My Week on Broadway

Ok. I was never on Broadway. Just to make that clear. I did however see a backstage tour and two shows all in the same week!! It was amazing.

Here's the context for it.

A few weeks ago, Laura Dueckman and her friend Ellery Penner visited Katie and me. Laura and Ellery had met while doing SALT (Service and Learning Together) in Indonesia. Laura and I went to school together at Bethel, and Ellery and Katie had gone to school together at University of Waterloo. Crazy Mennonite World! It was great to see Laura again, and talk Bethel College with her :) The other delightful outcome of seeing them was we got to take a backstage tour of the Lion King!!

It just so happened that Ellery and Laura went to see the Lion King, and when Ellery opened the playbill, she realized her good friend Patrick was playing Scar. Crazy right? She and Patrick had worked together as wait staff in Waterloo. She knew he was playing Scar on tour in Indonesia, but was surprised to see him on stage in NYC. She e-mailed him that night, and he offered her and her friends a back stage tour. It was wonderful!

We went on a Tuesday night. It was surprisingly less glamorous than I was expecting. I always had this idea that Broadway stars were larger than life, living it up, and somehow straddling reality and the world within the show. Spoiler alert: It's not.

We started with his dressing room. He shares the space with the actor who plays Zazoo. The dressing room was about the size of the box at the mods. I can't imagine two people sharing that, plus dressers and make-up artists! Click here to see Patrick undergo the transformation into Scar.

He then took us on stage. It was so cool to see the house from the stage perspective. He said they have triples of everything in case things break on stage. He showed us where all three Zazoos are stored across backstage. Crazy!

My biggest take away was theater is an artform. It seems silly that I didn't realize this until now, but it is. As he was showing us all of the props, and explaining all the optical illusions, I realized that the magic of theater is all in my head. Because I want to escape into the world of the Lion King so badly, I don't see the feathers falling off the costume, or notice how the lights make the optical illusions so I believe that Mufasa really has come down from the sky to talk to Simba.

It definitely changed how I view theater.

I had the next day off, so I decided to treat myself to The Last Five Years. I love the music, and I was so excited to see it! You can listen to my favorite song, The Schmuel Song, here. I loved it. I was surprised at how it was produced. It was literally just the sound track, only acted out. It was still wonderful :)

I decided since I was in Times Square anyway, I would try for the Book of Mormon lottery. I had tried over 10 times already, and I was completely indifferent to winning. I think my indifference made the difference. I won!!!!

Katie and I went together, and for the first act, we were in the box seats. For the second half, we sat in THE FRONT ROW!! We  had saved up our educational / recreational money to see the show, so we saw it for free :) My favorite song, Turn It Off, can be found here. We were so close, we could see the sweat falling from their faces!

It was especially interesting to watch it after seeing the Lion King backstage tour. I couldn't believe that for the actors, that was work. It looked exhausting! But after the show, all of them were genuinely joyful. I was glad it wasn't my job!

It was great week!