Many people think that musical theater is easy. I mean, all you have to do is sing and learn how to dance a little bit. Anyone could pull that off, right? That may be what you are thinking, however it is much more complex than that. This is what being a theater kid is really like.

This year, Day Creek presented the musical, Peter Pan Jr. The cast and crew worked tirelessly for hours after school perfecting their dances, songs and everything in between.

6:00 am

At about this time, most Coyotes are rolling out of bed. That much, we have in common. Just like every other kid, we are getting dressed, showering and wrapping up those normal human morning activities. Then things get a little more intense. We have to make sure our stage makeup is on and looks good, which can take forever. Michelangelo didn’t just slap up some paint on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, did he? Midmorning, all actors and actresses were required to visit the makeup artist. So, if you saw someone sporting bright blue eyeshadow or a giant mustache, they were probably performing later that day.

10:00

By this hour, we’d already been in class for a few hours. But once homeroom ended, we rushed over to E4, which was where we changed into our costumes and touched up the dramatic parts of our makeup. This was also when our backstage and lighting crew started setting up the stage to prep for the show.

10:30

Everybody is anxious, because when this part of the show happened, we all go on stage to sing “You can Fly/ Fly to Your Heart Part 2”. I’m serious when I mean everybody. From lunatic Lost Boys (that’s us!) to majestic mermaids, everybody is on stage now. It was kind of an organized chaos.

11:30

This was our time to relax and eat our food, as well as prepare for the next show. Most of us went through the frustrating process of taking off and putting on again all of the makeup and our costumes, but some of us decide that it wasn’t worth the frustration, and just brought a bathrobe.

1:00

Costumes? Check. More makeup? Check. Anxiety? Triple check. Then, we were revving ourselves up for the second show of the day out of the six shows we had performed over the course of two days.

2:20

Then, we had already finished the performance and the sixth graders have left the cafeteria. Then, we listened to the notes the directors and stage managers had to say about our performance and backstage work.

7:00

Because we took our costumes home, before we get back to Day Creek, we were asked to come ready with our basic makeup and costumes on. At this time, we were performing for the parents who had bought tickets to see Cast A.

8:30

The crowd had gone wild. Friends, family, directors and all. We had finished day one performing. After the pictures, flowers, and treats, we trudged back to E4 to change out of our costumes into our regular comfortable clothes.

Altogether, the 4-5 months of working really hard paid off. Both Cast A and Cast B did a great job representing all of the choreography, music practice and sleepless nights put into this show.