April 29, 2012

Willy Wonka at Burnsville High School


Willy Wonka at Burnsville High School

Todd Swank's Diary Update for April 29, 2012


We spent a lot of time in auditoriums this week.  The boys had 2 different band concerts on Tuesday and Thursday which lasted for about 2 hours each.  That's a whole lotta band music.


Being in the Brass Section, Avery is tucked away in the middle of the band so it's always hard to catch him for a photo.  I actually think he knows this and sits there on purpose.


Being in the percussion section puts Luke front and center for photos.  He just has to worry that his Percussion Partners don't squeeze him like a sandwich.


Grandma Linda thought Luke looked so cute standing next to his taller classmates that she insisted on going to find a tall person to stand next to also.  It made her really happy when she found one.


On Friday night, we traveled to Burnsville High School to see a play called Willy Wonka.  


The play was about this guy who runs a chocolate factory and exploits illegal immigrants for their cheap labor.  Kind of deep stuff for a group of high schoolers to tackle, but we were excited to see them give it a shot.


The reason we went to see the show was because our friend Ana Zitzewitz starred as one of the squirrels in the Veruca Salt Death Scene.  I never realized squirrels were so vicious. After seeing this I'm definitely steering clear of them in the future.


Ana also played one of the townspeople who were fascinated with the Chocolate Robber Baron.  They were all so nice to him which didn't seem very realistic to me.  If it were based on reality, this group would be part of Occupy Wall Street.  They'd eat alive this  weird guy from the 1 percent!


I was pretty impressed with the production.  The actors were great and quickly made you forget that they were only teenagers.  I really thought it was a bunch of old people laying in that bed.  I kept thinking how badly it must smell down under those blankets.  It was nice to get lost in a fantasy world like this for a couple of hours.


Other than the nice boy named Charlie, the other characters who won the coveted "Golden Tickets" turned out to be kind of jerks.  It almost made you cheer when they each met a gruesome ending deep inside Mr. Wonka's Chocolate Factory of Horrors.


Like this girl.  She was kind of cute and seemed pretty sure of herself, but she didn't do a very good job of listening to her elders.  Apparently she really liked gum and consumed a piece of an experimental piece that Willy gave her.  He warned her over and over not to eat it, but that only made me think "Why the heck did you give it to her in the first place if it could be so dangerous?"  I thought she was going to choke on it or something, but instead it caused her to blow up into a big blue ball.  It must have ended up killing her because we never saw her again.  I have no idea how this Wonka dude stayed out of jail by enslaving migrant workers and recklessly endangering children, but it seemed to be working for him.        He ended up being really rich and powerful and even adopted the one kid he didn't kill.

I guess that's the lesson we were supposed to get from the show.  

I'm not sure I get it.

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