HIII
Hey guys hey.
So let's talk about Broadway musicals for a second, okay?
I've always been what I'd call a casual fan of Broadway. Never really followed careers of Broadway actors or what have you. But when a national tour was coming through town I'd usually make some kind of effort to convince my mother to buy me a ticket and I was successful about half of the time. As such I saw The Lion King, 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee (actually, I saw that one twice), aaaaaaand....actually I'm blanking right now on if I saw others that way. Haha. Overseas, in Belfast, I saw Blood Brothers. And though I'd never admit it, I also saw The Lord of the Rings when I was in London. Oh oops. I just admitted it. Rest assured it was horrid. And then, because I'm generous, I usually count REALLY GOOD high school productions of musicals as shows that I've seen. Although I usually add the disclaimer that it was a high school production. But because the high school I went to was an arts school, we had a REALLY GOOD theater program. I saw their productions of 42nd Street and Godspell and one other not-very-well-known one whose name I can't remember but had a girl in it who always drunkenly yelled "WE'RE OFF TO THE RACES!!" I've also seen a university production of The Music Man. And then! To round that all off, I usually count movies as well. Especially if they have any of the actual Broadway actors. In terms of movies, I've seen Phantom of the Opera, Hairspray (like eight billion times), Chicago, Rent, and more that I also can't remember now. Because apparently my memory sucks.
ANYWAY. The point of all of this is that I really, really enjoy musicals. And because I'm a musical, dance-y person, after I watch musicals I always want to say screw you to life and move to New York and be on Broadway and usually during these phases, I dance and sing A LOT around my house and generally drive my family crazy.
But when it comes to "real" Broadway? I've always considered it to be out of my league. Like, money wise. I've been to New York City countless times and it's just never even been an option to go. I've had the aforementioned mild success in getting my parents to finance my love of Broadway when the tours would come through town, but I wouldn't have even dreamed of asking to go see a show in NYC itself.
This last weekend though, because it was Thanksgiving and we had a couple days of school off, two friends and I bummed our way down to NYC. One of my friends was a HUGE Broadway fan and, surprise! She introduced me to a way to get cheap tickets. Which I am really dumb for never investigating. BUT. They've got this thing called Standing Room Only tickets which are sold only for otherwise sold out shows. And they're sold at super duper discount. The downside is, you have to stand the whole show unless you get the lucky combination of people who don't show up and a really nice usher who lets you sit in the empty seats. But the upside is! You get to see a show ON BROADWAY for a miniscule fraction of the cost that you otherwise would be seeing said show.
Now everyone in the country has been like, freaking out over The Book of Mormon ever since it won the Tony earlier this year. I got caught up in the excitement and boldly declared that WE MUST SEE IT. Thankfully my one friend agreed and my other friend had no feelings. There were two shows, matinee and evening, on the day we chose to go, and we showed up at 11:00 am to get in the Standing Room Only ticket line to wait for tickets that went on sale at noon. The problem is, though, is that they only sell about 25 standing room tickets.
My three friends and I were numbers 27, 28, and 29 in line. >:|
Two of us, the two of us with feelings, decided that it was going to be worth it enough to keep our places (which were now 2, 3, and 4) to get tickets for the 8:00 pm show. My friend with no feelings ditched us to go do, you know, stuff. Lol. It's actually a really good friend that the friend who was waiting and I had already been to NYC so many times, and that my friend with no feelings didn't feel bad ditching us or wandering around alone. He came back, he just didn't want to wait. Not that I really blame him. If it was my first time in NYC I wouldn't have wanted to spend the day waiting in line playing cards with strangers.
So yes. We waited in line until tickets went on sale at 7:00 pm. That means we were in line for 8 hours. With breaks, granted. I ditched my friend to go eat delicious tacos and "accidentally" took the long way back and was gone for an hour and a half. She ditched me to "go back to the hostel and get some homework" which may have happened but could not have been all because she was gone for over two hours. BUT. It was fun.
Round about hour 3 of the wait, some lady behind me started yelling at me and accusing me of line jumping. I got so pissed off at her and was about to start yelling back at her, but the girl in front of me - with whom I'd been talking periodically throughout the day - stepped in and told the other lady to shut up. So yay.
ANYWAY ANYWAY. The show. Guys. It was amazing. Our "seats" were on the orchestra level which is the floor level, and it was in the back, but the theater was surprisingly small, and so it actually wasn't really that far back, and they were right in the center of theater which was amazing. And seriously, the people in front of us had paid about $300 for their tickets and we paid $27 and the only difference was that we were standing and they weren't. SUCK IT.
