The Muddily-Puddily Show

Lucky Duck

Camille is standing up on stage, trying to recite the poem about the tree with the yellow leaves. But she’s getting confused. She says she keeps getting the words mixed up, holding the wrong prop, and messing up the rhyme. Suddenly, Emerson says “Stop! I’ve thought of a better way to do it.”

The show is tomorrow, but Emerson keeps coming up with new ideas and new songs, and they keep popping out of Emerson like popcorn. But there’s so many ideas that the girls are getting confused by all the changes.

Emerson says Ashlyn can stand behind Camille and recite the poem. Then Camille just has to stand in one place and hold the props. But, Ashlyn is wearing a gigantic pumpkin costume. She says she can’t really see through it, so she doesn’t think she can recite the poem. And she can’t dance because she can’t see her feet.

Emerson insists she has to wear the pumpkin costume. And she doesn’t need to dance—Willa can do the Muddily-Puddily song and dance all by herself. At that comment, Willa gets nervous. She doesn’t want to sing and dance all alone on stage. Emerson says she only had time to make one duck mask, so Willa will need to be the only duck. She’s a lucky duck. She hands Willa the mask, who takes it hesitantly; she doesn’t feel like a lucky duck at all.

Emerson gets up on stage to demonstrate how Willa can act as a duck. She can fly around flitting her arms as wings, and then gracefully swoop to the floor as if landing on a pond, where Willa can sing the Muddily-Puddily song.

Willa tries to mimic what Emerson did, but she lands down so hard that tears come to her eyes. “I can’t do it like you do it, Emerson,” she says in a wobbly voice. Emerson crosses her arms. “All right, all right. Just sing the Muddily-Puddily song, then.” When Willa explains she can’t do it alone, Emerson dismisses her, saying she’ll be fine.

Camille asks if there’s something else Willa would rather do in the show. Willa’s face perks up. She’d like to talk about pinecones. She can talk about how they fall off trees, the males and females, and what happens when they decompose. But Emerson interrupts her, saying nobody’s interested in pinecones anyway.

Kendall says, “Maybe you can help me with the set, Willa. You can help me figure out how to have wind blow and leaves fly and rain fall.”

“You mean you haven’t figured that out yet? When will you figure it out?” Emerson demands. Kendall responds she doesn’t know yet… it may be impossible.

And then Emerson breaks. “Impossible? Impossible?! I’ll tell you what’s impossible: putting on a show with all of YOU! Maybe we just shouldn’t do the show at all.”

Everybody is silent. Willa feels hurt. Kendall feels unappreciated. Ashlyn feels confused. And Camille feels sad to see her friends all unhappy with one another. Then, slowly, Camille suggests they take a break. Glumly, the girls follow Camille into the playhouse.