Among the many dance classes my daughters are in is a musical theatre class in which my ten-year-old Brittany is enrolled. The class is taught by the owner/director of the school, and my wife and I agree that it is the best class yet for either of our girls. Almost every week there is a homework assignment, which the teacher says is to help them develop the stage presence and comfort needed to be successful in musical theatre. These have become family projects, with everyone chipping in. My main role has been to supply the music. Her first assignment was a commercial. We went with Pepsi and used Franz Ferdinand's "Take Me Out", which it appears her classmates knew only from the PSP commercial, proving that was a brilliant move on the band's part. For her next commercial we went with the Firefly cellular phone, presently rivaling Jesse McCartney as an object of lust among 10 year olds, to the tune of Randy Newman's "You've Got a Friend In Me". Next was a rapped nursery rhyme, for which I supplied a beat, courtesy of a demo of a program called Hip Hop Starz (magnificent stuff), and a fresh written intro and closing to the classic "Jack and Jill". Last week, she had to do a video performance to a pop song. We selected Skye Sweetnam's "Billy S", then Brittany and her mom worked out a rebel-without-a-clue look. This week, the assignment was another video, but it had to be no longer than a minute and a half, and must have backing vocals. My wife and I thought up Weird Al's "Fat", put her in stuffed outfit, and let Brittany come up with the moves. She's performing even as I write this, and I'm certain it's brilliant.

Brittany, like all youngsters apporaching puperty, has a lot of issues in her life, of which her mother and I appear to be the most vexatious at the moment. But the kid is a performer, and she loves to put on a show. Always has, really. For a child who is grumpy more than she has any right to be, that all slides away when she starts performing. She is very sensative and quick to hurt, and I suspect a career in the performing arts would wound her deeply. But right now, she's a star when she performs, and I pray that'll be enough to keep her head on straight in the next few years.