The Stage

My sons were recently in a play at the community theatre where I'm president of the board. Casey didn't hesitate to point that out to the people involved. He apparently doesn't realize that my being the nominal head of a completely volunteer organization just means that sometimes people listen to me...if they want to.

This was the second play for Marty. Theatre is kind of a group activity where his Asperger's really doesn't affect very much. Don't like making eye contact? Heck, most of the time you're not even supposed to. Get distracted a lot? If you think that's a problem, then you haven't spent much time around actors.

However, this was Casey's first play. He had been made prior to this because he's always been deemed too young. Even before being on-stage, Marty had gone to a couple of classes at a larger community theater and Casey wasn't happy about the too young label for those either.

When Marty was playing a squirrel in "Willy Wonka" last year (it doesn't make a lot of sense if you've only seen the Gene Wilder movie, but its in the book), Casey even went up to the director and sang the chorus of one of the songs, apparently just to prove that he would've been able to learn the material.

While Marty still doesn't like the confines of being told what he has to imagine while he's on stage and only marginally cares about the overall outcome of the production, to Casey this was his chance to shine.

They were doing Disney's "The Jungle Book." Marty got to be a wolf cub and a monkey. Casey got to be a baby elephant. They each had one line.

Last year, there were a group of older kids that kind of took Marty for their mascot and helped keep him focused on what was going on. This year the cast was a bit younger...so Marty's enjoyment was a little less as he was frequently out of place and not sure where to go, leading to a couple of meltdowns.

Casey, despite a rehearsal accident that left him with a black eye (he fell off of a table he was sitting on), was all about it. Memorizing his one line, learning the songs, getting down the choreography.

At one point, when they were in dress rehearsals, the cast was supposed to clear the stage of some stuff during a black-out. As the lights were coming up, there was Casey in the middle of the stage wrestling with a two-step stool that was about as big as he is. I was talking to the show's musical director at the time and suddenly I heard the director yelling, "Seriously? Is little Casey really the one that's supposed to clear that?"

For the record, both boys nailed their one line in each of the shows, but Casey made sure that he got noticed beyond that. Let's just say that the little ham didn't shy away from the spotlight. As each audience was leaving, someone that's known him since he was a baby would come up to me and say, "Well, that Casey sure seemed to enjoy being on stage."

Of course, the problem with having the kids spend two months rehearsing and peforming in a Disney show is the music. Every day, the boys would go around singing "Bare Necessities" and "I Wanna Be Like You." Unlike some other Disney shows, there really aren't other catchy songs in "The Jungle Book." Just those two. Over and over and over and over again. Even when Casey had the entire show memorized, it was still just "Bare Necessities" and "I Wanna Be Like You."

The thing is that those two songs might be two of the best in the Disney catalog, but not after two months of two kids singing them non-stop in the car.

I'm sure that at the very least Casey will be returning to the stage at some point, butchering songs that I once loved. I suppose it would be hypocritical to ban him from doing it thanks to that whole "president of the theatre" thing.