If you know anything about me, it’s that I love theatre. I love everything about it; I could talk about it for hours. Thankfully I live in Queens, New York, which means I'm a short drive from Manhattan. I've written before about my recent experience with "Matilda The Musical"on Broadway; I saw "Kinky Boots" over winter break as well. I was about to go back to school four hours away from home, so I wanted to hit up any show that had seats available (sadly, this did not include "Hamilton").
For those of you who don’t know, "Kinky Boots" features drag queens, knee high stilettos, and music by Cyndi Lauper. For non-Broadway fans, that’s probably the last thing you would expect to see on the Great White Way, but Broadway is a place of infinite possibilities: chandeliers fall, founding fathers rap, children and their nannies soar, and revolutions unfold before the audience's very eyes.
There’s something special about live theatre that you don't get from a movie. The sets and costumes can be anywhere from over the top to next to nothing, and wherever they land on that scale is meaningful to the story being expressed on stage. Anything could happen, and usually does (every theatre kid has a story about that—ask me about that time in high school when several nuns, myself included, were missing from the finale of "The Sound of Music"). There are things that differ from one performance to the next, making evey single person’s experience unique for both the audience and the cast and crew. If you’ve ever been in a production, you know there’s nothing like the rush that comes from hearing the audience react to what they’re seeing, even if you’re backstage.
Fun fact about me: I cry at every curtain call. No joke; for every single show I’ve seen or been in, I’ve cried. "The Little Mermaid"? Sobbed. "Matilda"? Bawling. Don't even get me started on "Finding Neverland"; the waterworks started in the middle of act two and didn't stop until I left the building. Even "Kinky Boots" had me tearing up. I even cry at shows I haven't even seen yet (I dare you to try to get through “Who Lives, Who Dies, Who Tells Your Story” from "Hamilton" without losing your cool). Curtain call is about all the actors coming together to be proud of what they created. Raoul and the Phantom shake hands, the Heathers hug it out, and Evita lives again, if only for those few moments when the audience is on their feet, cheering.
There’s something about sitting there, knowing you’re watching real people, knowing they’re right in front of you, feeling the beat in your chest, knowing that this is a story that is going to live on and on. Theatre doesn’t have the same kind of immortality that movies do; movies exist as they are forever, but theatre is always changing. Even if a show closes, it can go on tour, or return later, with a different cast and a different creative team. It’s pure magic.
