Fun Fine Arts

Many homeschoolers seem to worry about how to get in some electives including fine arts. We've had a lot of fun over the years doing just that. One of my favorite ways is to attend the school shows at Waterville Opera House.

We've been attending these shows for at least the last five years. In all that time we've had only a very few that weren't all that great. Overall, the shows are fun and give children a chance to see live theater performances geared for them.

The first performance being offered this year was The Lightening Thief based on the book of the same name by Rick Riordan. My oldest son has read the whole series so I asked him his thoughts on the play. He wasn't impressed. Apparently, the stage production was based more on the movie (which I have seen) than the book.

I thought the play was rather campy, but fun. TheaterWorks USA are the ones that typically put on the shows. They have a small troupe of actors do the production so they play multiple rolls. For instance, in The Lightening Thief one actress played the Fury, Percy's Mom, two different half-blood campers, and the Oracle. In fact, the only actor that played one roll was the lead actor who played Percy Jackson.

Every one we've seen done by TheaterWorks USA is also a musical. I think that's fun. The favorite part for my boys in this play, though, was when they had rolls of TP on rollers powered by leaf blowers. This was the "water" that Percy could control since he was the son of Poseidon and a human woman.

The price of tickets for the shows are also extremely reasonable at only $3 a ticket for most shows. A local theater will be putting on a production of MacBeth last this month and those tickets are only $1 for the students. Unfortunately, my schedule isn't going to allow us to attend that show. They do a really good job with these performances too so I'm bummed we need to miss it.