Several weeks ago, I received an email from my son’s teacher informing me that my son Ethan’s class was mounting a play. Naturally, I was thrilled as I adore the bite of live theater and welcome any excuse to stage-mother my child. However, as I read through the email, I was profoundly dismayed to see that this ‘play’ was not to be staged in the hallowed halls of the main auditorium, but was to be presented in Ethan’s trailer-like classroom. Even worse, the piece was to be an ‘original production’ – a sock puppet retelling of the ancient Greek battle of Thermopylea. I could tell this was going to be a snore, so I scheduled a Pilates lesson and lunch at the Polo Lounge for that day and texted my spouse that he was to represent the family. Imagine my horror when my spouse responded that he would not be available to witness this tube sock ‘spectacular’ as he had recently taken a job with Hollywood’s ‘it’ director J.J. Abrams, and J. J.’s directorial needs superseded my own selfish desire to avoid the mangled line readings and cloying stage presence of my son Ethan and the pack of Fruit of the Loom-attired misfits that make up his class. Just because wunderkind J.J. Abrams (no relation – goddamn it!) was now employing my husband, did that give him the right to subject me to a play whose awfulness was going to violate every tenant of the Geneva Convention? Come on J.J.- where’s your humanity?
As the play was scheduled to take place at 11 AM, I arrived at 11:01 hoping to avoid the awful parental small talk that usually precedes this type of thing. As I barged into the classroom , I was shocked to see the class overflowing with row upon row of Botoxed mommies and hipster daddies with their FLIP video cameras artfully illuminating their beaming faces. WTF? Did none of these people have jobs, responsibilities, or like my ass-kissing husband, dictatorial director’s to service? To add insult to injury, I was forced to to wedge myself between a large plastic trash can and an empty glass aquarium that reeked of hamster shit in the rear of the class. Due to the industrial-strength, presumably toxic cleaning solvents Los Angeles Unified School District uses to sanitize their archaic sites, I suddenly found myself mentally transported back to the year 1971, when as a frightened seven year old boy, I took the school stage in Joyce Kilmer Elementary’s muscial version of Voltaire’s Candide, and after seven curtain calls, left a man. This was a hollow victory, for the adulation I sought most was from my parents who were an inexplicable ‘no show.’
(To be continued)
Several weeks ago, I received an email from my son’s teacher informing me that my son Ethan’s class was mounting a play. Naturally, I was thrilled as I adore the bite of live theater and welcome any excuse to stage-mother my child. However, as I read through the email, I was profoundly dismayed to see that this ‘play’ was not to be staged in the hallowed halls of the main auditorium, but was to be presented in Ethan’s trailer-like classroom. Even worse, the piece was to be an ‘original production’ – a sock puppet retelling of the ancient Greek battle of Thermopylea. I could tell this was going to be a snore, so I scheduled a Pilates lesson and lunch at the Polo Lounge for that day and texted my spouse that he was to represent the family. Imagine my horror when my spouse responded that he would not be available to witness this tube sock ‘spectacular’ as he had recently taken a job with Hollywood’s ‘it’ director J.J. Abrams, and J. J.’s directorial needs superseded my own selfish desire to avoid the mangled line readings and cloying stage presence of my son Ethan and the pack of Fruit of the Loom-attired misfits that make up his class. Just because wunderkind J.J. Abrams (no relation – goddamn it!) was now employing my husband, did that give him the right to subject me to a play whose awfulness was going to violate every tenant of the Geneva Convention? Come on J.J.- where’s your humanity?
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