third- through sixth-grade children. Kandiss assured me they would make a DVD for every child to keep, which sounded very professional. How they were going to write and put together a piece in such short time with a teacher less qualified than the class was beyond me, but as I relied on my normal strategy of closing my eyes and wishing really hard.
On the first week I was a little disappointed to see only five children had signed up. Kandiss assured me everyone has to start somewhere, and we would probably get more next time. Next time! Obviously she had more faith in me than I did.
I began by asking the children their names, four girls and a boy. I swear it took me until the end of week six to actually remember them. I think one girl must have thought I was picking on her, but it was only because she had the only name I could remember.
I got them all to tell me what kind of writing they enjoyed, and what made them laugh.
"I don't like comedy," said Sparky, slithering and twisting around his chair like snake who had been at the whiskey. "I like stories about aliens and war."
Good start. "So what made you choose to do this course?" I tried, hoping he also had secret aspirations to be a famous novelist, even if it was by writing stories about war-torn aliens.
He replied with the honesty only a child can give.
"My mom made me."
After the first week, I realized that being bright Naperville children, they hardly needed me at all. They came up with a cute idea about California girls meeting an alien on a beach and in the end, scaring him away. Everyone played their favorite character, the girls were girly and Sparky spent the whole piece growling and waving a weapon around. The DVD was so good, the editing, sound and visual effects turned a piece of children's theater into a tiny professional movie.
What was even more surprising was that I seemed to have gotten away with it again. Wonder if they need any surgeons at Edward Hospital?

This article appears in today's Naperville Sun. If you think it's bad, just note the front page lead was how residents should be allowed to have washing lines to save power!