Somewhere There's a Place for Us
Okay, I usually, as a writer of fanfiction, tend to try to be pretty cool about people reading it. I get that a lot of people are jerks don't have the time or inclination to review, or rather more like my general reaction when I don't leave reviews, they get distracted. I mean, as an author who asks for reviews, I try to be as good as I can for leaving them for other people.
But what drives me up a fucking wall is on ff.net when people put your story on story alert but don't review it. First of all, but putting it on alert, you're already logged in and it would only take a few minutes more to even type out a "well done." I can deal with this, sometimes, but when a story has seven alerts, 151 hits, and no reviews it irks me greatly. We worked hard to offer you some enjoyment and a good reading experience, is it so hard to leave that feedback? Really?
*Huffs* That being said...
... Okay listening to Remember Me by Josh Groban was a really, really bad plan today.
I went to go see the revival tour of West Side Story this weekend. We saw it Saturday night and yesterday I ended up randomly crying in the middle of the day just thinking about it. First of all, West Side Story, being based off Romeo and Juliet (But the only version of that freaking story I can stand) is inherently tragic.
That's followed by how much the play means to me personally. It was my grandpa's favorite play, and this is the grandpa I can credit with a lot/all of my appreciation for music. When I was a little kid he would always play show tunes or jazz in the car and it was a lot of my exposure to that. My parents listened to musicals too of course but the association between parents and musicals wasn't as strong as it was between my grandpa and musicals. He was also the one to take me and my brother to my first real big play, the Phantom of the Opera. I still have the program and the ticket from that play actually. But his favorite was West Side Story. We had a chance to go see a college production of West Side Story with him, when I was younger but I'd never seen a professional performance of it before. This last year on my 21st birthday "Maria" ended up coming up on shuffle while I was reading between classes and I ended up just sitting there and crying upon hearing it because my grandpa never got to see either my 18th birthday, nor now my 21st which is when you're really really an adult as you can pretty much do everything at that point. After he died I didn't listen to West Side Story for a really long time, and actually took that moment for me to go back through it and listen to it again.
So that's a lot of personal baggage I'm bringing to this play in the first place. Actually, the night before we went I had another dream about grandpa so that alone says something. Especially since, as I said, I had never seen a professional run of the play. The college one was fantastic, don't get me wrong, but it's not quite the same.
Now, the revival of the play.
I have to say, I adored the changes they made here. Even from the moment you see the curtain which has the names of the Jets and Sharks carved into a brick wall you know it's different. The original play, and the 1961 movie certainly shook Broadway and Hollywood with it's subject matter, but it was still... limited in some ways by the time. The revival makes the gangs more menacing, the love story more charged, and the sets grittier. It really updated the play to appeal even more to people today. Which is saying a lot since the original is such a classic as it is.
I loved what they did with the sets, and with the costumes and the updated choreography. They color coded the two gangs purple and orange which made things quite interesting visually when they were facing off against each other. Plus, the Spanish put in for the Sharks made that feel a lot more realistic and interesting to see the interplay of the languages, as Anita would constantly be admonishing people to speak English in America.
That was certainly one of the more amazing plays I've ever seen, even if the seats we were in were perfectly placed to give me vertigo getting to and from them.
But what drives me up a fucking wall is on ff.net when people put your story on story alert but don't review it. First of all, but putting it on alert, you're already logged in and it would only take a few minutes more to even type out a "well done." I can deal with this, sometimes, but when a story has seven alerts, 151 hits, and no reviews it irks me greatly. We worked hard to offer you some enjoyment and a good reading experience, is it so hard to leave that feedback? Really?
*Huffs* That being said...
... Okay listening to Remember Me by Josh Groban was a really, really bad plan today.
I went to go see the revival tour of West Side Story this weekend. We saw it Saturday night and yesterday I ended up randomly crying in the middle of the day just thinking about it. First of all, West Side Story, being based off Romeo and Juliet (But the only version of that freaking story I can stand) is inherently tragic.
That's followed by how much the play means to me personally. It was my grandpa's favorite play, and this is the grandpa I can credit with a lot/all of my appreciation for music. When I was a little kid he would always play show tunes or jazz in the car and it was a lot of my exposure to that. My parents listened to musicals too of course but the association between parents and musicals wasn't as strong as it was between my grandpa and musicals. He was also the one to take me and my brother to my first real big play, the Phantom of the Opera. I still have the program and the ticket from that play actually. But his favorite was West Side Story. We had a chance to go see a college production of West Side Story with him, when I was younger but I'd never seen a professional performance of it before. This last year on my 21st birthday "Maria" ended up coming up on shuffle while I was reading between classes and I ended up just sitting there and crying upon hearing it because my grandpa never got to see either my 18th birthday, nor now my 21st which is when you're really really an adult as you can pretty much do everything at that point. After he died I didn't listen to West Side Story for a really long time, and actually took that moment for me to go back through it and listen to it again.
So that's a lot of personal baggage I'm bringing to this play in the first place. Actually, the night before we went I had another dream about grandpa so that alone says something. Especially since, as I said, I had never seen a professional run of the play. The college one was fantastic, don't get me wrong, but it's not quite the same.
Now, the revival of the play.
I have to say, I adored the changes they made here. Even from the moment you see the curtain which has the names of the Jets and Sharks carved into a brick wall you know it's different. The original play, and the 1961 movie certainly shook Broadway and Hollywood with it's subject matter, but it was still... limited in some ways by the time. The revival makes the gangs more menacing, the love story more charged, and the sets grittier. It really updated the play to appeal even more to people today. Which is saying a lot since the original is such a classic as it is.
I loved what they did with the sets, and with the costumes and the updated choreography. They color coded the two gangs purple and orange which made things quite interesting visually when they were facing off against each other. Plus, the Spanish put in for the Sharks made that feel a lot more realistic and interesting to see the interplay of the languages, as Anita would constantly be admonishing people to speak English in America.
That was certainly one of the more amazing plays I've ever seen, even if the seats we were in were perfectly placed to give me vertigo getting to and from them.