19 July

His Mom just called and told me he threw up all night long. I hope it's from nerves! Oh, that's not nice but well... I hope he takes this a little more seriously. I gave Julie your office number to call about tonight.

To: Moira
From: Kymm

Jesus wept, this is just exactly what I need. Of course, if he's sick and can't do it, then I can get a grownup to come in and do it and the fact that they are reading will make sense because they just stepped into the role!

I'm so heartless.

Melissa, I have no idea how you do it, working with children day in and day out. I only have one, and at this point I would cheerfully beat him to death with a hammer, how you even begin to manage to direct a show containing 50 kids or whatever it is, you deserve a medal.

This child is making me crazy. He is a very nice, engaging little boy, but he cannot learn lines to save his life, what he is doing in my show I will never know. Of course, I am the one who cast him, but I had no other options at the moment, and he was only cast last Tuesday and he open on Friday, but you know, if he had worked, he could have learned his lines. Normal children do not make good child actors, because normal children have no self-discipline. And the mother, everyone talks about how dreadful stage mothers are, I'd rather she was a bit more of a stage mother, so she would make him LEARN HIS LINES.

Never again, no children ever again, ever ever ever. I'm getting that on a t-shirt.

Fifty children! Oh, aren't you cute. I have EIGHTY-TWO. 82 bodies between the ages of 11 and 16! Right now, I love them, because they got it together and are doing good work onstage this week. But next week, when we start rehearsing for the other show they're in? I will want to sacrifice them to pagan gods.

Our show closes tomorrow and I have a lead who STILL is forgetting at least one line in every scene. I may kill him and take his place for the closing show tomorrow. I'll keep you posted.

But I'll tell you, Kymm - nothing works. Threats, pleading, commands, joking around, NOTHING works on a child who isn't committed to learning their lines.

Sigh.

Can you throw one more into the pyre? I'll happily drive him to Philadelphia if necessary. The funniest thing was tonight, after rehearsal where he made it clear that he didn't know his lines one bit, where he said that he didn't want to bring the notebook onstage that we have his lines in but it's tricked up to look like a school notebook, so he can read them and it makes some sense in context of the play, that he knows his lines and won't need it tomorrow. This is patently untrue, but what made me laugh was Ann's face behind him, eyes wide in horror, shaking her head at me. "Don't let me be on stage with this kid without The Notebook!" she silently conveyed to me.

When his mother picked him up, she asked me how he was doing and whether he knew his lines. I wanted to say, "Well, Julie, if you had been working with him, you'd know that he doesn't know them, or hey, if you'd been working with him, maybe he WOULD know them!" but I just said, "Fine, fine..." and prayed that he'd come down with the flu tomorrow and I'd have to read the lines myself from the booth.

"But I'll tell you, Kymm - nothing works. Threats, pleading, commands, joking around, NOTHING works on a child who isn't committed to learning their lines."

Tell. Me. About. It.