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#26

re: Earliest Musical/Theatre Memories

Posted: 4/8/08 at 2:39am

I think the first time my parents ever took me to a professional theatre performance, it was of G&S's The Mikado at Saratoga Performing Arts Center (SPAC for us upstaters) when I was about 8. Legend has it I was at the edge of my seat for the first 45 minutes, then fell asleep.

They also took me to see a touring production of Grease while I was in elementary school but I didn't start having those transcendant theatre experiences until I started performing in musicals at school. Shows took on a whole new meaning once I realized that I loved doing them as much as I loved watching them.
Face life with a little guts and lots of *glitter*
#27

re: Earliest Musical/Theatre Memories

Posted: 4/8/08 at 5:07am

I saw "The Wiz" on Broadway when I was six, but to be honest, I don't remember much about it. (I guess it didn't leave an impression on me) The first show that I truly loved was "Evita." I was nine when "Evita" was on Broadway, so I definitely appreciated it more. I was in awe of Patti!!!
As far as movie musicals go, I also totally loved "Mame" with Lucille Ball, and I watched it constantly. Don't hate me for saying that- I was only 4 when that movie came out!!!! My next earliest movie musical memory was "Easter Parade" every year with my Grandmother from the age of 4 also. Granny was and still is a HUGE Judy fan!!!
Acting should be bigger than life. Scripts should be bigger than life. It should all be bigger than life.- Bette Davis
#28

re: Earliest Musical/Theatre Memories

Posted: 4/8/08 at 9:56am

My parents brought home the original cast album of OLIVER after seeing it on Broadway, and I must have played that album on my little kids turntable until it wore out. Before that it was the films of MARY POPPINS and SOUND OF MUSIC.

My first professional theatre experience was Brian Friel's LOVERS starring Art Carney at New Haven's Shubert Theatre, followed closely by a tour of YOU'RE A GOOD MAN CHARLIE BROWN at the same theatre.

My first Broadway shows: first, APPLAUSE starring Anne Baxter (Bacall had left two weeks earlier), followed two weeks later by COMPANY (Larry Kert and Jane Russell).
#29

re: Earliest Musical/Theatre Memories

Posted: 4/8/08 at 12:14pm

I guess my first live musical was a touring production of "Annie" that played at the Palace in Albany a few months after the movie in the early 80s.

Before that, I think I might have seen some regional play...but it's such a fragmented, vague memory that I can't really place it.

And, of course, there was always "The Sound of Music" on TV and I had a few cast albums on vinyl.
#30

re: Earliest Musical/Theatre Memories

Posted: 4/8/08 at 12:23pm

My very first was the touring company of the original production of Guys and Dolls in Washington DC in 1952. I was six at the time and became hooked at that moment. I was particularly fascinated by the Take Back Your Mink number.
BroadwayEd
#31

re: Earliest Musical/Theatre Memories

Posted: 4/8/08 at 12:54pm

I have vauge recoolections of watching 'Grease' as a very small child, but I grew up in a very punk/rock house so I don't have many early memories of watching any musical films.

I went to see a touring production of 'Joesph' when I was about 6 or 7 and all I remember is the person next to me had a cold and thinking the camel onstage was real..and not liking it very much.

Nothings changed. :P
"I trained as a classical actor at Juilliard. I jump at the opportunity to do classical text...But I never in a million years guessed I'd get to play Juliet!"- Michael Arden
#32

re: Earliest Musical/Theatre Memories

Posted: 4/8/08 at 12:58pm

When I was in third grade, we sat in on an abridged version of the high school doing PINK PANTHER. I loved it. I remember some funny bits in it and I must have asked my mom to go because I remember her taking me.

Around that time, I also remember her taking us to see A CHRISTMAS CAROL at a school somewhere.

That was really it, though, until I saw Carol Channing as Dolly at age 17. It was all uphill from there. :)
Broadway Mouth: From the Mouth of Jerome Kern (via Mary Martin): Don’t Be a Dime a Dozen
#33

re: Earliest Musical/Theatre Memories

Posted: 4/8/08 at 1:05pm

Puppetman, the first professional stage musical I saw was the national company of OKLAHOMA! when it played in my hometown for 2 nights. The second musical I saw in my hometown was that tour of BLOSSOM TIME. I'm pretty sure that I saw my first musical on Broadway, MISS LIBERTY, between those two.

Tom Herson
Ithaca, NY
AIM - HersonIthaca
#34

re: Earliest Musical/Theatre Memories

Posted: 4/8/08 at 1:22pm

My first live theater experience was when I was 9 and I saw a local middle school's production of "The Wizard of Oz." I'm sure that there were more before that, but I can't remember any of them.
<--Sometimes it's easier to get out of a jam than into one
#35

re: Earliest Musical/Theatre Memories

Posted: 4/9/08 at 2:16am

Anne Baxter in Applause. I always wished I could have seen Ehtel Merman in Gypsy.

