Aladdin

Ok, Ok, I've been bad again and missed yesterday - so 2 stories it is! The first one today: a Summer Story

As you may know from previous entries, the NG had our own "production company", NG Basement Productions, which made movies and did productions. One summer we did Aladdin (unfortunately we did not get this one on tape). We chose this not only because we all loved it, but also because we had some of the costumes. A previous Halloween Katrina had gone as Jasmine and I had gone as Jafar. Jasmine was a purchased costume but Jafar, like most of our Halloween costumes, Mommy made. It was wonderful, looked just like his outfit, the shoulder "wings" were so large I had to walk sideways to fit through doors!

For our production, Katrina played Jasmine, Wendy played Aladdin, Jennifer played Genie, Gina played the dude at the beginning and sometimes Jafar (we traded off a bit). We didn't do the whole movie really, but did little routines while lip-syncing to the soundtrack.

Gina started the show with the introduction, using a yellow flashlight for the lamp and after "this is no ordinary lamp" exclaiming, "this is not a lamp" and launching it behind her. When Wendy did "One Jump Ahead", the rest of us also were on "stage" (the carpet of the basement floor) doing the background parts. The best was when Gina would put on the plastic glasses with fake cardboard eyes on them and sing, "still I think he's rather tasty". Jennifer's Genie costume was a long blue dress that was really part of an old Alice-in-Wonderland costume, but to make it more Genie-ish we pinned on a blue net "tail" from Wendy's 4 yr old tap recital costume. But, the most creative part of the whole show was "A Whole New World". Katrina and Wendy sat on a small rug in the middle of the stage, the other three of us split, Jennifer and Gina on one side of the rug and me on the other, all off the stage. The three of us tossed the pool basketball and volleyball back and forth in front of and behind the rug. Why? Because the crepe paper tails we had taped on the balls formed our clouds making the magic carpet fly! It was great fun and we all still remember most of the words to the songs.

(Originally posted April 24, 2003.)

Creative