The Gruffalo goes to The Joan

My school's latest adventure, captured as a Photo Peach slideshow!

The Gruffalo goes to the Joan

The fifth Warble passes the flame

Above: The Warbles plus one, 2006


Today the whole school walked to the Joan Sutherland Performing Arts Centre to see our second free concert by The Warbles, this time their sequel show, The Warbles Go to the Opera. Once again, four classically-trained opera singers played their stage personas to the hilt: passionate French girl, Sylvie Soprano; swashbuckling Barry Baritone; magical Miffy Mezzo; and - performing his debut just for us - a new version of T-shirt-wearing ocker, Terry Tenor.

The students were mesmerised, not just by the songs, props and costumes, but by the theatre environment, the footlights and spotlights, the (new) smoke machine - and the inevitable return of the somersaulting, kookaburra hand puppets!

This time, we saw Wagnerian Valkeries, the sinister Phantom of the Opera, the ever-popular Doh Rey Mi from "The Sound of Music" - and a different male teacher up on stage to dance with Sylvie and defend her honour against Prince Vince the Invincible (aka Barry) and the Phantom (aka Terry).

Last year, Sylvie came down off stage, mid performance, and selected me from the audience. With zero rehearsal time, she involved me in a very energetic waltz up on stage, much to the delight of all the students (and staff). This time, Sylvie asked for a male teacher volunteer to join her - and every head swiveled in my direction. Ooops. Did I really need a second five-minutes of fame? I sat it out and, as soon as the students started chanting the name of a male colleague (unsuccessfully attempting to blend into the seat coverings of the back row), I ran up to his row and escorted him down towards Sylvie.

"I had a turn last year," I reminded Sylvie. "Someone else should have a turn".

"I remember you...", she said later.

So, with Mr E safely up on stage, I beat a hasty retreat back to my seat. "Dancing With the Stars", "It Takes Two" and "Australian Idol" have a lot to answer for.

Great show, Warbles! Congratulations on some very engaging performances, which will live in many of the children's memories forever.

Sunday on Saturday

Today, after voting (Labor was returned to power, by the way), I went to see the local production of the musical, "Sunday in the Park with George" at the Joan Sutherland Performing Arts Centre (scene of my recent stage escapade), and I found "Sunday..." to be very moving. Sometimes, a musical comes along at just the right moment in one's life and, only this morning, I'd been contemplating some themes that were brought into perspective by the messages in today's performance.

A few weeks ago, one of my new Star Trek friends (discovered via the online Meetup group) happened to ask if his father was welcome to attend the next meeting. Well, of course he could. But the topic was mulled over in my head, until... I emailed him back today, saying, "I just realised, of course, that your Dad is probably about my age. I feel so old! ;-)

Ben wrote back, "He's just turned 40. Does this make you feel any better/worse?"

I'm 48. Gosh, I dunno how I feel? It's really weird. I relate to Ben - and AdamJ, for that matter - as equals, because we are all science fiction media fans. However, Ben's Dad is not only younger than me, he's also younger that both of my younger brothers.

Actually, I'm looking forward to meeting Ben's Dad; every now and then (but not often) I regret not ever having kids. To think, by now, in some alternate universe, I have a whole household of some really cool 20-Something kids who like SF. So bizarre. And very, very kewl (to coin a phrase). Actually, AdamJ, who's already taken to calling me "Dad", tells me that his parents are visiting Australia this year, from the UK. (Cheeky young whippersnappers!)

Anyway, all this "woe is my future" stuff was reflected, quite unexpectedly, by the plot of the second half of "Sunday in the Park with George". The action jumps from the 1880s to the modern day. One of the characters, a wheelchair-bound character in her 90s, had been a tiny babe-in-arms in the famous painting being celebrated ("A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grand Jatte" by Georges Seurat). The important thing, she explains to an art gallery first-night audience, is to leave a legacy after one has died: and that can be children and/or art.



I guess, since I'm not producing any children of my own (not counting, I guess, the 380 young students I teach every week), I'm really going to have to get my act together, and finish preparing something from the arts to be my legacy!

The other scary thing is: we have Grandparents' Day coming up again at school, just before Easter. We teachers realised a few years ago that most of the grandparents who attend are actually younger than most of us. Sigh.

The fifth Warble

Above: The Warbles plus one

A few weeks ago, my class attended a wonderful concert from the Musica Viva Performances for Schools Program: the a capella group called "The Song Company". A capella singing has certainly gained some notoriety of recent years, mainly due to those gruelling and telling auditions that "Australian Idol" puts all prospective contestants through (most of whom end up humiliating themselves). Perhaps because of several years of "Idol" on TV, the children were already really atuned to the concept of the performers' voices serving as the only instruments. (And, in after-show question time, the students inevitably asked the singers why they hadn't yet tried out for "Idol".)

According to my students, the highlight of "The Song Company" concert was when the soprano, Nicole, sang her caterpillar song, during which she contemplated her plight of being a lonely garden creature just looking for love - and locked eyes with me (sitting on the sidelines, trying to be extremely nonchalant). To no avail, as it turned out, because she crossed the floor and ended up in my lap being amorous, much to the audience's amusement.

However, today I began wondering is there's a really big target painted on me somewhere. We walked the whole school to A Real Theatre to experience "The Warbles", four classically-trained opera singers who dress in colourful costumes and have stage names which reflect their vocal level (boilersuited ocker, Terry Tenor; passionate woman-in-red, Sylvie Soprano; swashbuckling pirate Barry Baritone; and magical fairy Miffy Mezzo.)



Playing different characters from various musicals, such as "The Magic Flute", "The Pirates of Penzance" (above), "The Mikado", "Mary Poppins" and "Oliver", the talented Warbles entertained the students for over an hour, I thought I'd managed a very narrow escape when Barry (Jonathan Morton, below) approached me on the aisle, open-armed and looking for his long lost love from "The Magic Flute". I raised my arms in return and he scarpered off to the other side of the theatre, where his birdlike partner had just appeared (to pantomime-type screams of "She's over there! She's over there!" from the audience).



But then, only minutes later, Sylvie Soprano (Tania de Jong) was back on stage - this time as the passionate "Carmen", from the opera "Carmen", naturally. With a plastic red rose clenched in her teeth, she rejected her matador lover (Barry again), and selected... me from the audience. The next thing I knew we were down onstage, Miffy had confiscated my glasses - and there I was under the hot lights, dancing up a storm with the woman-in-red. Forget "Australian Idol" - this was now "Dancing with the Stars"!

By audience reactions, I guess I did okay, although I quickly reminded everyone later that on "Dancing with the Stars" the celebrity contestants are at least given a week of rehearsal for each dance. And hey, I embarrass myself, there are work colleagues in the audience with school digital cameras on hand, but noone sneaks off a shot of my three minutes of fame?