Who Says You Shouldn't Work With Kids and Animals?

Last Thursday was a crappy day for outdoor theatre. It had been raining most of the afternoon and, though it had mostly stopped by show time, the grass was plenty wet and the skies were still overcast enough to keep people away.

Some people did brave the weather though, including a woman with her little dog and even littler child.

I was in the middle of my judgement scene (Act II, Scene I of Measure for Measure) when one of the actors playing a bawd attempted some kind of "threatening" move as I sat in my "throne" (quotations because the move wasn't that threatening, nor does my seat look anything like a throne). At that very moment, the dog took offense and began madly barking in my defense. I couldn't have timed it better if I had wanted to.

Then, as I was lecturing the bawd, his companion, and the people in general on the way things run in Vienna, aforementioned small child cautiously begins to make her way across the stage towards my now-vacant throne. Since the audience obviously isn't going to ignore an adorable 15 month old girl as she valiantly tries to climb up my chair, I figured why should I? So, I continued speaking my lines, picked up the little girl and sat down with her in my chair.

Since I had sat down at this point, my scene partners were thrown off their blocking. I also started speaking my lines to the little girl. Suddenly, the entire scene made sense to me. I finally understood why I let everyone off the hook instead of having them all whipped. Escalus was too busy dealing with a beautiful small child to care about the vagrants in the city.

It was the best work I had down for this show throughout the entire run. There is nothing like random distractions to suddenly make you present in a scene.

Now, does anyone know where I might be able to find more small children to toss up on stage?