A few months ago my daughter participated in a theatre competition. Growing up around theatre I had never heard of doing it competitively. This was a competition for high school students, and although it sounded light and fun, it was anything but. As the mother of a boy who competes regularly in team sports, I am accustomed to intense sports parents. I agreed to volunteer for the theatre competition, unaware of what I was signing up for.
When I signed up to help, I thought it was to drive up snacks, drop them off, and leave. I signed up to be at the competition all day. It was intense. There was a musical category, dramatic scenes, monologue, make-up, costumes, category after category of theatre kids trying to win each round to go on to the next. My daughter’s school had a competitor in almost every category. I had no idea how stiff the competition would be. My daughter was in a group performing a musical stuffed into about eight minutes. Together with her cast, they got through round one, which everyone does. They had hoped to move on to round two and only six of the ten groups would go on to the next round. Having seen them along with the competition, I was certain they would move on. I was wrong. For whatever reason they were in the bottom four and the competition ended there for them.
All ten of the kids were in tears. They were shocked at the results and hugged each other sobbing about how unfair it all seemed. After all, it is art, it is subjective. I knew they did an amazing job, but the play was controversial and dealt with some strong themes. Maybe the judges weren’t open-minded enough. It was a heavier piece than most of the others, maybe it wasn’t light enough for the judges. It wasn’t a common musical, maybe the judges preferred a show they were familiar with. Whatever it was, it was upsetting and none of us could believe that it ended so soon for them, without any plans of getting to perform it again, it was over.
The director of the theatre program came with us that day and as she watched the students navigate their upset she posed a question to some of us moms. “Did we think our children’s hurt is harder for them or us?” At that moment watching my daughter and her friends crying, I felt awful for her, but it seemed she was taking it harder than me. I wanted to help and immediately offered her and her friends ideas of how to make them feel better. I told them that if they wanted to get a chance to perform the piece again we could figure out how to make that happen. I hurt for and with her but didn’t think more than her.
That director’s question has entered my head again in the last few days. For the whole school year, my daughter has hoped and planned for a project for her film class. She had to make the tough decision between doing film or theatre because the times conflicted and much to her chagrin she couldn’t do both. She chose film because ultimately this is what she wants to study in college, and with it being her junior year she wanted her portfolio to reflect her interests. Each year the film program offers an opportunity for six of the fifty or so kids to present a pitch to the other students. This year about twenty-three kids pitched their ideas. The class then votes that night on the ten they would like to see more of. Those ten then write a script and do a table read for the other students and they vote again on their top six.
My daughter’s pitch was one of the top ten chosen and she worked tirelessly for weeks on her script, hoping to secure one of the six coveted spots. Based on what she told me about the other ideas that were being flushed out in class, I was impressed with the complexity of her idea. There were four or five others with a lot of potential too, but a handful of kids who stopped coming to screenwriting class, and a few who didn’t finish their idea. We felt good about her chances. We were confident based on the time and effort she put into her work. When the day came to do the table reads, I went in to help her read for the part of the mother in her script. I listened to some of the other scripts. I took in the room of teenagers sitting and listening to script after script looking bored or looking at their phones. I wondered how they could focus on storylines and shoot details while sitting for two hours after sitting in classes all day. They had no scripts in front of them to follow along to. The sounds of the reader’s voices blended in a monotonous tone. How will they be able to vote on which scripts were their favorite when they all blended into each other?
When it was my daughter’s turn there were two left after her. We all read the script nicely enough, but the room was tired, myself included. When the two read after her I think everyone perked up a bit knowing it was ending soon. I felt the last three as well as one or two others stood out clearly to me as stronger stories. I drove us home feeling optimistic, but a few hours later we were shocked and disappointed. Her film wasn’t chosen. The last two read after hers were, but two of the other strong ideas weren’t chosen either. If that disappointment didn’t burn enough, she had developed her script together with a little pod of three other girls who had also been chosen and all three of the others’ films were chosen to be made, but sadly not hers.
As I reeled and tried to make sense of my thoughts, I realized how flawed this decision process felt. One of the other kids whose film idea was one of the top ten is a senior in high school, and this would be her last opportunity to participate in this program. One of the scripts chosen, that in my opinion wasn’t complete, was done by students who didn’t show up for many of the classes. Lastly, there was one student who was chosen last year as well and has already had this opportunity. It all felt unfair. The results were out though and there was not anything to do about it. As a parent, I contemplated pointing these things out in an email to the teacher, but to what end? My daughter didn’t want me to, and at a certain point, I felt it should be the students bringing these questions up, not the parents. Also, life hurts sometimes, life can be unfair, and we don’t win every time. That reality is sadly one we can’t and shouldn’t protect our children from. Yet still, it hurt so much watching her sadness and feeling it too.
As I tried to sleep that night I kept tossing and turning thinking about how much this stings. The next day in film class they all went in but were released early because of the long day they put in the day before. When my daughter stood up to leave she looked at her pod of three and asked them if they were walking out too. They stared back at her and said they had to stay for a class for the kids whose films were chosen. She left without them, waited to get into my car, and then started to cry. Today in her dance class the teacher gave a shout out to her friend on her film getting chosen and asked her to tell the class what her film was about.
I have been trying to find positive ways to spin some of this for my daughter and myself. I keep trying to let it go but it keeps popping into my head. She is doing her best to stay strong and resilient while I am doing my best to hide from her that I am not. So back to the question from the director about who hurts more, the parent or the child when the child is sad, and in this case I would say both of us are so sad. This time she is seemingly shaking it off a bit faster than I am, but kids mimic what they see, so I am doing my best to constructively move on and away from what won’t be the last of her heartaches. I am also modeling what it looks like to persevere and find that next opportunity because this is not the last.