Susie Quaid is a woman who can go beyond taking lemons and making lemonade. She can make a treat out of treatment and turn therapy into theater.

Quaid, a Baton Rouge resident, has been spending plenty of time in Vicksburg since February, helping her daughter, Ali Hopson, wife of state Sen. Briggs Hopson, as Ali has been undergoing treatment for breast cancer.

While here, she decided to help at Bowmar Elementary, too, where her grandchildren go to school. Quaid, also a cancer survivor, volunteered to teach some old-time songs to kindergartners there.

“Volunteering” to teach a few songs turned into a touch of theater magic, as the young students staged two shows Tuesday for schoolmates, parents and family, garnering loud applause, whoops and cheers.

“You can see how hard they’ve worked,” Quaid told an afternoon audience as the kids doffed top hats and took their bows after singing, dancing and pantomiming before a packed house.

Then Quaid turned to the kids and said, “You’ve made everybody so proud of you — your moms and dads, aunts and uncles, all your families and your teachers.”

Bowmar music teacher Joanne Ryan, who helped with practices and designed the choreography for the event, said the program went way beyond a simple line-up of songs. “This is a show,” she said. “It’s theater, the mother lode of all the arts. It’s all there, all the senses. They got all the sensory modes in gear.”

Quaid began practicing with the students in February, coming up from her home every three weeks to stay with her daughter for several days at a time after each of Hopson’s treatments. “I thought it would be fun to do a little show to get us through this chemotherapy,” Quaid said. “That first week I came to the school Wednesday, Thursday and Friday, and I think by that Friday they had mastered four songs.”

The last few weeks Quaid has traveled to Vicksburg for several days every week to get the students ready for the show.

In all, they learned 12 old-time songs — words, music, motions and dance steps to such classics as “Down By the Old Mill Stream” and “Heart Of My Heart.”

“It’s a heritage,” Quaid said. “These are songs kids don’t hear anymore, and they’re fabulous.”

Quaid grew up in a home where music was a constant. Her father played in an orchestra from the time he was 13 years old. “We just always had music, and these are songs that I was raised with.”

In addition to direction, Quaid played piano for each number and provided props, including boaters, bow ties, sleeve garters and top hats. Ali Hopson painted signs to decorate the stage, and other mothers and grandmothers helped make costumes, such as the flapper outfits for the “Five Foot Two” number.

For “Doodlee Doo,” the kids buzzed the melody on kazoos. Five boys had baseball uniforms, gloves and hats to pantomime a scene from the diamond as the rest of the kindergartners sang “Take Me Out to the Ballgame.” Four girls in pink and green summer dresses sang to their dolls in “Oh, You Beautiful Doll.”

Hopson, whose daughter Jane was one of the flappers, said she was glad the kids got to learn some old-fashioned songs. “She did a wonderful job,” she said of Quaid. “I could almost feel my grandparents’ presence as I was sitting there listening to those old songs I grew up with.”

The big finale, “Give My Regards to Broadway,” featured all 49 kindergartners with top hats and canes.

“I’ve been enjoying so much watching them come out of their shells,” said Michele Sibley, one of the two kindergarten teachers at Bowmar. “Some of them are so shy in the classroom, but they’ve loved this. And they have taken it so seriously.”

Quaid’s husband, Tom Quaid, played guitar for the performances. He also made and painted a car that was a prop for “Let Me Call You Sweetheart,” which was performed in two parts. First, four boys in khaki pants, white shirts and bow ties stood with the car, singing the first verse to four girls standing nearby in their Sunday best. Then they switched places, and the girls sang,

“Let me call you sweetheart, I’m in love with your automachine,

Let me hear you whisper that you’ll buy the gasoline.

Keep your headlights glowing and your hands upon the wheel,

Let me call you sweetheart I’m in love with your automobile.”

The audience responded with cheers and whoops.

“I’m impressed,” said Cassandra Terry, the other kindergarten teacher. “I’m really impressed that kids this age learned 12 songs.”

“It exposes some kids to singing who would never otherwise get to sing,” Sibley said. “And nobody knows if you’re rich or poor. Everybody’s equal on stage. Everybody gets a chance.”

Though Ryan loved the performance aspect, as a teacher she was also pleased with what the show taught the kids.

“One thing as a music teacher that I’m thrilled with — being an oldie but goodie myself — is that it increases their attention span. The arts do. And the songs have nice catchy melodies and words that tell a story.”

Ryan ticked off the skills and beyond-the-textbook learning value for the kids, beginning with rehearsal. “In this day of instant everything, we forget the value of practice, of memory, of repetition. It builds stamina, public speaking ability, poise — what we call stage presence. And the younger you start them, the better.”

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Contact Pamela Hitchins at phitchins@vicksburgpost.com