When I was in Elementary School, I saw productions by the Prince Street Players. I was hooked into the worlds they created.
If anyone ever tells you that you put too much Parmesan cheese on your pasta, stop talking to them. You don't need that kind of negativity in your life.
1. Like lots of kids, my friends Christopher, Kathy, Stacy and I used to string a rope between two trees in our backyard, put a couple sheets over it for a curtain, and did skits for our families.
2. I lived in a very small mountain town, population about 1,000 at the time, and a college used to come a couple times a year and put on plays. I remember one in particular, Cinderella, and how I was so attracted to the Prince. I was very young, not even in puberty, and certainly had no idea what "gay" was, but he stirred something in me. I thought about him a lot.
3. I was always a shepherd or a king in the Catholic parish's Christmas pageant, and I remember one time being one a few Christmas packages that ran away. I thought the costume was the coolest thing, just a big cardboard box Mom wrapped up and cut out holes for my face, arms and legs.
4. The PTA used to do an annual fundraising event called Ham on the Hill (we lived in the mountains). All the parents and some talented high school kids produced an annual variety show over a couple weekends. It was THE event in Arnold, California. I was never in it but loved watching it and I know the wink-wink adult jokes went over my head.
Took Theater in College because I thought it would be easy. We were required to see 3 shows. Thought I would hit two birds with one stone and I took a friend to see Wicked on her Birthday. The opening scene with the monkeys scared me. I thought the monkeys were going to come down into the audience so I grabbed my friend. All in all theater incorporated my favorite part about concerts which was the music and the staging. Wicked was a gateway drug to RENT which was a gateway drug to Spring Awakening. People frown upon Wicked but it is what got some people hooked into seeing and supporting live theater.
When I was in grade school, one of our neighbors was a scenic designer for the music department at the local university, so through knowing him I was an ensemble member in "Falstaff" and "The Music Man" and got interested in music. Years later, the score to "Les Miserables" turned me into a hopeless show freak and it remains that way today.
Just remembering you've had an "and"
When you're back to "or"
Makes the "or" mean more than it did before
I was lucky enough to go to the best high school in the country, a Jesuit school in Manhattan. A couple of times each year, they had 'X-Days," days on which students could attend cultural events and sites around the city. Choices were open to all, with sign ups by year, then alphabetically. My first year, in the fall of 1979, as a freshman with a last name toward the end of the alphabet, I had very few choices when it was my turn. So, I settled for seeing A Chorus Line. I had never seen a Broadway show before, or any show for that matter, so I was going quite reluctantly.
"It does me no injury for my neighbour to say there are 20 gods or no god. It neither picks my pocket, nor breaks my leg."
-- Thomas Jefferson