The radicalizing power of singing and dancing
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I went to musical theater camp when I was in high school. I desperately wanted to audition for RENT. When I finally got to college age, I had picked the route of visual art and slowly forgot about that dream. Not of performing, just of one day replacing Idina Menzel singing Take Me Or Leave Me. I played that song on piano and sang it so often I think I still have the tactile memory to pull it off.
But theater kids were mean. All kids were mean. I just didn't want to deal with the one kid from every high school who wanted to grow up to be a star for the rest of my life. It's why I prefer the east side of Los Angeles. I'd rather be with the painters: also known as the kids who would sometimes rather shut themselves in a room full of colors than ever speak to another person ever again.
But then come things like the recent episode of Good Hang with Amy Poehler featuring Jonathan Groff. Star of the criminally underrated gay HBO drama Looking, Groff went on to play King George III in Hamilton (a musical I still have never seen because I am often allergic to what everyone is talking about). He won a Tony for his recent role in Merrily We Roll Along and his acceptance speech is a real tear jerker.
They talk about him being able to just let his freak flag fly, explore acting and signing and coming out and so many things that are a product of a life in theater. The conversation is amazing and hilarious, highly recommend.
It doesn't come up often, but when it does, the impact on musical theater on my life personally pops out of the corner as if to yell "this is why you are the way you are!"
If you think it's dorky (I mean, it kinda is), here's how I maintain that much of musical theater can and will continue to awaken the queer left in its audience.
- My favorite movie as a kid was The Sound of Music, a million hour long film about your father falling in love with the nanny (a nun!) who leaves the church to be with him. The subplot of the entire thing is that Nazis are evil, insecure nerds. I wrote a bunch of feelings about it here.
- Another favorite movie was Grease, and my favorite character was the leader of the Pink Ladies Betty Rizzo, who I've written about at length here.
- One of the main lessons of Les Miserables, a musical about the June Rebellion of 1832 in Paris, is "if you see someone stealing food, no you didn't."
- In Victor, Victoria Julie Andrews pretends to be a male female impersonator. Read that a couple times, you'll get it. It's undoubtedly dated from a trans perspective but as a kid in the 90s that's a plot line that opens some possibilities.
- When I was in 6th grade I attended the local private high school's performance of Cabaret, a musical that chronicles the rise of Nazism in Weimar Germany through love stories and sex. I immediately want to attend that high school more than anything.
- When I was in high school I saw RENT three times and learned all the words to all the songs but primarily "La Vie Boheme," which is essentially the queer Lower East Side version of "We Didn't Start the Fire." A long list of cultural references I desperately needed.
There's a lot more where that came from. There's probably tons of new musicals that are even more radicalizing than those, but I love the fact that my examples of being a good person, fighting fascism, not discriminating against sex workers, and of course queer joy, came from watching a lot of singing and dancing.
Happy Monday. Here's Allan Cumming's rendition of "Willkommen" from Cabaret. May you be gayer for watching it.
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