Nursery School

Click to listen to the song:
FIRST WEEK OF SCHOOL

Voice: Jessica Ann Carp
Piano: Patrick Sulken

Recorded at Yellow Sound Lab

   
NURSERY SCHOOL

NURSERY SCHOOL is a song cycle about the lessons parents learn when they send their children to nursery school. It was performed at the Duke Theatre on 42nd Street

LAUREN HOOPER as Woman 1
JESSICA ANN CARP as Woman 2
BEN BOECKER as Man 1
MICHAL SALONIA as Man 2

BRIAN FREELAND, Director
RON LESHNOWER, Music Director
PATRICK SULKEN, Music Supervisor

In this song cycle, the nursery school parents take the audience along with them on an emotional rollercoaster ride as they undergo experiences common to being a parent of nursery school aged children. For instance, the show begins with "The First Week of School" (demo recording), a song about the difficulty a mother experiences sending her son to nursery school for the first time. In "Daddy, Why Are You Crying?" a father must explain to his daughter what it means that Grandpa died. In "My Name Is Jack's Mom," a mother negotiates her current consuming identity as Jack's mom with the poet and wife she had been before parenthood. In "Mother Superior," a well-intentioned mother learns how her shame and frustration in her son and his horrid behavior is only serving to make things worse. In "My Son Wears Dresses," a father reasons out why it should be okay that his son wears dresses and takes a lesson from his son about how to educate others. At their children's nursery school "Graduation," the parents realize that time felt slow, but now it feels fast. The parents acknowledge with pride and amazement that their "babies all are big kids now" and they brace themselves for kindergarten.