Good Shepherd of the Outback Heading for the Stage

Tomorrow is try-outs for the Rhema Christian School Spring Play, which I will be directing. I oringinally signed on thinking we were doing The Hobbit, but it turned out that the bulk of the actors, who would be 5th to 8th grade girls, were less than enthusiastic about the idea of putting on beards and acting like dwarves. Next we settled on an adaptation of Rumpelstiltskin, which turned out to have little to do with the title character and mostly be a fantasy in the tradition of Shakespeare's comedies, with no less than EIGHT couples ready to wed at the end. Showing the couples to be in love would have involved some hand-holding or walking arm-in-arm, and that ran afoul of the schools policy on PDA. SO, after much thinking, reading, and negotiating (all while the clock was ticking towards performance dates of April 27 and 28), we finally settled on something we had in hand, that could be adapted easily without violating copyright laws... and we will be doing a full-scale production of The Good Shepherd of the Outback.

I see no real problem telling the story in one night, as opposed to stringing it over five days in serial fashion, and it will be good to give the story a fuller treatment production values that eight weeks of rehearsal and technical development will afford. If the message has come across as well as it has lacking that time and care, I can only imagine it will have more impact if it is presented more professionally.

My only concern is with the fact that every student who tries out is guaranteed a part. And I'm not concerned there in having to work with young actors lacking in talent; my teen drama groups often included actors of limited talent and range, and I've managed to cast them and work with them well. What concerns me is the sheer number of parts that may need to be created to accommodate this. We can double the number of sheep, certainly (we've always alluded to a larger flock than was represented onstage), and there are a few other parts that can be added with no problem. But if we get 30 kids or so showing up tomorrow, it's going to necessitate a major rewrite and create a lot of headaches for blocking!