This summer I'm ASMing at a summerstock, and we have a few shows with kids. Right now we're in the middle of performing Annie Get Your Gun. There are 4 kids. I have a 12 year old girl, two 9-year old girls, and a 10-year old boy. We have a "backstage parent" but they are mostly there to keep the kids quiet/entertained in their dressing room when not onstage. None of the parents know the show enough to get them anywhere on time. So it's now my job. I don't really mind, since it miraculously works out that my track follows their entrances almost exactly. And the few times I have to drop them off by the wing and run somewhere else, I know I can trust the 12-year old to keep them in line. Self-wrangling children....
The biggest problem I have is that the director has created a comic bit where Little Jake (the 10-year old) is eating chocolate cake almost every time he appears onstage. The SM and I anticipated this being a sugar rush issue, so we cut small pieces (about 1-inch squares) which he eats 4 times during the show. During tech, the director asked for double the cake each time. So this kid eats 8 pieces of cake each show. And there are several days during the run with 2 shows in a day. By the end of the second show, the kid is bouncing off the walls, driving me insane.
The girls are great, though...
