Members' Mothers and Fathers Theater Influence

Do either of your parents share your passion for theater? If not a parent, do you or did you have a significant person in your life with whom your share a love for theater?

My mother always shared my joy of Broadway and was with me for my first five Broadway shows (my father was there for only the first.)

Indeed, it was my mother who got my father to get the tickets for my first Broadway show, Hello Dolly! with Pearl Bailey. I recall vividly my mother wondering if perhaps my father should have gotten tickets for a show with "more of a story." I hsve never really understood what the heck she meant, in fact, I am giving myself a note to remind me to ask her later:)

It was a few years before this that my father brought home the OCR of Bye, Bye, Birdie. I was very young and it is uncharachteristic that my father brought this album home. More likely than not, it was given to him as a gift at work. One of my older sisters and I fell in love with Bye, Bye, Birdie and played it repeatedly. I do have a childhood memory of watching, with my mother, "The Telephone Hour" from Birdie being performed on t.v. Maybe my mother asked my father to get the album and doesn't recall now??? hmmmmmmmmmm

Did your mother or father influence your theater going life?

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Miriam, do you mind my asking where your mother dressed and your father pitted?

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Mine have never sipported me as anything.. let alone an actor

My parents took me to my first Broadway show and I thank them for that becuae I hooked from that day on. My mom will sometimes go to the city and see shows with me but she doesn't have the passion for it like I do.

I really don't know what my parents think about me acting. They suport me in a sence that they let me take dance and vocal lessons and they are ok with me double majoring in Theater and communications. Then the othr day I asked if it would b ok for me to go to a school like AMDA if I wanted to and I was told not falt out no. Alot of the time I feel my mom doesn't think I'm talented. She tells me I'm worng but I just don't feel she's behind me when it comes to acting.

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:) thanks ya know it really doesn't bother me that much she has always been behind me in everything eles in my life. When ever I need her or my dad they are always there for me so thats whats really important.
On top of that it really doesn't matter who blives in me as long as I believe in me.

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my parents arent artsy people, for me it was my geandmother who was the threatre lover, and luckily it rubbed off on me =) she saw shows all the time and when I was little, maybe 7, she took me and my sister to Radio City to see the Easter show..that one day in NYC, after walking down Broadway, i knew this was where i wanted to be!! She always took me to see shows and I will always be grateful. She died on Christmas Day two years ago, and I still cant listen to The Impossible Dream without crying, because that was one of our special songs we sang together =*)

Its always been my grandmother's dream to see me on Broadway, and I'm here at NYU trying to acheive that for the both of us. Itd make her life (i find this quite funny) to see me as Albin in La Cage Aux Folles. She saw the original 5 times on Bway and its her favorite show.

i love this thread:) lots of very touching stuff.....

robbiej, i too tested my parents' limits when i was nude in an off broadway show in the mid 1970s. they were always wonderful about most things.

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Our family was visiting another family who lived a long way from us. All very straight, lots of kids, very noisy. I was about seven or eight.

One of the boys from our hosts family got my brothers and myself into their Dad's den and started playing MY FAIR LADY, SOUND OF MUSIC, WEST SIDE STORY...on the phonograph.

Well, we had never heard anything like this in our house. It was all Johnny Cash and Mills Brothers. And may I tell you we were, to say the least, intrigued?

Comes time to leave, and I remember, we were in the middle of WEST SIDE STORY and Mom comes in to the den and says, "Okay, boys, let's go." When we protested, and said we wanted to hear the end of this record she said, "Oh, for God's sake, we have all those records at home."

Who knew? And sure enough, we did. They just never played them for us.

From then on it was Musicals all the way in our house. We were all out of the closet, to some degree!

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Updated On: 11/12/03 at 07:11 PM

I'd been to see summer stock shows and had saved my allowances to buy tickets to Broadway shows (in those days matinee tickets were 4.50!). However, it was my father who was able to wrangle Opening Night tickets to TWHM for me and my mother.He was an auto mechanic and one of his customers was associated with the TV show called "That Was The Week That Was". He to get us third row center seats. Both Mom & I balked because the tickets were an astronomical $9.90 apiece!!!! However, we were seated near Arlene Francis, Peggy Cass and Dorothy Kilgallen and when the curtain rose my life was forever changed. Thanks Dad!

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My Mom tells me that she and my Dad took my brother and I to Dallas to see Hello, Dolly!, um, I mean TWHM, when I was about 4 years old. I don't remember that production at all, but she swears I was entranced and watched in complete silence and talked about it for weeks. Mom and Dad both were fond of musicals and took us to tours and community productions in Dallas and Shreveport frequently. Dad is deceased but Mom still loves musicals. I treated her to a trip to NYC at Thanksgiving 2001 during which we saw four shows (Cabaret, By Jeeves, 42nd Street, and The Full Monty) and she, well, she talked about it for weeks!

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tis amazing the things we learn from hearing stories about our parents...

Sueleen, I really had no idea before this that you were a "boy." Go figure.

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Hello Dolly was also my first Broadway show. The second I ever saw was Plaza Suite starring Peggy Cass. A few years later, I saw Arlene Francis in GIGI.

I have shadowy memories of THAT WAS THE WEEK THAT WAS. I remember the theme song and the buzz about its controversial attitude.

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