Made in Taiwan: Dance, Monkey, DANCE!

There are certain defining moments in our lives. These moments are often at the apex or climax of some sort of series of difficult, yet possible to overcome obstacles. Hollywood has taught us to embrace these moments with the realization that the reward awaiting us is well worth the toil. When I was a child, one of those rewards was summer vacation. No matter how tedious or boring school was, I knew that if I could just persevere I would find myself on the other side with the sun on my face and seemingly endless days ahead to run and play.

In a rather dramatic sense that has been a picture of our Taiwan experience, and in another way that is how we have begun to see our recent endeavor: The Jubei Branch 2 Kindergarten Performance.

To begin I must be clear on my terms. Namely the word performance. What does performance mean in a discussion about 3- 6 year olds? Well here in Jubei it means an English play(complete with full costumes, memorized lines, dance routines, props, sets and in some cases sound-effects and a soundtrack), a separate musical show with its own costumes and dance numbers as well as instruments, and a climatic finish with the entire school dancing to a song lead by the Japanese teacher. That's right folks, 3 hours straight of entertainment and an insistence upon no dead air or dead time. But more on that later.

The entire process of why and how this show came to be is beyond the scope of this simple retelling, but I will say that the scope of the project seemed to grow larger and larger the more we got into it.

As we began writing our plays we realized that simple costumes would not be seen as enough. We needed to have props and backgrounds for the kids to interact with or our the show just wouldn't look up to snuff. So the task of building began. This mainly consisted of many hours spent cutting, taping and arranging various cardboard boxes and heavy paper into the appropriate shape. At one point Katie had considering making 406 individual apples for her students to stack on their heads, but thankfully she found another way.

Here are some of the props lined up in the proposed order during a rehearsal:

We spent most of our lunch breaks and a few Saturday mornings working on our props and as they came together so did the plays the children were learning. It was at this juncture that we saw how much these children could do and that, at home, children were not being asked to do enough. These kids were memorizing a 10 -15 minute show all in a second language that was memorized! Do I know a 3 - 6 year old at home that could do that? I don't know, no body ever asked them to.

As the day neared, rehearsals began to take over entire English classes and eventually we were marching out to various venues to practice. These practices involved all of the children (around 120 kids altogether) sitting around for 3-4 hours waiting to practice one of their 3 different shows. The highlights of these practices are as follows:

1. One of the younger kids fell asleep on stage during the music show performed by the small classes (3-4 year olds).

2. One of the kids began to throw up because it was too hot, he was given a plastic bag and asked to keep on going.

3. One of the staff at our branch was less than gentle with many of our props and some (like Katie's surfboards) were all but completely destroyed, erasing many hours of work.

4. At one of the venues (an outdoor stage), the director began to yell at our manager demanding that we pay her for the time we spent there. We paid nothing, but we did not go back.

5. The confidence of many kids in our classes began to shine and many had little trouble reacting to the large stage and learning to use the props.

6. One of the music teachers in a less than kind voice, demanded that the children smile more and try to act cute. That is: more cute...we need more cute!

7. We got to see the kids on the actual stage and were amazed at how large the production was and yet how they seemed to manage it just fine.

All in all, after many sweaty hours the dress rehearsal arrived. Here are some shots from that day:

On Sunday, July 5 we woke up early and made our way to the stage. It had been almost 2 months since we had done anything else other than think about all things performance and now the day was at hand. I am happy to tell you that, we weren't nervous...in fact we were ready. 500 people would be in attendence and we were confident that they would not be disappointed.

Here are some shots of the children in their costumes. They were given full make up as well as the costumes specially bought or made for the occasion.

This is Brian. He just informed me that this traumatic and stressful experience has turned him into a dinosaur...or "Teaher Luke...me...is dinosaur!"

The show went off with out a hitch. For me a highlight was at the beginning of my Elephant class' rendition of "The 3 Little Pigs" one of the narrrators forgot the opening lines of the play. He squinted through the many layers of hot stage lights and when his eyes met mine he began to shake and cry. Yeah kid...that is a lot people. Thankfully his co-narrator said his lines for him, squeezed his hand and the show began and went just fine.

All in all the show went very well and it was well recieved by the parents as well as the staff we worked with. In fact, it felt almost anti-climatic considering how much work and worry we had put into it. All the hours of trying to figure out dances and how to make the blocking on the stage work were just eclipsed by the kids doing their thing and then almost as soon as it was over, we tore down everything and left since the stage was being used by another school a short time after ours was finished.