Take Me For What I Am
I am a self-proclaimed “Level 1A” musical theatre aficionado. If there is anything that I allow myself to indulge in with utmost pretension, it is the gratification of knowing that I possess an absurdly above-average amount of love for and knowledge of Broadway musicals. I do not take this status lightly, and I only just attained such a ranking after my most recent trip to New York City. Preparing to graduate from college a semester early, I went to the city for a long weekend with my best friend Celeste, who is also finishing school in December and is the only person I’ve ever met who knows as much about musical theatre as I do. We called it our unofficial Spring Break. Game plan: see as many Broadway shows in three and a half days for as cheap as possible. Two options: 1) try for rush tickets (leftover seats sold the day of a performance for a flat rate, usually costing between $30-$40), 2) enter digital and in-person lotteries, where tickets are randomly awarded to lucky winners (entrants can select to receive one or two tickets in case of a win), also usually offered a flat rate and sometimes located in the front row. Our entire trip was a game of chance. Armed with a loaf of bread and a jar of peanut butter, and intentions to only spend money for food on $1 slices of pizza, we played our cards exactly right, and I officially earned my title of total Broadway buff.
The only thing worse than being in the hellhole that is Times Square is jogging through it in cold October rain, elbowing through swarms of doe-eyed tourists, their faces illuminated by a kaleidoscope of jumbotrons. Hurry! Take cover from the chilly precipitation under the glowing marquee of the Eugene O’Neill Theater on 48th Street, where The Book of Mormon has been playing to Broadway audiences since 2011. Quick! Fill out a lottery entry card, check a box to receive two tickets in case of a win, and toss it in the golden raffle drum being spun by a young man with a miniature bullhorn in his other hand. A crowd of maybe 60 other entrants are already huddled under the theater’s blinking bulbs.
“Five minutes until the lottery closes, ladies and gentlemen,” the young man says. “Five minutes until we draw the winning names, the first ten of which will receive front row seats!”
The pile of entry cards ruffles around inside the spinning drum, as last minute hopefuls drop in their chances. Then the drawing begins. Twenty-five tickets will be given away. Fingers crossed. The first nine winners are from all over the world: Norway, Portugal, Canada, Washington, even New York City.
“Alright, this is the last name for the front row,” he says.
I brace myself for loss.
“From Virginia….”
Ah!
“We have Vayda Parrish!”
I make a noise that can only be described as a gasping squeal. I had won a game of breathless bingo, after running through the rain from the Rockefeller Center subway stop to the umbrella of the Eugene O’Neill’s marquee. I am ushered into the foyer of the theater, awarded a button boasting, “I WON THE BOOK OF MORMON LOTTERY!”, and placed in a queue to the box office to claim my $32 front row prize. At the general box office line next to the winner’s window, some hopeful theatregoers are turning away after being told that full price orchestra seats were available for a minimum of $169. I deserve this $32 front row seat, dammit.
Later that night, I sit down in one of the Eugene O’Neill’s deep violet, velvety upholstered seats. The orchestra tunes up. The conductor looks exactly like 1980s Val Kilmer from Top Gun. He never cracks a smile, leading the orchestra from his perch at the keyboard, directing the musicians with lively hands more expressive than his stone cold face. The moment he signals the swell of the overture, I am transported. I am no longer in my rural Virginia hometown. I am front and center and completely enveloped in the escape of a singing and dancing, musically orchestrated narrative. I am on Broadway and I am blissful, enveloped again in the magic of live theatre that enchants me like nothing else.
After the show, Celeste and I walk a block over to the Walter Kerr Theatre, where the Opening Night crowd from the acclaimed revival of Falsettos is spilling out onto 48th Street. We linger amongst them, still dressed up from seeing Mormon. There is no security, no hordes of fans rushing to greet the cast. There is only a stream of beautifully dressed familiar faces from the industry. The glamour and excitement blends in with the Manhattan air. I recognize Billy Porter, Tony-winning actor of Kinky Boots fame, sporting dress pants with a loud, groovy black and white print stamped on them. I pass by Tony Schaloub, star of the television series “Monk”, chatting with some of his friends in the theater lobby. I mingle around the bustling, invite-only theatergoers and hear shouts of, “Hey man! What’s the address of the after party again?”
“53rd and 6th!”
That’s the address of the MoMA…how cool is that?
For a moment I consider trying to hail a cab and head straight to 53rd and 6th myself. Instead, I stand under the glittering marquee and hang around until the crowd dissipates. I dream of the day when I will get my own Opening Night invitation, when I will be amongst the people who speak my language.
