Today we went to see the orchestra at an educational
outreach program at a local theater. We
have been buying tickets for events like this for the past 5 ½ years. I love taking the kids to these events. Today’s show had a $1.00 ticket price, so in
addition to the big kids… and even the little kids… I took Miah.
She was very good, although she did talk quietly to me several times
during the one hour performance.
At some point, an usher came to me and whispered that the
people sitting in front of us were contributors to the venue and that they are
really into “this kind of music”, so I needed to keep Miah quiet. Uh… seriously?
Now please don’t misunderstand. When I pay $40.00-$100.00 per head for
tickets at this place, I don’t take my toddler.
This is a matter of practicality… a matter of wanting to enjoy an
interruption free show… and a matter
of respect for all of the other patrons who have purchased high priced tickets!
But… when you
purchase a ticket for $1.00 to a performance that is geared toward children (many
local schools bus kids in for field trips, and I would say that 90% of the
theater was full of elementary school
aged kids today); you cannot expect it to be silent. If Miah had been truly disruptive (crying,
yelling, shrieking, kicking the seats in front of us, running up and down the
aisles, etc.); no one would have needed to tell me to keep her quiet. I would have been quick to correct the
situation myself. But she wasn’t. She was simply being two… and a pretty darn
good “two”, at that…
Further… I felt out
of sorts at the comment about “this kind of music”. What?
The orchestra? Classical
music? We’re pretty “into” it,
ourselves. As a matter of fact, Grace
was transfixed the entire time, and Seth and Caleb didn’t move much, either,
except to give each other sideways glances when the first notes of music they
recognized (which included most of the selections) were played. Admittedly, Ian flopped around on his seat like
a fish out of water for most of the performance, but we were in a row by
ourselves, with no one behind us. The
only person this irritated was me.
We love music at this house.
I think it’s really important to give children every opportunity
possible to love music… music of all kinds… and this certainly includes the
orchestra. If a theater is going to
advertise an event as educational and an orchestra is going to take time out of
its performance to talk about the different types of instruments and the
definitions of melody, harmony, and rhythm; I think it should be pretty obvious
that this is not a posh, five star, suit jacket and fur coat event… especially
at 9:30 on a Wednesday morning…
When we got home, Miah ran into the living room to play the
piano… We win…
In my defense, I took all of these pictures before the program began, so we were not in additional trouble for using flash photography or anything silly like that:
Admittedly, Miah does look like she could cause some trouble here:
She actually just loves to make silly faces for the camera...
This one is much more sweet:
But... yeah... We all know where she gets it:
The Orchestra:
L.
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