Clear the ring for the Glamour Girls Circus!
The audience clapped enthusiastically in time with the music as the 22 children from the 5th and 6th Grade Theater Club marched into the ring to the sound of circus music: clowns, magicians, acrobats, a snake charmer, an escape artist, a belly dancer, circus performers, and even trained foxes with their trainer, along with the director, her assistant, and her makeup artist.
For the next half hour, everyone watched with bated breath as Alfonso, the muscleman, tried to find his place among this group of women, only to be met with rejection at every turn. It wasn’t until he suddenly disappeared that the circus troupe realized they might have been too mean to him.
The Theater Club developed this truly enchanting play on their own over the course of the last school year. Taking the circus as their theme, the children first created characters during the first semester, then improvised short scenes using these characters, and finally developed a storyline based on them. The second semester was then devoted to rehearsing the individual scenes. The students came up with all sorts of creative ideas, ranging from funny clown antics and absurd magic tricks to an impressive choreography for the acrobats. The costumes were also largely put together and procured by the participants themselves.
A truly outstanding performance by these young actresses, which was rewarded at the end of the show with well-deserved applause and calls for an encore.
Nina Merzenich