We met the cast afterward, because we waited by the stage door with some other more hardcore fans and we got pictures and autographs and the cast was so nice and so peppy and so friendly and so. good. looking. I told my friends that when I'm rich and have a giant house, I'm going to have a room set aside in which casts of shows that I invite over can perform for me and then hang out drinking classy drinks.
But really. The shooooow. I feel like I'm fangirling it. But I'm not the only one because last night I actually found fan fiction for it. It's all pretty terrible. And there's a big "disagreement" within the "fandom" of the first name of one of the characters (most of the characters are just called "Elder ____") which was annoying because the couple of stories that I skimmed alternately called him Connor, Ryan, Jerry, and Jimmy. Apparently the actor who plays him likes to think his name is Jimmy, but the fandom seems to likes Connor better. I say wtfever, what's wrong with calling him "McKinley" that sounds good enough for me and people call each other by their last names all the time. BUT.
I would not advise reading fic for musicals. Because sometimes people try to put singing and dancing into their fics and I'm like, NO. NO PLEASE DON'T. And because the show is a comedy but some of the material being laughed about is actually really serious, it's clear that some people don't know how to write the fic, as a comedy or not, so most of the stuff I was skimming last night was a bit disorienting-ly flip-floppy.
And also because, well, it's kind of weird to base a "fandom" on Broadway show, because that means that the entire fandom is based on, usually, one viewing (unless you have the resources to go more than once) and the soundtrack. Otherwise, there's no gifs, no photosets, no fanvids, etc. And if you don't remember an exact thing, sucks for you, you're best bet is to ask others. I guess you could wile away your time watching interviews of the cast or something, but even that isn't as good of a bet as other fandoms because outside of Broadway circles, and outside of Tony season, not many people pay much attention to musicals.
Anyway, I will say that I'm all supportive of buying music and supporting the artists and stuff, but I'm also super supportive of just ~freely giving it away, so I'd be happy to share the soundtrack if anyone wants it. Although if you're like me and like to have the visual first before listening to the soundtrack, sorry, you're out of luck. You'd be hard-pressed to find boot-leg copies of the show because the theater staff was REALLY GOOD and catching people videoing.
I really have no idea who on my friends list is even in a position to go to NYC or see a show, but if this musical ever gets made into a movie, or goes on a national tour (the tour I'm sure will happen, the movie maybe in like 50 years), SEEEEE IIIIT.
So let's talk about Broadway musicals for a second, okay?
I've always been what I'd call a casual fan of Broadway. Never really followed careers of Broadway actors or what have you. But when a national tour was coming through town I'd usually make some kind of effort to convince my mother to buy me a ticket and I was successful about half of the time. As such I saw The Lion King, 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee (actually, I saw that one twice), aaaaaaand....actually I'm blanking right now on if I saw others that way. Haha. Overseas, in Belfast, I saw Blood Brothers. And though I'd never admit it, I also saw The Lord of the Rings when I was in London. Oh oops. I just admitted it. Rest assured it was horrid. And then, because I'm generous, I usually count REALLY GOOD high school productions of musicals as shows that I've seen. Although I usually add the disclaimer that it was a high school production. But because the high school I went to was an arts school, we had a REALLY GOOD theater program. I saw their productions of 42nd Street and Godspell and one other not-very-well-known one whose name I can't remember but had a girl in it who always drunkenly yelled "WE'RE OFF TO THE RACES!!" I've also seen a university production of The Music Man. And then! To round that all off, I usually count movies as well. Especially if they have any of the actual Broadway actors. In terms of movies, I've seen Phantom of the Opera, Hairspray (like eight billion times), Chicago, Rent, and more that I also can't remember now. Because apparently my memory sucks.
ANYWAY. The point of all of this is that I really, really enjoy musicals. And because I'm a musical, dance-y person, after I watch musicals I always want to say screw you to life and move to New York and be on Broadway and usually during these phases, I dance and sing A LOT around my house and generally drive my family crazy.
But when it comes to "real" Broadway? I've always considered it to be out of my league. Like, money wise. I've been to New York City countless times and it's just never even been an option to go. I've had the aforementioned mild success in getting my parents to finance my love of Broadway when the tours would come through town, but I wouldn't have even dreamed of asking to go see a show in NYC itself.
This last weekend though, because it was Thanksgiving and we had a couple days of school off, two friends and I bummed our way down to NYC. One of my friends was a HUGE Broadway fan and, surprise! She introduced me to a way to get cheap tickets. Which I am really dumb for never investigating. BUT. They've got this thing called Standing Room Only tickets which are sold only for otherwise sold out shows. And they're sold at super duper discount. The downside is, you have to stand the whole show unless you get the lucky combination of people who don't show up and a really nice usher who lets you sit in the empty seats. But the upside is! You get to see a show ON BROADWAY for a miniscule fraction of the cost that you otherwise would be seeing said show.
