Ever since I was a young girl I have been completely in awe of the world of musical theater. Music taking the form of a story, evoking a never-ending expanse of hard-to-reach emotions, and sending me into a new world, has ultimately become one of the core parts of me.
From dancing around and making my own songs and stories for my family, to my awkward sixth grade “Hamilton phase”, to present day adult life dissecting the deeper meaning and political themes hiding amongst some of my favorite pieces, I am a musical theater “nerd” through and through.
The unfortunate thing about all of this is that this passion and love has been one of the most hidden things about me.
Growing up in a small town where you had to fit a perfect picture to not feel like the weirdest girl in the room often shaped the things I openly enjoyed. As an avid member of the choral and band programs who hardly ever spoke about that part of her life, that was as far as I could dip my feet in while still feeling like I was preserving the stupid social status I depended on.
My headphones became my solace, but also my cloak. I could smile and say I was enjoying the new hot song that everyone was obsessed with, knowing I was actually getting teary-eyed at a ballad from “Les Mis” or imagining myself as the groundbreaking activist female writer Katherine Plumber from “Newsies”.
As I got older, entering the late years of high school and the beginning of college, a common ice breaker happened to be the question of “What is your guilty pleasure?”.
This was my first chance. I could talk about something I loved, but also “admit” it was stupid and embarrassing to anyone who was listening and would have questioned it in a different setting or conversation. So, my answer…? Musical theater. Every time.
The more I shared this, the more I realized I was devaluing something I knew was so important to me. Even this past semester I shared it with my class of almost forty students as my “guilty” pleasure.
It wasn’t until I got to see “Wicked” (one of my all-time favorites) in its highly anticipated movie form on opening weekend that things changed.
For the first time, I saw so many people embracing their love of theater and saw so much open support on social media. Most vividly, after seeing Cynthia Erivo’s perfect depiction of the character of Elphaba, a character who would do anything to speak about what she is passionate about, I knew things were going to change.
My friends have had to suffer through me openly singing the songs stuck in my head, raving about the concept and production of the movie AND musical, spilling the entire lore, and for the first time I feel no shame for this.
I LOVE MUSICAL THEATER. No changing it. No more hiding it, and certainly no more agreeing with others that it is something to be guilty of.
Now of course, this change has led me to become quite mournful of everything I robbed myself of growing up, actually acting and singing in tons of musicals, gathering a resume for a music-oriented career, and so on. But I can look to the future with the knowledge I am growing in my journey of being the truest version of myself.
If something makes you happy, never sacrifice that hard-to-come-by feeling for the things that others feel should actually be making you happy.