WotOpera

At the beginning of the school year I met with Jalen's drama teacher at a parent teacher interview. She told me that she realised that Jalen had done some drama outside of school and wanted to give him an opportunity to extend himself more, and told me about a program called WotOpera.  She said that he would be one of the grade seven students chosen to do it, as it included students from each grade.

I didn't know much about what WotOpera was, but Jalen would come home after each session telling me all about the process and what they were doing.  As a group of students they had to create the characters, write the words and music, design and make the costumes and set and then perform it.  Jalen came home telling me how bad it was as they all had to audition and sing and he is definitely not a singer (he sounds just like his Dad when he sings, and that is very flat!).   He hated the singing, but was still enjoying the whole process and came home last week with a t-shirt that they had all been given, and had to wear on the night of the performance.

They had four sessions at school which only ended up being a total of 21 hours together before they performed it at the Princess Theatre.  There were four schools who did it all together including Exeter, Prospect and Kings Meadows High School. I felt sad when KMHS did theirs as I recognised a lot of the kids and I know Aaron would've loved to have been there to see them as well as watching Jay's.  Mum and Dad came with Harri and I to watch it (thanks Alison for babysitting Kobe).

It was amazing to see what each of the schools came up with.  I'm not into opera at all, but I was very impressed with their creativity and what they could come up with in such a short amount of time.  It was nice to see Jay up on stage smiling, and having a great time.  His friend George was also in it with him, so they had lots of fun hanging out together.

Before each school's performance they showed a short video of the process of them creating their opera.  It made us laugh as they showed Jalen quite a lot, and showed him singing different parts.  He was so embarrassed, but I told him I was proud of him.  Then Harri said 'yeah I was too Jay!' :)  The organisers kept telling the kids that it's not about how well you can sing, but it's about having a go. I loved what they had on the back of their t-shirts.

It's no secret that Jalen hasn't loved school this year.   It's been the exact opposite, and he's had a hard time settling into high school.  After WotOpera he told me that he is actually liking school now and loved being in it, because he got to know a lot of other people from other grades.  The day of the performance all four schools were together all afternoon as they practiced on stage and ate dinner together before performing for the public.  Jay said it was a lot of fun to spend time with everyone and it was so nice to see how happy he was.  I can slowly see the old Jay coming back.