Fangirls and fanboys are fawning, fervent, and fixated. I am all of these things. But I am not a fangirl. Not anymore. In eighth grade, I fangirled over the Jonas Brothers for more than a year. Nick and I were destined to be together because we both played piano and loved the New York Yankees. He also had that cute, curly brown hair and sweet singing voice so how could I not be in love with him? My bedroom was plastered with posters of the boy band pulled from the pages of Tiger Beat and J-14. There was also a period of time in middle school when I preferred to doodle the names of every character from the Twilight series in the margins of my agenda book rather than pay attention in science class.
Fandom is a safe space; it incubates obsession. It’s comforting and enlivening to share a love for something with others, many of whom you might never actually encounter. But fandom can be isolating; it traps you in fantasy and fiction. Yet that’s precisely what makes it thrilling. You become blind to any flaws that a certain book series, band, or Broadway musical might have. Everything about it is perfect and no one can convince you otherwise. Fandom also tends to be temporary, coming and going as phases of passion that eventually fizzle out or fall to the wayside. But my love for Broadway is entering its fifth year of existence. Unlike the Jonas Brothers and Twilight days of my past, my knowledge has reached a point where I often list the names of the 41 theaters to myself, just to stay sharp. It has reached the point where I recently accepted a communications position with the Broadway League, the organization that co-sponsors the Tony Awards. I have fallen away from fandom faster than the high-flying actors in Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark literally fell from the rafters of their flop musical to physical injury and even worse, disastrous reviews. Escaping fandom comes with a newfound ability to look more critically, to assess and appreciate imperfection and refine personal taste.
When I was little, my parents would play the Camelot original Broadway cast recording on cassette in the car. They fell in love with the show after they saw a production of its national tour. It was my earliest exposure to a musical score. I have distinct memories of singing along to showtunes about royal adultery and knighthood, with Richard Burton and Julie Andrews as King Arthur and Queen Guenevere, from the comforts of my car seat.
In 2011 when I was sixteen, I saw my first two shows on Broadway Mary Poppins and Annie. The former was a Disney-produced, tourist-drawing juggernaut; the latter, a revival of a family-oriented classic. If you tried to get me to see a Disney on Broadway show in 2016, I would probably grit my teeth, and only go if I won tickets. Of course Disney shows have merit. If they didn’t, how would The Lion King still be running at the Minksoff Theatre if it opened almost 20 years ago? On a similarly jaded note, imagine my surprise when I later discovered that the revival of Annie that I saw with my family was directed by the iconic James Lapine, director of artistically masterful and critically acclaimed shows such as Stephen Sondheim’s Sunday in the Park with George and Into the Woods, and the 1992 original and 2016 revival casts of William Finn’s Falsettos. But high school me knew nothing of Broadway theatre; I was blinded by the lights of Times Square and the outlying streets of Manhattan’s Theater District, between 40th Street and 53rd Street. I loved the spectacle but didn’t understand the form. I began my journey into musical theatre magic by way of the Broadway bandwagon. I had just begun to fall into fandom.
After seeing Mary Poppins and Annie live onstage, after being enchanted by the triple-threat talent and the powerful, pure vocals, the 2012 feature film version of Les Miserablés took over my life — you know, the retrospectively cringe-worthy film with awkwardly intimate cinematography and film actors straining to sing Alain Boublil and Claude-Michel Schoenberg’s classic show tunes. I’m not sure exactly what drew me in, but I do know that by the end of the nearly three-hour epic, I was artistically awakened, teary, and felt ready to lead a revolution to the tune of “Do You Hear the People Sing?” I needed to know everything about the show. Its original production opened in 1987 at the Broadway Theatre on 53rd Street. I fell down a black hole of theater histories, actors’ and actresses’ résumés, composers, lyricists, and Tony Award winners, losers, and nominees. I became fascinated with the process of creating a show, from the grit of writing songs to the tangibility of the material, being able to rewrite, remove, or add songs during preview performances, and the performers’ abilities to make acting choices based on a live, human audience.
Two days after seeing Mormon Celeste and I are getting off the A train at 181st Street in Washington Heights. We are making a musical pilgrimage to the hometown neighborhood upon which Lin-Manuel Miranda based his 2008 Tony-award winning musical In The Heights. The show’s opening rap number circulates in my head: “Even farther than Harlem to northern Manhattan and maintain / Get off at 181st and take the escalator / I hope you’re writing this down I’m gonna test ya later”. Sure enough, we get off at the 181st street subway stop and take the escalator back up to fresh air. We walk north to Fort Tryon Park, which overlooks the Hudson River and the George Washington Bridge. Lin’s rhymes fill my brain once again: “Just me and the GWB, asking gee, what’ll you be?” The autumnal air is blustery at our elevated overlook. I pull out my phone to take a panoramic photo of the bridge, river, and fall foliage on the New Jersey side of the water. An email comes through, the notification popping up on the screen, interrupting my photography. “You won lottery tickets to FALSETTOS!”, the subject line shouts.
