The first Broadway show I ever saw was a touring production of The Lion King, when I was five years old. My grandparents took me and my family when it came through Boston.
I mainly remember two things about that first exposure to live theater. One: sifting through the trail mix my mother packed us and being disgusted every time I accidentally ate a raisin instead of an M&M in the dark. Children should not have to live their lives in that kind of uncertain environment. But I also remember two - being transfixed by the amazing music, production values and of course, the intricate puppetry that The Lion King is famous for. The show took me out of my life, out of my head, and somewhere amazing for two hours. It was like a magic trick. From that day on, I was hooked and the zealotry towards seeing professional shows only grew when I got to see Wicked at thirteen. And Catch Me if You Can at fifteen. And Hamilton at nineteen. And on and on and on.
I can’t dance, or act and my singing has been known to cause physical discomfort to those who hear it. I’m not a Broadway hopeful, at least, not anymore. (Enough time has passed since Glee went off the air that a large amount of my generation has managed to let go of that dream.) But dammit if I’m not going to patron the hell out of it, like a high school football booster reliving his glory days through attending every game and spending an obscene amount of money - Hey, check it out Dad, I made a sports metaphor!
I watched the Tonys this year on my laptop - my sister very selfishly commandeered our family's television to watch a Zac Efron movie. The awards were a more sober event the one probably originally planned, due to the horrific LGBT massacre in Orlando just twenty-four hours before. Even where I live, hundred of miles away in suburban Boston, people found themselves saddened and subdued by the murder of LGBT men and women, the spike in Islamophobia that followed the shooting, and the abysmal record of gun violence in this country as a whole.
But then something amazing happened. The Tonys still came on TV. Host James Corden mugged for the camera. The cast of Waitress was peppy and cute and then Jessie Mueller blew a Sara Bareilles song out of the water. Lin-Manuel Miranda made everyone cry over his sonnets (and how he and his wife are #relationshipgoals.) My Facebook and Twitter feeds, full of sorrow and dismal news reports, began to dilute with joy, awards show jokes, the phrase “YASSS GIRL” in regards to Danielle Brooks. Broadway was lifting people’s spirits, not only distracting them from their sadness, but honoring it and through the power of song and sheer creative genius and craftsmanship, reminding them that the sun will, in fact, come out tomorrow.
Theaters are churches. There’s something spiritually moving about sitting in a dark room with hundreds of strangers, being experiencing joy and grief and everything in-between as a group. There will always be hardships in this life, from big ones like Orlando and Donald Trump and the Boston Bombing, to little ones, like your 17-year-old sister insisting on using the family television to watch High School Musical 3 when SHE COULD DO THAT ANY OTHER TIME, KRISTEN. But there will also always be Broadway, as a beacon of hope and distraction and light.
The show will always go on, and in these uncertain times, that deserves a standing ovation.
