Kid's theater is too much drama
http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/culture/2014-06/13/content_17584839.htm
"I will not take my son to a children's show again!"
This is the mantra I say to myself each time on the way home from the theater after escorting my son to a performance. Obviously, I have repeated the same mistake several times.
I hate performances for kids because either the show is a disaster, or the theater experience is.
Chinese children's show creators either underestimate their audience's intelligence, telling silly stories that even a 5-year-old kid will think is stupid, or go completely over their heads, trying to give a big moral lesson.
Once a colleague offered me two tickets to a so-called children's musical. Her daughter and my son are good friends. Looking at their sincere eyes, I did not know how to say no and had to "sacrifice" my son. I let my son go with them. I went to see Johnny Depp's Transcendence.
Later my colleague told me that the two kids were fidgeting throughout the show. The other boy they invited to the show played on his tablet computer the whole time. It was not an enjoyable experience.
The 9-year-old girl said it was a "bad and stupid" copycat of Cats, which they've watched at school on video.
Thank God, it did not take much time for my son to become 1.2 meters tall, so that he is permitted to enter a formal theater.
I recently took him to a show on a weekend. It was a black-light performance by the Lightwire Theater from the United States - not a typical children's show. But I had forgotten the significance of the date - it was International Children's Day.
I realized my mistake as soon as I arrived in the lobby of the National Center for the Performing Arts. Thousands of kids were running everywhere, shouting and yelling with ice cream in hand. The elegant and spacious arts venue was completely turned into a playground.
I grabbed my son to fight our way into the theater, only to find another chaotic scene, despite the ushers telling every parent to make their kid "as quiet as possible".
I sat down, watching some of the ushers chasing the kids climbing the stage and others busy stopping them from drinking inside the theater. The broadcast welcoming them and telling the parents to take care of their excited kids was repeated over the speakers.
I desperately hoped the show would start soon.
Then a mother and her 2-year-old son came to sit next to us. The mother asked her cute son to pose for photos. The boy was not willing to and turned his back to her. She tried hard to persuade him, saying, "Honey, sweetheart, look at Mom, look at the camera. I will send your picture to your father."
Then the phone rang. It was the boys' grandfather. She answered the phone and asked the boy to say hello to grandpa. It seemed the boy was just not in the mood for anything. He cried and shook his hands.
Then the mother asked whether he wanted to drink something. She looked around and spoke to herself: "Where to buy water from?" She waved to an usher. The nice usher told her on the second floor. The woman immediately stood up and said: "Let's go to buy you something to drink."
It was 7:29 pm, one minute before the start of the show. I wanted to tell her if you left, they would not allow you in until the first number finishes. But I held my tongue. For a second, I wished they would leave and be unable to get back in. But she did not leave as the usher told her the rule.
The show did not start until 7:45. The theater manger went onstage and asked everybody to turn off their cellphones and camera flashes.
She explained that the black light theater needs darkness. Any flash could hurt the performers' eyes and be dangerous. One of the performers fell from the stage because of a flash when they performed in Tianjin a few days ago.
The theater finally turned dark amid the powerful Carmina Burana (O'Fortuna). A green "dinosaur" ran onstage. The boy next to me was frightened and cried: "Mom, it's too dark! I want light. I want to leave." His crying shattered the theater's atmosphere, and older kids, including my son, burst into laughter.
I really admired his great mother who tried everything she could to calm him down, explain to him the story and persuad him to stay for the whole show.
A father sitting behind me checked his phone throughout the show, as if he never heard what the theater manager said.
In August 2010, I went to a concert at Warsaw Philharmonic Concert Hall. During the break, I found seating behind me a little boy dressed in a smart black suit and little leather shoes. Maybe Poland does not have the rule of 1.2 meters to enter such a theater.
I asked his parents how old he was and how he could keep so quiet through a Chopin piano recital.
The young parents told me he was 2 years old and it was not his first concert. They did not teach him how to behave in a concert but to be polite and quiet in public.