High School Musicals

For about a year I've been listening to podcasts of "Working in the Theatre" from the American Theatre Wing (http://www.americantheatrewing.org/wit/). These are seminars that bring together various theater artists with a moderator, with the purpose of informing aspiring theater artists about how to get into the business and how the business works. This has been like a fabulous master class--and as I finish listening to the archives and get up to date, I'm thrilled to know that there are hundreds more individual interview podcasts in the Wing's Downstage Center series (http://www.americantheatrewing.org/downstagecenter/).

Among the many thought-provoking comments I've heard on the podcasts was one about musicals--that some of them live on vividly in the culture because they are produced in high schools. At Highland Park High School, during the years I was there, I saw "Oklahoma!", "My Fair Lady", "Brigadoon" and something else that I can't remember. (I could go up in the attic and look for my HPHS yearbooks, but it is 10 degrees here at the moment, so I refuse to do that!) Dozens of kids work on these shows, and hundreds of friends and family members come to watch the shows. People with big roles become (or became at my school, anyway) as important in the collective consciousness as quarterbacks and cheerleaders. My good friend Mike Tobin had important parts in a couple of those shows, and I remember them very well.

Most musicals make me cry at the drop of a hat anyway, but I am a particular sap for "Brigadoon," partly because of that high school exposure, and partly because of a summer youth theater production that was done in 1970, when I graduated from high school. I had had a boyfriend during my junior and senior years of high school. He was a college freshman when I was a senior, and by the end of that summer he had moved on. He had a little part in the summer "Brigadoon"--he played the bartender--and the emotion I felt about seeing him onstage is all wrapped up with my feelings about the show. He had taken me on a big date once into Chicago to see a touring production of "Man of La Mancha," and I can get all choked up about that, too.

But then, when I watch the film of "The King and I," I start crying at "Shall We Dance?", so don't go by me.