Showstoppers

In Knight of the Burning Pestle it amazes me at how lost and confused I am when I try to imagine little children running around, singing, fighting, dancing, and especially speaking in this way.  It is one thing to imagine the adults, but young boys doing this?  It blows my mind.  The two videos really helped put the boys company's performances into some kind of organized chaos in my mind.  This makes it really hard for me to focus on one scene as I feel the overall picture is cute and ridiculous.  Imagine watching a young boy playing Venturewell dismiss an even younger boy playing Jasper.  And Jasper replies, "Sir I do liberally confess I am yours...," (p.62) so formal for young boys.  Then Jasper goes to his "love", Venturewell's daughter, another young boy playing a girl, perhaps with a falsetto, and they talk about their love and running away together.  I don't think boys companies could escape from the fact that boys playing adults is a little awkward and boys playing girls is quite funny.  So almost no matter what the show it would turn out with a comic perspective.

Galatea as well to me becomes problematic and awkward to think of children posing and posturing as Greek gods and having two of the more famous goddesses of that canon in drag!!  I wonder if they were as fallible on the stage as our youth today with their clumsy mistakes and improvising (like the second video).  Also, for me, these children's companies also make me think of mock seriousness like the Shirley Temple video.  She's cute and awkward in her importance and dress of a soldier.