In the office, children of employees (from 4 to 18 years old) were given the exciting opportunity to make good of their summer by enrolling in a 30-hour voice, dance, and basic theater acting session supervised by Kids Acts Philippines Incorporated. The enrollees had to undergo a five week, twice weekly crash course that culminated with a musical staged last Saturday in the GSIS Theater. The final show incorporated elements of what a “real” musical theater program would commonly have: costume, mic lapels, movable stage props, underwater backdrop, lighting, a live band, choreography, and live singing. The classes were well participated with 31 children making it to the finals. It was a great initiative, leaps better than previous years’ usual arts and crafts theme.

The end product was a musical adaptation of Hans Christian Andersen’s The Little Mermaid.

(Warning: this sentence is the part where I gloat some) I’m no stranger to watching theater productions, plays, or musicals produced by either Dulaang UP, Blue Repertory, Philippine Opera Company, PETA, Atlantis, and Repertory Philippines. (I told you there’d be gloating LOL) This time, however, I’ve no grand expectations for the children knowing full well that things can go wrong (voices on the mic heard from the cast in the back stage, children slipping, failed blocking, costumes falling off, audio fading, lines forgotten, no emotion conveyed in the lines and songs delivered, and dead air to name some) given the constraints but, overall, it turned out quite nice. I’ve never seen so much stage mothers running amok in a single venue LOL!

The thing that struck me with this particular musical is that they chose to present the original Hans Christian Andersen story where the mermaid died in the end. No matter how commonplace the musical’s story already is, watching the children do their darnedest to present the genuine article struck me hard. In the last scene, soon after the mermaid had decided to sacrifice her life instead of killing the prince, the music became so melancholy that when the mermaid was lying on the stage while one after another the little fishes, the king, and her sisters made their way to pay her tribute, I cried. Seriously, I did. I knew she was going to become foam in the end but watching kids enact the scene made it seem more tragic. Imagine an innocent choosing to do what she knows in her heart was right.

I overreacted, I know, and I realized it too late that I should have made a mental note that the mermaid in the original story is no 9 year old.