Michael McNett Photography » Wedding, portrait and destination wedding photographer based in Bethlehem, PA serving Allentown, Easton, the Lehigh Valley, Philadelphia, NJ, DE & beyond

For those that know my very shy daughter Sienna, be prepared to be blown away, I was. Today was the first performance of NEMS’s musical “Annie”. My daughter Sienna some months back auditioned for the part of Annie. At first I was thinking “Ohh my G-d how is she going to do it? She is going to run off the stage mid performance and it will be devastating.”

Sienna is 12 and talented in so many ways, it’s just not funny. She always gets high honors, straight A’s, at 11 she was designing and sewing her own clothing line, but stick her in front of people and she cringes and slowly shrinks into herself. To be in a play was a big step , to be the lead had me worried. To make things worse she wouldn’t practice in front of us. She would go up into her room lock herself in and turn the music up so high that we really couldn’t tell how her singing was coming along. 

It is with tears in my eyes that I write this because let me tell you when the curtain opened, and she began to sing, I didn’t take a picture. With camera poised my jaw dropped. The sound that came out was not my little girl. She was loud, confident  and sounding exactly like the CDs we have been playing over and over again for the past couple months. I owe a big thank you to Mrs. Parker & Mr. Denatzko from NEMS who did a fantastic job of not just the production of Annie but breaking my little girl out of her shell. 

And a very big congratulations to Sienna who did a phenomenal job, we are so very proud of you!