Explaining Cannibalism to Children

[fireheart]

It took me less than 2 weeks to master Twinkle Twinkle on the flute, does that make me a genius?

as for the Sweeney Todd question...

Music Theatre International recently adapted the production to be performed by high schoolers. The only substantial edits that have been made are the removal of the Judge's "Johanna" and slightly different lyrics for a few of the Beggar Woman interludes, as well as removing most of the swearing, and providing alterations to the stage directions so the murders did not need to be performed onstage. Repertory Company Theatre of Dallas's school of musical theater division in the US, Ysgol Bryn Elian, Artestudio a musical theatre school in México, North Wales from the UK, John Septimus Roe Anglican Community School in Perth, Australia and the Sunbeams School in Dhaka, Bangladesh were the first in their respective countries to perform the School Edition.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sweeney...treet_(musical)

[jedimaster91]

I come from a musical family. Papa Jedi has played guitar, bass, dulcimer, piano, cello, violin, and other stuff I'm probably forgetting about. One of my uncles sings professionally. Li'l Sis plays piano and she played tenor sax in middle school. Li'l Bro also plays piano and used to play sax and drum set. They were also involved in a percussion group in grade school that was quite good. I played the piano (still tinker with it occasionally), violin, and cello. Li'l Sis and I also danced for a long time. The poor parentals have had to sit through so many performances and they were always very proud of us. But they were also proud of other performers who worked as hard as we did.

ETA: My poor cello looks like a piece of junk. She's taped together on one side because the glue's not holding anymore. But she sounds better than the newer ones my school had and I wouldn't trade her for anything.

[Sonoma]

My poor tenor sax has seen better days as well, but I wouldn't sell it for the world. Poor thing survived college marching band as well. My repairman cringed, but it was the only horn I had. Those Mark VIs can sure stand up to a lot. I used it all through college, it sat in the case for about 10 years, then was put back into service about 5 years ago when I joined a community band. It would completely destroy the horn to have it refinished. I could have sold it to put the money towards the down payment on my house, but I couldn't bring myself to sell that horn.

[SuperRTL]

My dad bought be a new tuba for Christmas a few years ago. It gets to stay at his house when I'm not playing it, which is a lot. I'll be breaking it out for TubaChristmas in a month or so to get back into practice. Can't really lift it right now.

I had a $2000ish flute in high school and college. I had put it in with the rest of the stuff my husband and I were storing in his grandmother's garage while we were between apartments. She told us to only move in what we needed immediately and we could get the rest of our stuff out as we had the time. Yeah, apparently, we were taking too long getting all of our stuff out because she held a garage sale. Sold all of our baby stuff, most of our pots and pans, all my good china (which I inherited from my grandmother) and about $5000 worth of books. My flute she decided to donate to the school my son currently attends. Because it was a donated instrument, the old principle told the girl who was playing it for her senior year that she could take it with her to college. She did, then pawned it for beer money. I'm still pissed over the whole thing.

Oh, and she didn't tell us she was doing it. She told us we could store our stuff indefinitely. We found out this summer when I was asking for the baby stuff that she'd sold it all just a few weeks after we moved.

[Eisa]

Awww, the musical needs "Johanna." That's the best song...

Although my favorite song is "Epiphany." And the song about his straight-razors being his friends isn't removed? Nice.

I guess for high-schoolers, that's fine, but for 5-15?

[flutes_and_fabric]

This reminds me of high school when kids used to stuff trash into my cello through the f-holes (like straw wrappers and such). It took a lot of shaking the cello above my head upside down to get that crap out.

When I learned violin and cello, I dealt with 6 months of my aunt screaming "stop that racket! It sounds like a dying cat making love to nails!" Even now that I've been accepted into the state honors' orchestra repeatedly, I still sound like a dying cat to her.

I rented a sax from my conservatory for woodwinds cause I was too lazy to bring it from the dorms to the classroom (which are basically located in the same building) and when I went to play it the first time I found $40 stuffed in the bell. Poor cello, you're lucky you never tipped the sound post. Although that's much easier to do on violin than cello. And oh all state, how I miss thee. I held first chair all orchestra and band for four years. Then when I left another freshman from my high school took the title. Haha.

Reminds me; some years back I left my violin bow in the pit at a school after a performance, and someone walked away with it. Don't know how anyone could've figured out that it cost me 200 bucks and two hours of weighing, holding and playing to get one that was just right for my hands. I hope at least it was a violin student.

Hugs. Someone was stealing from our lockers. Got away with my friends 2 trumpets, music, and $300 worth of mutes. The only reason anyone knew the lockers were there was because the only non music classroom on that floor was next to the lockers. Found the bastard though.

$16,000 for a flute? As a non-music player I have to ask, does one insure something like this? I bet that girl's head spun with how fast you got that away from her. Wow.

Yup, it's completely insured. My prize was the second place flute. Half and half, a tube of gold inside the silver body and a gold mouthpiece. The first place prize was a solid gold flute, $32,000. For flutes, an elementary instrument is usually $120-200, first open hole flute (late middle school early high school) is $600-1200, student model open holed (late high-early college) $2000-4000, professional model (college and beyond) $4000-8000, professional (professional) $12000-40000. Any instrument over $2000 should be insured.

