The Youth Play

In December right after finishing the planning of our Ward Christmas Party, I was asked to direct the ward youth in a road-show type youth play. I was thrilled at the opportunity while also hesitant at the same time since I had never directed a play (besides the ones we had to put on in my German classes). Also being new to the ward and spending my time with the Primary kids, I felt like it would be a challenge for me not knowing the youth.

But as I learned early on - "fake it til you make it" - and that's what I did. I was given the task to guide the youth in creating all aspects of the play from the storywriting to costumes to props and music. The theme we were all given was "Arise and Shine Forth" and we had only 9 minutes with only 1 minute to get on and off stage. We had to incorporate at least one song and we were each given several different books in the Book of Mormon to chose at least 1 story to highlight in.

Before the play even started, I ran into problems between my ward youth leaders and the stake play directors. The stake had this huge vision of what they wanted the play to be like and the ward leaders felt it was unrealistic. Again this caused more worries for me - I like to worry I guess.

But when I finally met with the youth for the first time to present our guidelines and gauge their interest, I was reenthused. I could tell they were looking forward to it and had not done this before (so how bad could I really mess up anyway).

I led a brainstorming session one Saturday morning with a group of the youth who expressed interest in helping with the story writing. We decided to do the conversion story of Alma the Younger and the Sons of Mosiah but to do in a modern, high school setting. Alma the Younger and the Sons of Mosiah were the bad boys of the high school with two groups of girls - the bad girls and the good girls. The Bishop joked about how I should let him know which girls chose to be the bad girls.

From there I chose two youth - Adam and Sydney - to write the story and we spent several more Saturdays working on it. I loved their creativity and I was constantly amazed by how considerate they were to each other and of the others who would be acting out the things we were writing. Not having worked with the youth much, I wasn't sure what to expect, especially since I had been quite the brat in my own youthful years.

Most of the time, I felt like they had to scale me back for what was okay to include and what might be borderline inappropriate which again amazed me about the quality of these youth. This really carried on throughout my whole experience with the youth.

As we presented the story ideas and practiced the play over and over, I got different glimpses into each of the youth's personalities and I learned so much from them.

Here a couple of wonderful examples:

• There were a time during dance practice when one youth was by himself and every time I asked one of the others to join him, they didn't event hesitate and went along cheerfully, even though they had clearly been having fun.
• They constantly coached and enouraged each other during our practices. There were so many times they could have all gotten irritated with each other but instead I found them offering little praises to help those who were shy.
• During dress rehearsal, one of the stake leaders noticed that one of our young men was by himself on stage and getting run over. She asked for one of our youth to join him. Even though most of the youth in our ward had opted out of the dance routine and I had spent the last 10 minutes trying to talk them into joining, 3 (not just one but 3) youth jumped up to his rescue.
• When that same leader changed her mind and asked them all to sit out of the number and the original young man became upset, I was all ready to go to bat for him. But the others assured him they would do something even better and made him laugh to distract him.
• When somebody messed up, not one of those youth got mad. They all just laughed!

Our play turned out fabulous, even with little flops here and there, but really it didn't matter because the whole experience had brought not just the youth together, but really our whole ward together. The ward members came together to donate items or make goodies or give of their time to move props and we left that night with a better understanding of each other, of the story of Alma the Younger, of the reach of our own abilities and a vision of what could be accomplished in so little time with everyone working together.

Matt and I moved to our new apartment in Mountain View just two weeks after the play and I was bummed to have to leave the ward right after I was just starting to get to know the Primary kids and the youth and really many of the ward members. But my roommate Dawn always told me to leave a party while still having fun and that's how I felt about our time in the San Jose 16th Ward.

The finale song with all the girls singing

Most of the youth - and me - at the Awards Party afterwards. We won the award for best props and most youth participating. Whoop Whoop!