Swine flu vs. The Wiz
Friday, May 1st, 2009“We’re at places.”
Final dress rehearsal for the production of the Wiz I’m working on at Butler High School. The set is nit quite as finished as I would like. There are some good lighting effects I’ve created. Overall, the show is almost ready for an audience. They will have one the next morning.
“how late you planning on staying tonight,” ask Robert, the sound guy, “I might be here all night.”
Just then, the director gets a phone call.
“What?” she questions, “I don’t understand what you’re telling me…” and she walks out the booth.
“Loos like we are holding.” I tell our light board operator.
We start talking about some of the cues…when it goes dark for the entre act…so on, when Amy, our director, comes back in. She’s pale.
“I need to talk to you guys in the hall, and the music director.”
Crap, some kid’s been arrested…that’s my thought.
“That was Olivia, our producer, on the phone. Schools are closed until Monday. They have 2 suspected cases of swine flu in the county…shows are cancelled…”
It took us a while to wrap our heads around it. The kids had worked so hard. We were less than 12 hours away from an audience. We only have one weekend of shows…and the swine flu just took a dump on it.
Ok…we had to take health as our main focus. That was our only course of action. We would figure out doing the show later…some how. We had to let the kids know. We also decided to finish the rehearsal. Honestly, not know how bad it could get…this might be the last time school was open this year.
The kids had lots of questions…we had no answers.
“Lets video the rehearsal. That will give them a chance to see it later and have memories.”
Sounded great. But in the 30 minutes that it took to get the camera…some of the kids lost their shit. It was like wathing a little slice of mob mentality. We had girls “passing out”.
A couple altercations. I’m not sure if it was the flu scare or all the work for the show, but it happened.
We didn’t do the run through. We are now trying to figure out when we can get the paid musicians back…and the rented lighting gear…and when school will be open.
Swine flu 1 - Wiz 0



Okay, tell us the thing you’d never say to our face.
“The bus driver’s mean…but he lets us have snacks on the bus…but other than that he’s mean.”
student in learning. Let me share these observations:

My jaw hit the floor. Who says that? What kind of person says that to a 7 year old. He was crushed. He spent all last night saying he wasn’t smart enough to be in second grade. Now, he has an ‘A’ in math, and most of his grades are ‘B’s or high ‘C’s. 