Having time on your hands is an interesting thing. While I’m doing all the activities that I thought I would do I was surprised to find myself gravitating to something I don’t do every day: watching movie musicals.
This may not come as a surprise for my childhood friends reading this, as most of us were diehard musical theater geeks, but for those of you who don’t know, I was performing in musicals at our church since grade school and continued to sing and dance all throughout high school. I was drama club president and treasurer of the glee club to boot and I lived and died with the Rent CDs for most of my adolescence.
I was a theater minor in college and years later, I wound up putting that minor to good use by writing theater reviews for Resident Magazine. While my taste for theater has matured as I’ve grown older, I still miss the feel-good musicals of my youth that made me want to get on a stage to begin with.
As a gentle reminder, I am currently social distancing with my parents and my husband, so if we watch a movie these days, we pretty much vote on what’s next on the watch list. I’ve been campaigning for musical after musical and we’ve watched two big ones thus far: Annie and Seven Brides for Seven Brothers.
Our Giuliana seems to love music and giggles uncontrollably when I belt out The Sun Will Come Out Tomorrow—partly because she loves being entertained and partly because I’m terrible (I do commit though, so there’s something to be said for that).
All of this strolling down memory lane got me thinking about my long-lost theater days, so I posted a note on Facebook asking friends and family for their favorite movie musical suggestions. I figured I might as well create a comprehensive list to have throughout Giuliana’s childhood so she can get a proper Broadway education.
Social media is a funny thing, but sometimes, it unites us in a way that most other things cannot. I had my old theater friends responding to the question, telling me their favorites and which movies their kids love singing along with now. We had some threads where we joked about our least favorite musical reviews we did together.
The digital reunion really made me smile. It felt so nice to connect with old friends, many of whom are new moms themselves, and be able to harken back to a really wonderful time in my adolescence when the only worry we really had was what part we were going to get cast in or which songs we were singing at the glee club recital. Times then felt tough, but they weren’t, not even close. But when we did have normal teenage angst, troubles and drama, we always had theater as our creative outlet to make us feel better when we needed it the most.
So if you’re wondering what musicals we’re cueing up, I currently have the following on my list:
Gypsy, Little Shop of Horrors, Rock Horror Picture Show and Bye Bye Birdie