I scream. There had probably been thousands of contestants around the city, and I won. Again. I slowly sit down on the cold pebbly walkway of the park and proceed to sprawl out entirely. I lay on the hard ground in a state of shock. The scarf wrapped snugly around my neck and the jacket hood pulled over my head are the only forms of security preventing my head from exploding. We needed to rush back downtown to claim our winnings from the Walter Kerr Theater’s box office. This was going to be my first sung-through show, and the cast, oh, the cast, including a three-time Tony winner and three other Tony-nominees, not to mention the Tony and Pulitzer-prize winning director James Lapine and Tony-winning composer William Finn. All of my Broadway dreams were coming true in one short weekend.
We rush back to the A train and ride back downtown to the Theater District. We arrive back at the Walter Kerr, this time as ticketholders rather than Opening Night bystanders. The woman in front of us in the Box Office line is speaking frantically into her cell phone, a gold-lettered sign requesting PLEASE NO CELL PHONE USE IN THE LOBBY glints from a small plaque just above her eyelevel.
“Honey, the only orchestra seating they have left for this weekend is too expensive, can we try for later in December?” she pleads with the person on the other line. “Oh, oh okay. Alright I’ll call you back in a few minutes.”
“Ma’am,” the box office attendant says with an eye roll. “We just got an excellent New York Times review. The seats that you want will likely be gone after you call him back in a few minutes.”
The New York Times review of a recently opened play or musical in New York City can literally make or break a production. The lady on the phone clearly doesn’t know this, but I do. And I don’t have to pay $200 for an orchestra seat, only $42 for winning another lottery. I think the universe is trying to tell me something: I belong here.
Later that night, after ugly crying through Act II of Falsettos, Celeste and I rush down the side staircase from my seat in row C of the steeply raked mezzanine, straight out onto 48th Street to claim a spot behind the bright red barricade placed around the Walter Kerr’s stage door. We wait anxiously for the cast members to emerge one by one and sign fans’ Playbills and posters and pose for pictures. All around me Broadway fans crowd in and made small talk with each other about what shows they have seen this weekend and what stars they’ve met at stage doors. We had just seen Falsettos on a Saturday night, only two days after its official opening. A girl next to me has already seen it three times, twice during previews and once the same night as me. Preview performances generally run for about a month and are subject to song, set, and acting changes from the production team up until Opening Night when the show is finalized for audiences.
The understudy for the three adult male roles in the show walks out of the stage door and I let out an audible gasp, but no one around me does. Guys that was Colin Hanlon! You know, the guy who played Tim, the casting director in the web series Submissions Only that satirizes Broadway audition culture in New York City? No? Anyone? Okay, just me. That’s cool. I find myself explaining Submissions Only to supposedly seasoned theatre fans around me. Next thing I know I’m suggesting shows to people (Have you seen director Bartlett Sher’s revival of Fiddler yet? Oh my god, the choreography is incredible and Danny Burstein is a dream as Tevye. It’s closing on New Year’s Eve, you have to see it!). I spout facts about shows that have been housed in the Walter Kerr in the past. I feel awesome. People are listening to me. The cast comes out and signs. Christian Borle (who plays Marvin, the man who leaves his wife and son for his male lover, Whizzer), obviously on vocal rest and speaking very quietly, locks eyes with everyone who thrusts a Playbill or poster into his hands or asks for a stage door selfie.
I am strangling my inner fangirl. Be cool. You are in control. You belong amongst these people. These are your people. This is your thing. Treat them as equals.
“Hi,” Christian almost whispers, speaking mostly with his icy blue eyes. “Thank you for coming,” he says, holding intent but brief eye contact before swirling his Sharpie over my Playbill. He moves down the line and then walks off into the Manhattan night, probably to catch the subway home and recover from another night in his emotionally wrecking role. He’s just a normal guy, living in the bubble of Broadway celebrity. I listen to the girls around me gushing over his good looks. I’m internalizing everything, still proud of myself for facilitating stage door conversation and feeling like I belong on the Broadway scene.
My own life feels straight out of a Broadway show: starry-eyed country girl takes the big city. That seems too cliché, even for me, someone who’s fully embraced this side of myself. But in the immortal words of Jonathan Larson’s RENT, “Take me for what I am/who I was meant to be/and if you give a damn/take me baby, or leave me.”
