How'd You Get Into Theatre? — Page 2

It all began when my big sister found Phantom. I always liked what my big sister liked and we would have sing offs to the title song. It was then the I began researching ALW and all his shows. However I took a break untill 2008 when I watched the Tony's for the frist time. I remember cheering for Patti and loving Lin-Manuel. I hope one day I can see a show outside of my computer and local productions.
Oh.. I guess I should say this: it was next to normal that made me never go back to the cold unfeeling mainstream

^i totally know how you feel!

Honestly? It started with watching (and loving) all those old movie musicals (Sound of Music, etc.) and, oh, all those Disney musicals on TV, both the cartoons but also especially the live-action ones. I adored, as a kid, "Follow Me, Boys" and "Summer Magic" and "The One and Only, Genuine, Original Family Band" and the like. Once one gets into musicals, period, it's just one step away from live staged musicals and then another step into straight plays.

My mom was a ballet dancer when I was a kid so the theater wasn't a foreign place to me, and I remember when I was about five I was a Munchkin in a local production of The Wizard Of Oz. At some point in elementary school I started listening to musicals a lot (Cabaret was my favorite) and apparently at some point I asked my mother, "Is it okay that I like musicals?", because I was a boy and I suppose I thought it was wrong somehow. It kind of stuck with me through high school (in twelfth grade I took Theater ROP where we built sets and I got to crew for the first time; the show starred Chris Colfer) but I didn't really get into it until college where I developed an intense passion for stage design. It's been a year since I've really been involved in theater and it's kinda bumming me out. Being part of that is probably the most incredible experience I know of. Even just pulling flies is exhilarating.

I killed some dude and stole his identity. He was in theater.

It wasn't the ideal situation, but I've grown to appreciate it.

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I had been singing since I was three, and my parents all the way through my childhood tried to get me involved in musicals. At the time, I had no interest, my focus was on sports. A cycle of my parents telling me about a show I could audition for and me refusing went on until I was twelve, when my parents finally forced me to audition for our middle school's production of Honk Jr. I was cast as the lead and the rest is history I suppose.

I was indoctrinated into theater and opera from the cradle. The only music that was ever played in our house when I was growing up was classical, opera and showtunes (no, not one single Sinatra album, or Tony Bennett or Perry Como or any other “popular” music). My mother in particular had a love for the theater and had been introduced to it at a very young age by a maiden aunt. My mother remembered being taken to see Anna Pavlova dance when she was four years old (my mother, not Pavlova). She was determined to pass this love on to her children and from the age of about three on my brother and I were taken to every children's production of both music and theater in Chicago. I have strong memories of going to see shows at The Goodman Theater. I can’t even tell you the first show I saw because I was so young, but I do remember seeing a production of G&S’s “The Gondoliers” when I was about 4.

My mother was very upset by the lack of theater in general (well, culture in general) when we moved to Los Angeles (I was 5) but she managed to find a children's theater program at UCLA and a few other venues around LA. This was about when the Music Center was being built and when the Ahmanson opened in 1967 (with Man of La Mancha) my parents became charter season subscribers with tickets for the three of us (my brother, considerably older than me, wasn’t interested) so I got to see every show (Broadway touring company and others) that played the Ahmanson, as well as whatever came to UCLA and the Shubert Theater and the Pantages. End result was I became a devoted fan of classical music, opera and theater for life. As an adult, and after my parents died, I maintained these subscriptions (along with one for the LA Opera after it was created) until financial considerations forced me to give up most of them.

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