In my elementary school play of Cinderella. I was cast as a pile of animated clothes. My role was to lay still and then suddenly spin around like one of those spinning brushes in a carwash and flail off the stage.
Many (but not all) private schools in the US are religious. From elementary school through college I attended Catholic affiliated schools. This sort of display would not be allowed at most public schools, and the ones that would allow it would be sued.
There's actually a Jesus Christ Superstar parody told from the view of the innkeeper (featuring The Mighty Boosh's Noel Fielding and Julian Barratt, Julia Davis, Rich Fulcher, Matt Lucas, Matt Berry and Richard Ayoade):
Take some liberties: for one, it's a manger, add animals. For two, it's a work of fiction, add aliens, or Wookies, or robots. For three, the whole point is to have kids feel included and be interested, so add MDMA or something.
I just thought that in real life, when they were out of on-stage roles, other children would do something else. But then again if the children are, like, 7, it's not like you can assign ALL the jobs to them.
I hadn't thought about it. But then again, I never did any sort of play at school.
This actually brought back bad memories for me. Depressing stuff follows:
I went to a private school and had the same teacher for all six years. He hated me for multiple reasons and a lot of things he did to me would be considered just plain abusive today. It was bad to the point that my parents, who didn't understand the issue, only figured it out when my mom ran into a schoolmate of mine years later in a supermarket and she told my mother that she felt so bad for me because of how he treated me.
Anyway, one of the first signs of this was that in first grade, we were going to do a winter puppet show for the parents. Like I said, this was a private school. It was split into grades 1-3 and grades 4-6, so we're talking like 10 kids here. I was super excited because I have always loved performing. He knew I was super excited. So he cast me as... snowflakes. I had to hold up too snowflakes on sticks and move them around. I was absolutely crushed.
The good part is that as an adult, I've been paid to do standup and have done some critically well-received VO work (for some names you would recognize but I'm not going to say, sorry).
So fuck him.
Anyway, not your fault, I just had to let that out.
“I come with the stench of pre-bottled blood of the new born on my breath, & enough peyote to last until the rapture! Now where’s that lil dude? Need somebody to light my fire!”
I was a wiseman in a public school Christmas thing. Even that young it felt a little weird but I had such little exposure to religion that I went along with it. If I had been any older I would have known to step down from my role and be a door.
In high school, I was in a production of A Midsummer Night's Dream (I was act 2 open fairy/Peasblossom) and the absolute best part was the play in a play, Wall spoke her lines and flapped off stage like an enormous bat, funniest part of the whole play.