The Kids Backstage
You may be wondering what we kids did backstage during the show, when we weren't performing. Well, here is your answer.Since we hardly ever got homework, (lucky, huh!) because we didn't have much free time (we usually did eight performances a week), we enjoyed ourselves backstage (most of the time). We did many different things. Some kids brought diaries or journals to the theater to update. Others, the younger ones brought something to play with (Crazy Bones was big for a time). Some didn't bring anything and just colored using the crayons and paper provided for us at the theater. From time to time, my mom assigned workbook pages to me to complete (those were the only times I didn't enjoy myself). I like to read so, sometimes I would read a book.
We
always had a wrangler (one of our two tutors) as well as a dresser,
watching us backstage. If our dressing room was big enough, our
wrangler would let us play a game. At certain times, playing cards
was popular and played often. Sometimes, we were lucky to have
a TV monitor in our dressing room and could watch the show. This
was a real treat! We were in the show but, rarely got to watch
it. One time, we had a dressing room with a real TV and and a
couch. See how intently we're watching TV? We were able to watch
different channels including cartoons.
We also directed, rehearsed and
performed our own shows and choreographed our own dances backstage.
We then scheduled performances on a night off and performed these
for the rest of the cast.