It took me less than 2 weeks to master Twinkle Twinkle on the flute, does that make me a genius?

as for the Sweeney Todd question...



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sweeney...treet_(musical)

I can get it for high school, but the majority of this camp are under 11, with usually 7-8 above. There is a separate camp for ages 14-19 (they did beauty and the beast this year) but they will be performing anything goes.

My dad bought be a new tuba for Christmas a few years ago. It gets to stay at his house when I'm not playing it, which is a lot. I'll be breaking it out for TubaChristmas in a month or so to get back into practice. Can't really lift it right now.

I LOVE TUBA CHRISTMAS! (even though I'm Jewish) I started playing tuba because I did two degrees at two universities at the same time (conservatory for performance, teaching school for education) and I couldn't stand being in the flute section of the marching band (15 piccolos, and most were not good) so I joined the sousa section. The piccolo and sousaphone aren't that different, right?

[dalesys]

...The piccolo and sousaphone aren't that different, right?

Well, with one your lips are a lot looser...


But with both, after three long notes you won't need any medical grade catnip...

(played baritone, trombone & sousaphone 5th-11th grades)

[fireheart]

Awww, the musical needs "Johanna." That's the best song...

Although my favorite song is "Epiphany." And the song about his straight-razors being his friends isn't removed? Nice.

I guess for high-schoolers, that's fine, but for 5-15?

Just so we're clear, in Australia, high school is from around 12/13-18.

Also, I believe that they only removed the Judge's part of Johanna, not the whole song (similar to the version in the film). My favourite songs happen to be with Toby in them as well as Epiphany and A Little priest (the Toby songs=Pirelli's Miracle Elixir, God That's Good and Not While I'm Around)

I wonder-would it be possible for the kids to do Oliver Twist at all? I know that there are some disturbing themes, but not along the lines of cannibalism. My high school did it as a general play and we managed to do it: we had to cut a couple of songs for timing reasons. Strangely, we kept "My Name" even though that's cut from some versions.

[flutes_and_fabric]

Well, with one your lips are a lot looser...


But with both, after three long notes you won't need any medical grade catnip...

(played baritone, trombone & sousaphone 5th-11th grades)

Just to clarify, that was a sarcastic rhetorical question Hehe, I think you could fit about 200 piccolos inside one tuba. Glad to hear so many people here participated in school music!

[Magpie]

There are children's stories in which people get eaten. If the kids can handle Grimm fairytales, they can handle Sweeney. After all, the "evil witch" from Sweeney Todd ends up being shoved into the oven herself, right? Good conquers evil. All is well.

Bear in mind that most children haven't heard Grimm fairytales these days. Disney is not the only culprit for cleaning them up. How many people here ever read (as a child, doesn't count when you're in your teens) the fairytales where someone was tied to four wild horses, or put in a nail-studded barrel? What about the red-hot shoes?

[RecoveringKinkoid]

If someone stuffed my guitar full of crap, I would make them takeall the strings off, empty the shit out of the soundhole, and then restring it. It would need to be in perfect tune when they were done.

I play a twelve string. This would be apt punishment.

[tropicsgoddess]

I've seen, on TV, the evil that is the stage parent. If I ever have kids, which is not very likely, I hope I *never* do that to them.

Luckily I've never had to deal with stage parents and like you I've seen them on TV and sure as hell will not be one to my chid(ren).

[Magpie]

I play a twelve string. This would be apt punishment.

For you or for them? You know you'd never get it back.

[flutes_and_fabric]

Bear in mind that most children haven't heard Grimm fairytales these days. Disney is not the only culprit for cleaning them up. How many people here ever read (as a child, doesn't count when you're in your teens) the fairytales where someone was tied to four wild horses, or put in a nail-studded barrel? What about the red-hot shoes?

That's true. One of my students had heard that the real little mermaid story was different from the Disney version. She asked me about it. I love fairy tales, so I e-mailed her mom and got permission to lend her the original story (she was 10 and I wasn't about to get in trouble with the parents for destroying a Disney illusion.) She read the entire book by the end of the year (a few thousand pages of various fairy tales) and told me she had never heard any of the stories told like that. People are obsessed with a happy ending.

I was also babysitting a few days ago, and I noticed that the children's shows now a days are much cleaner then when I was young. I remember watching aw real monsters and ren and stimpy and pinky and the brain. Maybe I was just there at the wrong time. One day I'll have to catch up on my children's programming. What's popular now a days?

[MoonCat]

Bear in mind that most children haven't heard Grimm fairytales these days. Disney is not the only culprit for cleaning them up. How many people here ever read (as a child, doesn't count when you're in your teens) the fairytales where someone was tied to four wild horses, or put in a nail-studded barrel? What about the red-hot shoes?

Good point. The old stories as handed down by word-of-mouth were not all goody-goody glitter fairies and cutesy unicorns like the sanitized versions we have now. They were morality tales and as such, somebody usually had to suffer!

Case in point: There is an old Polish tale of an evil king who was devoured by mice! I hate to think what Disney would do to that!