On Wednesday, May 24, I joined my high school drama club as we day-tripped to Broadway for an improv workshop, lunch, and to see Beautiful: The Carole King Musical. Ever since I was a freshman at Mills, we had been spending a Wednesday in May down in New York City attending various theatre workshops and seeing various shows as a way to close out the school year and spend time as one big drama family.

Being invited back by the director was completely amazing, but actually going on the trip was even better. Most of my old castmates were there, as well as some of my other non-drama friends. Getting the chance to spend a day with them reminded me of how much I had missed them while away at college.

For most of the long bus ride down to the city, my friends and I sang show tunes at the top of our lungs and caught up on so many things. We discussed relationships and college and everything in between. When we got to our workshop, we split up into two groups so that we did not have to squish maybe 40+ people into a tiny space. During the workshop, we just let loose and acted and performed without much of a care as to how we were perceived by our peers. After all, most of us are or were actors at some point. After the workshop was a Q & A session with one of the actresses from Beautiful, and to many of our delights walked in Jessica Keenan Wynn, otherwise known to many as Heather Chandler from the musical Heathers. She was so down to earth and really easy to talk to and overall an amazing human being, and now I have even more reason to find a bootleg of Heathers so that I can finally watch the show everyone raves about.

Beautiful was incredible. I was never much of a Carole King fan, and I still am not now, but I definitely do have more of an appreciation for her. King went through so much in her life with her husband and seeing how that affected his and her work together in the music industry as well as her personal life was eye-opening. All of the actors performed phenomenally, especially Jessica Keenan Wynn and Abby Mueller (who played Carole King).

The trip was such a memorable one, mainly due to the group I was with. My LSM drama family had been through a lot with me, and they truly are my extended family. I am eternally grateful for the chance to spend that day with them and I hope to do it all again next year and the year after that, until my very own freshmen graduate in two years.