Do You Remember Your First Time? — Page 3

Rent on Broadway in July 2001. Seems like just yesterday!

jtishere said: "I was enamored with movie musicals and Broadway scores from a young age but I didn't get to experience live professional theatre until spring 1994. Our high school band teacher took us to the Saenger Theatre in New Orleans to see the national tour of The Phantom of the Opera. I was in heaven, right down to the Diet Coke I got to order at the bar as I held my souvenir program with the red tassels. I remember coming home to a surprise - my dad had bought me the Phantom highlights album that day to have when I got home.

My first show to see on Broadway was May 2009 at the Shubert - Angela Lansbury, Christine Ebersole and Rupert Everett in Blithe Spirit, a whole new level of heaven.

OMG!!! Thank you for sharing that!!

I do. Barely. But my memory of it has a funny story attached later in life. The answer is the 1990 touring production of Bye, Bye Birdie. I can remember only bits and pieces of it as I was VERY young. Maybe 4, 5 at max. My family had season tickets at the local cultural center when I was younger and it was the first time they took me to a show. The only real MEMORY I have of it was the song "The Telephone Hour" and a distant memory of a staircase in the set pieces. That's about it but I do technically remember it.

The AMUSING story about this though came YEARS later when I was in college. I went to a local school and one of our AD HOC professors was a director in NY so when it came time for our spring trip one year, he pulled some strings and got us a Q and A with the cast of the off Broadway show 'The Glorious Ones.' We went, saw the show, had the Q and A. At the VERY end, as we were getting up to leave, the actors asked us where our school was located. We answered and Marc Kudisch responded, "Oh, I've been there. I played Conrad Birdie in a tour of Bye, Bye Birdie that stopped there." I told him that had I had actually seen that production. "No. That's impossible. You're in college. You would have been a baby." And when I told him I was about 5, his sighed really heavy and just said, "God I'm old."

First, a city production of 1776. I was nine and completely enthralled. (I think I drove my family crazy with the OBCR). By middle school I'd all but forgotten about theater until I saw a community theatre production of West Side Story. I was moved beyond words, and have been a devotee of theatre ever since! To this day both of those shows are still very close to my heart.

Reading this made me realize how absurdly recently I got into Broadway.

Mine was a matinee performance on June 30, 2014 for the second Les Misérables revival. I had seen the movie the year before and loved it, and when I found out there was going to be a revival I told my parents to get me a ticket as a graduation present. I remember just sobbing through the entire overture and then not being able to stop smiling for the rest of the day. Then my dad somehow managed to get us tickets to Wicked that night and I haven't looked back since.