Skit director

The last night of the camp usually involves a group of kids doing a play of some sort... always in French. Well this past week we had 4 children that spoke Russian and some English (one of them, a 5 year old, also spoke Spanish and French). So I was put in charge of coming up with a play for them to perform on Friday night. I had the afternoon to pull something together. Since my Russian consists of like 2 words, along I'm learning a few more, I wasn't sure what kind of play I could pull together. Besides my collection of skits, plays, and dramas is very small and most are only understood in certain contexts.

Good thing for the internet, because I typed in "funny skits" and found this British comedy sketch below and thought it would be perfect. The kids liked the idea of being in something funny. So I set off to rewrite the bit for our context. The three older kids performed the skit in English, French and Russian. I wrote out their parts and we practiced their English and French lines. I was really nervous that it wouldn't come off as being funny or that the French kids would critique the Russian kids for their French lines. Thankfully it went off really well and everyone was laughing. On the bus ride down to Montreux today, the actors were replaying their lines most of the way down the mountain. I took it as a sign that they were pleased with their performance and not embarrassed at all.

The rewritten skit was about trying to find a bathroom. Here the actors are during the performance.