Community Service

Last winter we did another one of the joint musicals between Anderson and West Valley. However, this year it was big. This year we did “The Wizard of Oz” and seeing as it was such a big musical, it took a lot of man hours. There were the costumes, and the props, and the additional things to add to costumes such as hats. There was the dancing and the singing and the movements to perfect it. There was the time, and there were the big set pieces, and also, a new addition, the flight crew. I’m pretty sure that I worked over 20 hours with that play.
I helped out with things like cutting out the fabric, in which sometimes I would stay later or come earlier to help do so. There were the dances that I helped with, that I stayed late to watch and critique and add in my own ideas. Also, I had helped with the little kids so that they knew what to sing and what to do. I helped make the props which took a lot of hot glue, tap and anything else we could find at times.
Sure, it may have sounded easy, however it wasn’t. For one thing, wrapping the polls for the Winkies was not my idea of fun. It took a lot of time seeing as I am a perfectionist and I wanted the black tape to look nice going around the polls. Also, there were the flying monkey wings that I had to punch holes in. All they were made out of was plastic binders that they had spray painted black. Be that as it may, those holes were really hard to punch, however I didn’t mind it. Cutting out the patterns for some of the costumes wasn’t so bad actually. I kind of, in my own weird way had fun doing that part. I helped sew some weird plastic things to the masks they were going to use for the “Flying Monkeys” as well, making me feel cool because I was sewing something I literally couldn’t mess up.
I helped with the dances too. I actually helped more with the crows than anything else. I showed a few moves I thought would look cute to the dance instructor in which she gladly used. I also helped the crows clean their dance, counting out their steps so that the instructor could either work with another group or do something else she needed to do. Yes, we were all very busy. Oh, better yet, I had ended up going a few nights even when I wasn’t needed to help with other dances once I learned I wasn’t actually in it. A friend and I had made it up and practiced it with the group a few times.
All in all, I wouldn’t change a thing. It was fun helping out, knowing that if I hadn’t helped some of those things may not have gotten done. It was also nice to know that I was taking a little of the burden off the parents helping during the show. I guess you could say, I could understand how hard it was seeing as my grandmother had helped with “The King and I”, where she had sewn well over 200 costumes. That was very stressful, and so this year I could only imagine how bad it must have been for them.
One thing I learned from it was that things went better when there was help. No one person could have done all of that themselves. I also learned how grateful it could make a person when you help them take such a huge load off their back. It also made me think about my friend Chris Yost and how busy he must have been making all the things he had. Usually I just saw him and his friend Kelsi when he helped with our show. I don’t understand how he does it, but next time I see him, I’ll learn to ask him if he needs any help. (Not that I hadn’t before.)