Drama Club 2/27/08

So the Black History show is next week and I knew that I had to get the Drama Club in gear so that they would be ready. My goal was to just run the scene over and over again until it was at least running smoothly from start to finish. I also knew that I had to make some hard choices. Several kids had been flaking on me over the past couple of weeks. So I made the announcement that only the kids that showed up today would be a part of the show. I think that really helped. It took a load off of my mind and it allowed the remaining girls to take ownership of the show. I also knew that I needed to resort to bribery to keep them motivated so before I went to work I bought some Blow-Pops. It started out fairly well. They ran the scene 3 times and each time it got a little bit better. There were fidgeting issues and missed cues but at least it was moving forward. Then, after the bathroom break, all hell broke loose. And I have absolutely no idea why. Cheyenne, my class clown, just decided to shut down on me. Which really sucked because she's the leader of the scene. I really couldn't just cut her out of it. So basically, I just decided to wait it out. She held the entire club hostage with her hissy fit for about 5 to 10 minutes. Which, in retrospect, doesn't seem like that long. But it felt like an eternity at the time. Finally they got back into their places. Then Jamir, whose a bit of an outcast, got distracted because some girl moved her script that she had carefully placed on her spot on the stage. And by got distracted I mean became accusatory and argumentative. I reprimanded her and told everyone to start again. She responded my crawling under the piano and crying. Now here's the thing, I've clearly been working with kids for too long because I have grown completely indifferent to the cries of a youngster. For them, crying is like breathing. So I simply told everyone to get into places, allowed her to, "let it out," for a minute or so, then told her to get into places. Thankfully she complied (although it was clearly under protest because she chose to crawl to her appropriate place) and forgot all about whatever it was that was bothering her. We were able to run the scene 3 more times and I decided to leave it at that. I think it's in fairly good shape and we've got 2 more rehearsals before the show. Despite the meltdowns, everyone was rewarded with Blow-Pops.