Diane
If I heard the bells and the banjos ring
#36

re: Earliest Musical/Theatre Memories

Posted: 4/9/08 at 2:31am

West Side Story all the way around.

I remember being 7 or 8 and watching the movie on tv and i vividly remmeber seeing those colors on the screen during the overture and the whole danced prologue. And being absolutely transfixed.

and then when I was in 8th grade, I had just done my first play and went to see West Side Story at Leland High School and my dad was a teacher there and was the "special faculty actor" playing Officer Krupke. I was enraptured. I thought it was amazing. And that was the first time I thought, "I really want to do THIS!" Now that I'm a professional, I look back and it was a terrible production. But I LOVED it at the time. And I'll always have that memory.

And finally this summer, I'll finally be doing the show for the first time. It really is a dream come true.
"...and in a bed."
#37

re: Earliest Musical/Theatre Memories

Posted: 4/9/08 at 5:22am

I just remembered one more thing to add to my previous thread- learning the entire Broadway cast recording of "Jesus Christ Superstar" in the fourth grade. It was a Catholic grammar school with a really "hip" fourth grade teacher who loved that show. We had to know all the words to the songs by the end of the year to get a passing grade in music.
Acting should be bigger than life. Scripts should be bigger than life. It should all be bigger than life.- Bette Davis
#38

re: Earliest Musical/Theatre Memories

Posted: 4/9/08 at 9:41am

I just remembered something else:

My dad as a general rule dislikes musicals with the exception of (for reasons i don't know) The King and I and West Side Story, i have vauge memories of bugging him throughout my childhood to play 'somewhere' on the record player that i wasn't allowed to touch..
"I trained as a classical actor at Juilliard. I jump at the opportunity to do classical text...But I never in a million years guessed I'd get to play Juliet!"- Michael Arden
#39

re: Earliest Musical/Theatre Memories

Posted: 4/9/08 at 9:50am

Wow, reading the previous posts makes me feel ancient. BEAUTY AND THE BEAST is someone's earliest theatre memory? LOL

Mine is seeing a high school production of CAROUSEL back in 1966. I was 5, and I remember the full orchestra they had. Oddly enough, even at that young age, I completely "got" the plot, and remember the tightness in my chest when Billy tells Louise in the last scene "Believe. You must believe" -- or whatever the line is.

My mom's first B'way memory is one we'd all kill for. The first show she ever saw in NY was the original cast of MY FAIR LADY.

Of course, mine ain't too shabby, either. The first B'way show I ever saw was the original cast of PIPPIN.
#40

re: Earliest Musical/Theatre Memories

Posted: 4/9/08 at 11:13am

Mine is memorizing every. single. WORD. To "Song and Dance" -well the song part at any rate. I was about 5 years old. I nearly wore out my mother's record. I'm actually fairly certain that if someone started the music right now, I could still sing the entire thing. Actually anytime I hear the music for it now, I mist up and get nostalgic.

My first broadway show was a few years later, November 1987 - I was 7 - and it was Les Mis - and I remember being delighted at how TINY the theater was (our national tour house in NC was so HUGE) - to me the Broadway theater looked... like a jewel box.
Now what would you say if today I started over? Without a thing but this taped together four leaf clover And I'll pretend like everything is already alright And I'll run toward the sun till the castle's out of sight
#41

re: Earliest Musical/Theatre Memories

Posted: 4/9/08 at 1:27pm

I was about 4, and I stole my grandparents vinyls of the OBC recordings of Hair, and Porgy and Bess, and Camelot, and West Side Story. My parents decided to enroll me in the local theatre. When I was still 4 I was a baby sheep in Babes in Toyland.
My first actual Broadway show wasn't until I was 11. It was the 42nd St. revival with Christine Ebersole.
#42

re: Earliest Musical/Theatre Memories

Posted: 4/9/08 at 3:02pm

I just realized, many of my dance recitals were sort of based on already existing musical theater. The dance studio owner always made up a script or something, and made all the dances something that would be found within the theme. Like my first one was kind of based I guess on a mix of Gypsy and A Chorus Line. Well, we a couple of songs from each show. Basically, it was about these girls who worked in a library, but the one girl wanted to be a dancer instead. Most of the dances were things from books, but then there were parts similar to the 2 shows. Like the audition part at the end, the 1 girls name was Rosie. Yeah, we pretty much mutated A Chorus Line and Gypsy into 1 show. LOL! But when we did Peter Pan as the theme, there was so much used from the stage production, it wasn't even funny.
"I don't want the pretty lights to come and get me."-Homecoming 2005 "You can't pray away the gay."-Callie Torres on Grey's Anatomy. Ignored Users: suestorm, N2N Nate., Owen22, master bates

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