Stage Father

For the last month, Mikey has been practicing for his preschool’s holiday concert. There were four songs to sing: “Santa Claus Is Coming To Town,” “Rudolf the Red-nosed Reindeer,” “The Dreidel Song,” and “Feliz Navidad.” With great enthusiasm, we would sing them all together after school, applauding as he rocked back and forth and punctuated certain words (“Eh eh eh eh eh NOSE! Eh eh eh eh GLOWS!”), or acting out certain parts of the song (laying his head horizontally across his hands in the universal sign for sleeping during the line “He sees you when you’re sleeping” in SCICTT). On that Friday, we got him dressed up in his prescribed outfit and accessories – white shirt, black pants, Santa Claus hat, and flashlight – and got him to school.

We returned at 10 am for the concert, and were ushered into an overcrowded classroom, filled with parents with a little space for the kids to perform at the front. After squeezing in, it was the running of the toddlers as they all came into the room, screaming, laughing, and crying. Half took the stage, and half ran into their parents arms and clung. Mikey was one of the clingers.

So we sang along with the kids on stage from the audience.


Ironically, that evening, Mikey did want to go up on stage. Unfortunately, it was the stage of the El Portal Theatre where we took him to see his first English panto, in a performance of “Cinderella.” If you’ve never been, a panto is a British tradition, a performance for the whole family with sing-a-longs, cross-dressing (the ugly stepsisters are always played by men), improvised chatter with the audience, and lots of dancing and corny, slightly saucy jokes. Before it had begun, Mikey was down the aisle and up on stage, to the applause of the people finding their seats, and the consternation of the stage manager.

He was transfixed by the dancing and singing, and joined with the audience to boo the ugly stepsisters, and we had a great time.

A family holiday tradition is born.