Now everyone in the country has been like, freaking out over The Book of Mormon ever since it won the Tony earlier this year. I got caught up in the excitement and boldly declared that WE MUST SEE IT. Thankfully my one friend agreed and my other friend had no feelings. There were two shows, matinee and evening, on the day we chose to go, and we showed up at 11:00 am to get in the Standing Room Only ticket line to wait for tickets that went on sale at noon. The problem is, though, is that they only sell about 25 standing room tickets.
My three friends and I were numbers 27, 28, and 29 in line. >:|
Two of us, the two of us with feelings, decided that it was going to be worth it enough to keep our places (which were now 2, 3, and 4) to get tickets for the 8:00 pm show. My friend with no feelings ditched us to go do, you know, stuff. Lol. It's actually a really good friend that the friend who was waiting and I had already been to NYC so many times, and that my friend with no feelings didn't feel bad ditching us or wandering around alone. He came back, he just didn't want to wait. Not that I really blame him. If it was my first time in NYC I wouldn't have wanted to spend the day waiting in line playing cards with strangers.
So yes. We waited in line until tickets went on sale at 7:00 pm. That means we were in line for 8 hours. With breaks, granted. I ditched my friend to go eat delicious tacos and "accidentally" took the long way back and was gone for an hour and a half. She ditched me to "go back to the hostel and get some homework" which may have happened but could not have been all because she was gone for over two hours. BUT. It was fun.
Round about hour 3 of the wait, some lady behind me started yelling at me and accusing me of line jumping. I got so pissed off at her and was about to start yelling back at her, but the girl in front of me - with whom I'd been talking periodically throughout the day - stepped in and told the other lady to shut up. So yay.
ANYWAY ANYWAY. The show. Guys. It was amazing. Our "seats" were on the orchestra level which is the floor level, and it was in the back, but the theater was surprisingly small, and so it actually wasn't really that far back, and they were right in the center of theater which was amazing. And seriously, the people in front of us had paid about $300 for their tickets and we paid $27 and the only difference was that we were standing and they weren't. SUCK IT.
We met the cast afterward, because we waited by the stage door with some other more hardcore fans and we got pictures and autographs and the cast was so nice and so peppy and so friendly and so. good. looking. I told my friends that when I'm rich and have a giant house, I'm going to have a room set aside in which casts of shows that I invite over can perform for me and then hang out drinking classy drinks.
But really. The shooooow. I feel like I'm fangirling it. But I'm not the only one because last night I actually found fan fiction for it. It's all pretty terrible. And there's a big "disagreement" within the "fandom" of the first name of one of the characters (most of the characters are just called "Elder ____") which was annoying because the couple of stories that I skimmed alternately called him Connor, Ryan, Jerry, and Jimmy. Apparently the actor who plays him likes to think his name is Jimmy, but the fandom seems to likes Connor better. I say wtfever, what's wrong with calling him "McKinley" that sounds good enough for me and people call each other by their last names all the time. BUT.
I would not advise reading fic for musicals. Because sometimes people try to put singing and dancing into their fics and I'm like, NO. NO PLEASE DON'T. And because the show is a comedy but some of the material being laughed about is actually really serious, it's clear that some people don't know how to write the fic, as a comedy or not, so most of the stuff I was skimming last night was a bit disorienting-ly flip-floppy.
And also because, well, it's kind of weird to base a "fandom" on Broadway show, because that means that the entire fandom is based on, usually, one viewing (unless you have the resources to go more than once) and the soundtrack. Otherwise, there's no gifs, no photosets, no fanvids, etc. And if you don't remember an exact thing, sucks for you, you're best bet is to ask others. I guess you could wile away your time watching interviews of the cast or something, but even that isn't as good of a bet as other fandoms because outside of Broadway circles, and outside of Tony season, not many people pay much attention to musicals.
Anyway, I will say that I'm all supportive of buying music and supporting the artists and stuff, but I'm also super supportive of just ~freely giving it away, so I'd be happy to share the soundtrack if anyone wants it. Although if you're like me and like to have the visual first before listening to the soundtrack, sorry, you're out of luck. You'd be hard-pressed to find boot-leg copies of the show because the theater staff was REALLY GOOD and catching people videoing.
I really have no idea who on my friends list is even in a position to go to NYC or see a show, but if this musical ever gets made into a movie, or goes on a national tour (the tour I'm sure will happen, the movie maybe in like 50 years), SEEEEE IIIIT.