Emma Watson North

Chapter 18

I ran through my thoughts as I breathed in and out, in a Downward Dog position.

Mum and I were doing yoga at home, on a fine Saturday afternoon. Yeah, pretty random, but it was actually very relaxing.

As we changed into another pose, Mum turned and said softly, "What are you thinking about?"

I smiled. "Drama musical."

Before I tell you about the musical, let me give you an update on school lately.

In the last few months, I developed firm friendships with some other classmates that I hadn't really got to know before.

For example Amber, who was quiet and shy but once you get to know her, she's so hilarious to chat with, and a very reliable and trustworthy person on the whole.

I also made new friends through joining a drama programme from school with Lily which was where we developed a sense of deep interest in drama. 

This leads to the topic of the "musical".

In the drama programme, we were to prepare our own little show of any genre.

Lily and I had joined a few others from our grade in the programme, and we came up with the idea of a musical.

We had written our own script, written lyrics to popular songs, and had a blast performing it last week.

Ms. Shapiro, our teacher enjoyed our final performance and was impressed with our creativity and humour.

We basically did a comedy referencing to the iconic Shakespearean play —"Romeo and Juliet"— and made it about 5 schoolmates having to do the play. We titled it "Riley and Juliet" (two of the schoolmates) and made it into a comical musical, with parody songs in it, illustrating the process of their making of the play.

We were quite proud of the outcome of our hard work, so when Ms. Shapiro suggested we upload the videotape of our performance to YouTube, we did it, hoping it would give someone a laugh.

Then, Ms. Shapiro very excitedly informed us yesterday that a manager of an upcoming festival of literature and arts saw our video and invited us to be guest performers.

I remembered our jaws dropping when she told us. It wasn't a huge festival, but still, it would be a way bigger audience than in the drama programme.

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And of course, we said yes to performing, because it was such a cool and rare opportunity.

We had two weeks before the festival, so we practised as much as we can to try to perfect it.

The day before performance day, we were rehearsing the musical in my living room.

We were halfway through and having a break when Mum poked her head into the room.

She handed us cups of lemonade and said, "Hey, I made some lemonade, was wondering if you wanted some."

"Yes please, thank you," I reached out, "Mm, yum."

Lily smacked her lips together blissfully. "Thanks, Ms. Watson," she said.

I giggled at "Ms. Watson". Mum nudged me playfully and replied, "Pleasure, honey" to Lily.

She chuckled as we sipped. "How's it going?" I asked. 

"Good," she smiled, "you?"

"Brilliant," I said, handing her the now empty cup, muttering "thanks".

"Can't I stay?" She pouted, with merriment in her eyes.

"No. Wait for tomorrow like everyone else," I laughed, shoving her out of the door.