My daughter Clare's Bio for The Sound of Music

Clare had originally auditioned with her older sister in June of 2008, but at only four years of age, decided that she wasn’t ready to be in a show, and dropped out. Always certain that one day she would be ready, when a spot opened up, she auditioned again and now in the show as one of the 3 girls who play Gretl.

This is the point where our family life gets truly nutty. Our calendar for taking kids to shows, dance lessons, etc. is quite an entertaining read. No kidding.

Clare’s doing really well. She had her first show Labour Day weekend and has been doing an average of 3 shows a week. They recently announced that The Sound of Music will be closing January 3rd, which is too bad because it would be nice for her to have a longer run.

Clare splits her time between the two ‘families’ of kids in the cast, so she’s on stage with her sister Hannah sometimes, and others she’s with the other cast. She seems to have fun with both.

Watching your kids perform in a giant theatre is weird. One of the most striking things for me this time out was hearing Clare call Burke Moses “Daddy” on stage.  I can honestly say I’ve never heard any of my four children address anyone else that way…it’s odd.

Another interesting thing about all this is that Clare’s only five (almost six). I don’t really remember much about when I was 5 going on 6, but I wonder how much of this she’ll remember when she’s older. Since the internet never forgets anything, I guess she’ll be able to tell me in twenty years or so.

Hannah's Bio in the Sound of Music Programme

Hannah has amazing stamina that is perhaps only available in 8-year-olds, but she has been doing a rigourous schedule of 8-hours a day from Thursday to Sunday since early February, and she still has lots of energy left over for school, dance classes, and endless hours of practising her lines and songs.

As Marta, she doesn’t have a lot of lines to remember (Marta is the 2nd youngest of the Von Trapp children), but there’s a lot of singing to learn and get right. And I’m amazed that she isn’t sick of it yet.

Our whole family has been adjusting to the back-and-forth to rehearsal schedule. It’s about a 45-minute walk from our house to the Mirvish Productions building next to the Princess of Whales Theatre here in Toronto. As part of our attempt to teach Hannah about money, we got her to log all of the money she didn’t spend on transit tickets or taxis to get to rehearsal. This money is designated in a separate category for her discretionary spending. We’re all hoping it means we all get to go out for breakfast on her occasionally.

First performances

We now have the first month’s schedule of performances, and so have booked a whackload of tickets for March 17th at 1:30pm.

The rest of the schedule for March is:

Wednesday March 18 — matinée
Thursday March 19 — matinée
Saturday March 21 — matinée
Wednesday March 25 — matinée & evening
Saturday March 28 — matinée
Sunday March 29 — matinée

Only one evening performance means that at least we’ll ease into the late nights.

First came a contract, in a couriered package with contract pages plus rider. There was a form to fill out for her pay (!) which necessitated a bank account for an 8-year-old. Said bank account was procured from RBC, the “Leo” account or some such thing…the only bank account they offer kids.

We wondered about the necessity of a GST number. She will not have enough income from this “self employment” to warrant it…this year at least.

Income tax? Does an 8-year old have to file income tax in Canada? Will have to find that one out.

Then there’s the bio & photo. Parent supplied…who knew? The bio was written collaboratively by my wife, my daughter, and myself, and copy edited and proofed by my work colleague Laura and my mother-in-law. We tried to make it cute but not too cute. It’s interesting when many of the other kids’ bios include television credits and the like. We had to focus on the living room shows and ballet school performances instead.

I write this from Vancouver, where I am attending the IxDA’s annual conference, Interaction ’09. I have had a misadventure (another post) but I did manage to get myself up early enough to call and wish my young performer a happy first rehearsal.

It’s going to be a long haul for a little while: 4 8-hour rehearsals a week for 5 weeks. Good thing she has boundless energy.

Sound of Music Poster

We are not a showbiz family. We have no experience with professional theatre and so it’s a great adventure for all of us.

So far, we’re still in kind of ‘holy crap’ mode. You never want to get your hopes up too high, and you keep your attitude light so that you don’t set yourself and your kids up for disappointment in a process that is so fraught with peril.

Since we’re new to this whole thing, I’m going to track it a bit for everyone. It’ll be a diversion from my original focus here at the LoweLife, but that wasn’t really working anyway. I’m taking a page from 43 folders here and am gonna blog the crap out of this.

Coming soon:

You have no idea all the stuff that you have to consider when your 8-year-old child is going to be receiving a regular paycheque. Or maybe you do? I’m gonna tell you once I figure it out.