The Taming of the Shrew: Cast B Performs!

Sunday night was the culmination of our family's entire summer project: 

"The Taming of the Shrew" (Cast B) performed!

Doing Mary's hair and makeup backstage (fun photos of John didn't turn out) . . . 

The energy backstage was electric and book me back to my own high-school theatrical experiences.

Mama with her young thespians

Mary was a non-speaking wedding guest in a wedding dance scene. It was so beautiful and complex, all the colorful dresses swishing, and I wish we had taken video.

John was Tailor Number 1, with four speaking lines. The tailors had made a dress which is rejected by the wise and scheming Petruchio in a very comic scene. John remembered all of his lines and spoke perfectly loudly!

Curtain call . . .

The children tossing their hats

Grandparents from Georgia and California traveled for the big occasion: our children are so blessed!

The cast party was fabulous fun. The organizer had taken pizza orders from all the families, then delivered them to each family table, and there were drinks and cake. Our 78 cast members, younger siblings, parents, and many visiting relatives filled both the cafeteria and gymnasium. It warmed my heart (as always) to see all the homeschooled children playing with all ages, strapping six-foot young men playing with eight-year-old brothers, hooting it up and having a grand old time. No eschewing of age groups here!

But our Miss Mary is so passionate about her music, she spent almost the entire party sitting atop the piano listening to the advanced pianists playing, rarely taking her eyes off their fingers. (They must be little Marys grown up because a few of the musician children also spent their entire cast party making music as their form of making merry.)

Mary took to lying atop the piano to place her ear directly on the vibrations.

This entire theatrtical troupe and fine arts festival was the modest brain child of a mother-friend two summers ago. She was sitting up late one night and emailed to our homeschooling group, "Does anyone think it might be fun to have the kids do a Shakespeare play this summer?" She received an avalanche of enthusiastic replies and the woman with virtually zero theatrical experience was suddenly our director. She has learned so much, organized us all, and handled herself under stress with total grace, certainly being an example to me of how to behave (in contrast to how I really behave). I am incredibly grateful to her and the other adult leaders for all they have given to our homeschooling community through this venture.

The children are already totally committed to doing this next year!

(Click here to see all the professional photos.)

(Click here to read a review in the newspaper.)