In that I am a serious teacher of serious theatre and want only serious things to happen on stage. My students are always amazed that I attend anything related to musical theatre. They step back and ask me if I know that tonight’s show isn’t going to be more then just a lot of show tunes. I know. I like show tunes. I ain’t THAT dang serious.
Every theatre teacher, fresh out of school, finds themself in a small high school where theatre is a one man show. Every show and every flat and every costume must come from their own crafty hands. My experience was no different. I did my obligatory Bye Bye Birdie, Annie Get Your Gun, South Pacific, Working, Charlie Brown, and Unsinkable Molly Brown. They were great fun. I didn’t know what the hell I was doing but it made sense of those early days out of college. How in the world I thought I could EVER direct a musical without being able to sing, dance or play the piano myself, I have no idea. Thank god I WAS ignorant or I would never have gotten beyond auditions. And THANK GOD none of my students of today are able to see my work of yesterday – if so, they would do all they could to get out of my classes.
I do love musical theatre though – can’t do it – but adore the process and the result. It is one of the few places in theatre that I can be a total audience – incapable of offering any meaningful critique. I just sit back and tap my foot, shed a tear, and watch all of the pretty people and the pretty sets. My critical brain RELAXES.
It makes sense that I am still attached to musical theatre. I certainly didn’t enter this passion for theatre from the love of plays. I entered this passion from the parking lot of the Country Dinner Playhouse in their dinner theatre production of Brigadoon. Roast beef and musical theatre in the mountains of Colorado cemented my place in this art for the rest of my life.