Free For All 2005: Kids are people too

Got out to the Shakespeare Theatre Free For All at Carter Barron Friday night. They were reprising A Midsummer Night's Dream from last season. My wife and I had seen this production at the Skakespeare Theatre's cozy Lansburgh theatre and figured it would translate to the large outdoor ampitheater setting. Also, since it's really a fanciful comedy with the fairies and the intentionally bad actors of the play-within-the-play, we didn't have too many qualms about taking our 5 year old. As for the 2 month old, she was coming along anyway.

We sat in the very last row of the ampitheater, so there was a slight echo and some distortion when the actors spoke, but other than that we were fine from that far away. It was interesting, though, that my main preoccupation was watching my son's reaction to the play.

Once you become a parent you really don't do even the things you used to do in the same way: you do them always with an eye to your children, in part because your job often seems to be entertaining them, but also because you want very much for them to have the same appreciations that you do. You want very much for your life choices -- not in the details, but writ large -- to be adopted as good models for behavior. Museum going? Yes. Book reading? Yes. Theater and "film" appreciation? Yes. Disgust for libertarian freeloaders? Absolutely.

He did very well during the first act -- he was very interested in the boy who played the changling child and in the "man who changed into a donkey" -- but his attention began to wander in the second act. This behavior called for numerous retreats to the woods beyond the ampitheater, where we threatened numerous times to leave early. However, he didn't want to leave. When it came time for Bottom and his comrades to perform their play for the Duke, my son decided to treat the characters' lines as an opportunity for call and response. This didn't go over well with our neighbors, so we watched the final few minutes from the edge of the ampitheater.

In the end, though, it was quite worth it. He has talked now for two days about the man with the donkey head and about fairies. As always, everything is a work in progress.