Just thinking about how I've been to musicals and plays this year! I usually don't go to that many but this year I upped the ante and enjoyed myself!
Except for Hunchback of Notre Dame. I did not enjoy myself there.
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| First off, Hamilton! It was ... a big deal. :) Big money. |
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| The next day I went to my home stake's stake play. Just happened to. It counts I guess! (Annie. In case you couldn't tell.) |
I also branched out into some Fathom events, where you go to a movie theater and watch a filmed recording of a play.
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| I don't have a picture of going to Puffs, but this is from the same general time frame. I watched the play again on BroadwayHD last month and it still holds up! |
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| Also watched Bandstand! An excellent show. |
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| This summer I went further afield than ever before and went to Tuacahn for Cinderella! I was expecting OG Rodgers & Hammerstein, it was the revival, it was still good. (Not as good as Brandy.) |
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| Daddy Long Legs at HCTO changed my life. I went two weeks in a row. I thought about it constantly. I started writing a blog post about why I feel so strongly about it (unfinished, but...it's draft amnesty season. I'll post it below.*) |
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| I didn't get any actual pictures of going to see Scarlet Pimpernel at the Hale. Just a picture of my Fitbit thinking I was asleep during it. I enjoyed it a lot. |
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| Spontaneous Waitress viewing! We had great seats, it was a great time. |
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| And finally, Come from Away. |
It was a great year for shows! Thanks to everyone who made sure I could get out there and enjoy some ~culture!
End of Post.
*Footnote:
So yeah. I felt ALL the feelings about Daddy Long Legs and didn't come to any conclusions about it. But I tried to write some thoughts. Here they are (unchanged from September 19, the last time I tried to have any success with them).
Last weekend I went and saw Daddy Long-Legs at HCTO with some friends. I loved it. Daddy Long-Legs is one of my favorite books, a very formative story of my childhood, and the play absolutely did it justice (unlike...the movie...). It took most of my favorite lines from the book and made an ever better story! (Removing some of the benevolent sexism/classism that was simply a product of the time helped enormously. And I actually liked hearing from the guy's perspective.) I've been obsessed ever since; I actually went and saw it again and have been listening to the soundtrack on "heavy rotation," as Spotify calls it.
And I've been thinking a lot about why epistolary courtships are such my jam. I don't have any answers but I do have some ramblings.
He will know me in letters ~ Jerusha Abbott, Daddy Long-Legs the Musical
Twelve years ago I had an enormous crush on a guy, the kind that basically tongue-tied me every time I tried to speak to him. But on Facebook, I was braver. I wrote on his wall, he wrote back, we engaged in that plausible deniability banter that's so delicious in early courtship (we were in different countries by then -- I may have been braver on FB but I certainly wasn't any more prompt). That turned into longer Facebook messages, which then turned into writing each other beautiful long letters throughout his mission.
It may surprise you to learn that nothing ever came of that.
The thing about letters is there's always a tinge of unreliable narration going on. We only write the things that will make us look best (at least...I did in this instance). I didn't mention a boyfriend I happened to have, and he didn't share the minutiae of his dealings with his companions and the monotony of missionary work. We write into letters what we want to say, more deliberately than other mediums of communication. (Texting can go either way. I've agonized over the wording of a text before, but I've also sent off-the-cuff messages.)
But learning more about people via the written word is still SO important to me. I might blame DLL and Ella Enchanted for that. There's something to be said for learning what people want you to learn, but may be too reticent to be vulnerable in person.
A few months ago I had a gentleman caller that paid me very particular attention for about a month, then went out of the country. I was honestly looking forward to entering a more epistolary phase, an opportunity to talk a little more deeply about things since I was feeling like we were... kind of stuck? at the shallow level? I knew some things about him (uh, because of who I am...) that we hadn't brought up, and goodness knows there are pieces of my life that I don't talk about but that he might know. But it's hard to bring stuff up in person sometimes. So I was hoping we could get there while we had no option to be in person.
It may surprise you to learn that nothing ever came of that.
(I'm still not over it.)
I've just been looking through my email drafts and many of them are written to people with whom I'm having emotions toward. Wirting it out helps me process better and make sure I'm not going to respond too aggressively.
The end of that. It's true, though, that a good way to get me super invested in a story is to make it epistolary. Never got far enough in the post to figure out why. Oh well.
End of footnote.
