Funny how much we can learn from children. How they can remind us how to love. How to look. How to laugh. Funny how they can see with their hearts and listen with their eyes. And their big wide gazes can penetrate those deep dark places we hide inside. The ones we’d rather forget exist. Or they can search into those deep forgotten parts and withdraw those pieces we didn’t know still existed. Those pieces that are just memories from a different time. A time before we saw in harsh edges. Before our vision became distorted. Before we learned intolerance. And then the gazes drops, and the big wide bright eyes turn to the big vast bright sky, and we fumble to hold onto those pieces. It is like holding water. They slip right through our fingers.

Funny how easily children can laugh. The sound rolls of their tongues from their bellies. Natural. Right. And the sky can be grey and the world can be chaos and their pasts can be red and their futures black. And all we can see are the reds and the greys and the blacks—but they see in color. They laugh in color.

The Firebird cast includes fifteen children. Their sweet laughter and smiles brighten the studio. They bring more joy than they know, and they teach us more than we realize—the important things. Because as important as plies and lighting cues are to us—children teach us that which makes all of those things worth it. They remind us to laugh. And in those big wide bright eyes is the most powerful message of all.

Hope.