Brinkleys: Peter Pan comes to our church!

This is what has been taking up our time for the last 6 weeks...

Our church does not do much in the way of childrens' choir during the rest of the year, because from right after New Year's for 6 weeks they do a musical. It is a HUGE undertaking. They really go all out with it. Our women and childrens' pastor is extremely talented in drama and music and she actually writes the thing. Some of the songs they did this year were from the group Go Fish, but everything else was original in the production. Well, they did base it off of the Peter Pan story and the movie "Hook".

There were a lot of people at the church who gave hours and hours and hours of their time to pull this off. The costuming and set were amazing. They have been doing musicals like this for 21 years and I'm thinking it has just been growing a bit every year and turned into something really impressive. Austin has not wanted to participate the last 2 years since we started attending this church. We told him last year that he would be participating this year no matter what, because 3rd-6th graders are the ages that do the majority of the performing. Since Austin entered 3rd grade this year, we told him he had no choice this year! He had to practice 3 hours on Saturdays, during one service on Sunday and for an hour Sunday nights for 6 weeks to prepare. Part of the reason we had him do this musical was that the kids really get a lot of time together and friendships really grow as a result. Its a really good chance for him to get to know the kids around his age and have fun doing something that is a bit of a challenge. Austin really loves to just stay home and not do some of the church activities (and sometimes we are ok with that), but we thought this was an opportunity not to be missed.

The 6th graders in the church are given the main cast parts, so Austin had to just learn several songs and the choreography to go with them. The director actually writes a part for each 6th grader and has each person and their personality in mind as she puts the thing together. There are also 2 men in the church who are really good at drama and they acted in the play with the kids, one as the older Peter Pan and one as the Sr. Captain Hook (there was a Hook Jr. played by one of the kids and a young Peter as well). There was even smoke and a crocodile that finished off Hook at one point in the play! I don't think he would admit it to anyone, but I think Austin actually enjoyed it a little, or at least more than he thought he would. He did a great job with the singing and choreography. He always knew what to do at the right time and was a great little performer. Smiling was a bit of a challenge for him, he was concentrating so hard on what he was doing, he had a frown on his face for a lot of it, but for those of us who know him well, we know that was because he was just trying so hard. I was very proud of him for doing something like this that he wasn't excited about and for doing such a great job of it and always giving his best effort.

The 3rd grade boys were dressed as "woodsmen" for part of the performance. (There were 4 performances and 3 dress rehearsals spread over 3 weeks.)