"I'm so excited! I'm so excited! I'm so...SCARED!"

Last night for Sidmummer's rehearsal we started working in the little Indian boy that Oberon and Titania are fighting over. We were to devote this entire rehearsal to getting him into the scenes and dance numbers.

Most productions just cut the kid. After all, this is Sidmummer. Not Annie.

We didn't. After all, you can't have a Flaherty & Ahrens-esque ending to your musical unless there's a child--a symbol of purity, innocence, and hope for the future--to bring down the curtain and make the audience go "awww".

Our kid is a long-haired hellion named, appropriately enough, Alighieri. They say he was in the running to play Damien in the upcoming Omen remake, but I don't believe it.

So there's Al, running around, playing with the props, talking very loudly while everyone's trying to stay focused, tap-dancing on the director's last nerve...

"Okay Al," says the Director. "I want you to be center stage and all the fairies are going to come around you and dote on you because they think you're the best thing ever. Do you like girls?"

"No!"

"Okay," the Director continued patiently, "I want you to do some acting for me then. They're going to come all around you kind of like a picture frame and I want you to look very proud. Can you do that?"

They ran the scene about five times. Each and every time, poor Alighieri got this extremely frightened expression on his face that said, "PLEASE! Get off this stage! I'm REALLY uncomfortable right now!"

We were almost done staging the big final number when the Director stopped everything.

"Alighieri, what's the matter?"

Al hurried to the Director in tears.

"It's my fault," said the Choreographer. "I told him just now that he needed to stand still and behave while we do this. He thinks he's in trouble."

Which made Al bawl even more. He started gulping for air the way little kids do when they're trying to talk and breathe and cry at the same time. It sounded like he gasped something about asthma.

"A-a-asth-mu-mu-ma! Can't--breathe!"

That was news to us. Everyone quickly turned to Al's older sister who sits in the corner and plays her Game Boy whenever Al joins us for rehearsal.

"Does he have his inhaler?" asked the Director.

"No," she croaked, barely looking up from her Nintendog. "He doesn't even have asthma."

"A-a-asthm-mu-mu-mu-ma!" wheezed Alighieri.

Pandemonium.

"EVERYBODY TAKE TEN!" shouts the stage manager. Al runs for the door. Everyone screams "DON'T RUN!". The big sister sits there watching everything, having a grand time. The Director says, "GO WITH YOUR BROTHER!" She runs after him. The choreographer and stage manager yank up the kid and rush him upstairs to his father who is in rehearsals for the Tempest. The guy playing Bottom joins them for some reason.

We got the news a few minutes later that the kid just got really excited, which freaked him out so he started crying. Then he thought he had asthma.

We were also told that he wasn't in any kind of emotional state to join us for the rest of the "Indian boy rehearsal". And we only started 45 minutes ago.

Hundreds of hopefuls outside the theatre upon hearing the news of Al's collapse.