1) News of a funny scene backstage slowly spreads throughout the cast and crew – it evolves as it travels and I correct the details to explain how it came about.
2) The crowd hoot, holler and clap at the end. Everyone agrees it was a fantastic performance, the best of the run.
3) The boys sing the drinking song “Fill Ev’ry Glass” louder and more raucously than ever before — in their dressing room after the show is finish. The highwaymen’s leader Macheath – who had been attempting to liven them up all week – exclaims what I’m thinking: “why didn’t you do that on stage?!”
4) K – my fellow tutor – appears backstage after watching the show in the audience and admits she was close to tears by the end. It’s been an exhausting few weeks but I think they were tears of pride not just relief it’s over. They done good.
5) The girls – the queen bees of the class – expand their circle to include me. The nerdy teenager within me is always thrown when this type of thing happens and it takes me a moment to realise it’s ok to join in.
6) I spend most of the after-show party talking to various people about the upcoming election, overjoyed at how politically aware the kids are even though some of them won’t be able to vote for five years.
7) I’d expected it to be just snacks and mostly gone by the time I got there but the food the hosts have laid on is delicious and plentiful – just what I need after a week of sandwiches-for-dinner.
8) They gather around her, the friends of her sons, and tell her it’s alright to cry.
