Letter to My Grand Niece Sarah

I'm writing this letter on my blog so that I can add a few pictures related to the story I am going to tell my 7 year old grand niece, Sarah.

Hi Sarah,

I hope that you really enjoyed being a part of "The Wizard Of Oz". Your grandmother tells me that you had to practice two hours a day. Wow! That's a lot of work but I bet it was worth it. You will have to write me and tell me all about it.

What was the most fun for me in High School were the extra curricular activities like acting in plays, singing with groups, and working on the yearbook. One year the drama class put on the play "Winnie The Poo". We even performed at the Fox Theater downtown a number of times on Saturday mornings so a lot of kids in Spokane got to see it.

Can you guess what part I played?

It wasn't Winnie or the Owl. And Kanga is a mom so I didn't play that part. Nope, not a rabbit. And I was too big to play piglet. Give up?

Would you believe I was Eeyore? Did you know that Eeyore's favorite foods are thistles?

Anyway, what this story is about is the costume that I had to wear. Since Eeyore is an old gray donkey the costume suit was gray flannel. Very hot, particularly under the lights, so I wound up just wearing my underwear. Seriously, I sweated buckets in that thing.

It didn't make sense to crawl on stage and a two person costume would be too big so the front feet were glued onto two broom stick handles cut down to the length of my forearms. Since they had to be taped with masking tape I had shave my arms before every performance. Now when I bent over with the new front feet my back was straight and I was about waist high to everyone else on stage.

The head was big and heavy. Now imagine me all bent over walking on my hands and feet. It wasn't possible to get my head up to see where I was going so a square was cut in the neck and a screen put in. I had to follow chalk lines drawn on stage as certain cues had me moving from one point to the next. Actually, we used the alphabet so my first movement was to point A and then on to B, etc.

With my head down I had to really project my voice so the audience could hear me. Do you know how to project your voice Sarah? 

MISERABLE! MISERABLE! Those were the first two words I grumbled everytime I came on stage.

We put the play on Saturday Mornings at the Fox and took it to some grade schools. One of those mornings at the theater my friends led me out to the lobby to say Hi to the kids. All of a sudden I felt someone poking me in the butt. Poke, poke poke. "Here's your tail, Eeyore," some kids Mom said. My tail was snapped onto my costume and somehow it came off and the lady was trying to get it snapped back on. You don't think some kid pulled my tail off, do you? Naw, that wouldn't happen. LOL

So that's the story of me as Eeyore and that really, really hot costume. Hope you got a laugh out of it.

Here's a Valentine from Piglet to you, Sarah.

Take care, sweetheart, and I'll see you this summer.

Love,

Great Uncle Terry