Live Performance: Children Remind Us

The boy formerly known as Pippi.

Children remind us of the incredible power of live theater. This little boy – my grandson – saw his first play last year at age 3. It was a performance of Pippi Longstocking at Seattle Children's Theater. Almost immediately after the show he began re-living the character of Pippi. He literally became Pippi. He staged endless re-enactments of the play, casting the adults around him, me included, in various roles. For weeks he insisted that he was not my Grandson, but was in fact Pippi; the Grandson, he informed us, was doing something else upstairs.

Finally, last weekend, Pippi saw Dick Whittington at SCT and it was Dick, not Pippi, who returned from the theater. I didn't make that show and don't know much about the character, except that he apparently wears a tri-cornered hat and has some exciting adventures with pirates. 

Dick and I will be going to Robin Hood at SCT next June and I can't help wondering who will return from that show – and what my role will be in the subsequent family performances. Undoubtedly Friar Tuck.

By the way, the parents are delighted that Pippi has more or less permanently returned to Villa Villekulla. Pippi had attitude.