Broadway: Where My Life Happens

Thespian acting and musicals on the stage have always enamored me. Natural, living humans act out memorable roles to take us to faraway places while connecting the in-depth emotions of the characters through the surreal tendrils of music. I love all music, and my collection is eclectic. But in the fullness of life, musicals are where my heart resides by the invitation of writers, actors, composers, and theater venues. Broadway creations are timeless and will exist long after I am gone from this world. This is my limited Playlist of Broadway music interwoven into the critical moments of my life.

1965

The first time my life felt alive with purpose was when my mother took me to The Sound of Music. The movie was spectacular, but the story became rooted deep within me when I experienced the Broadway stage performance.

It was also my first crush, Maria (Julie Andrews.) Her character would shape my romantic ideas of a woman for decades. As the third of four boys in cramped military housing, I had discovered a wholesome, unique, and lifelong connection with my mother in the world of music. My brothers didn't care about it, which was fine with me. The music and its storyline blended my heart for history with the desire to be loved. Some say I am an old soul.

The Hills Are Alive - Rodgers and Hammerstein

Later the same year, the musical connection with my mother was corroborated when she took me to The Man of La Mancha. My brothers stayed home. The Impossible Dream became forever implanted in my mind as one of the most powerful Broadway songs ever written. A lower middle child is sometimes called the unseen child. For example, I sat by my father at the dinner table, not to be close as much as to be out of the line of sight and unnoticed. I imagined myself as Don Quixote and would set out to change the world. To this day, windmills stop me in my tracks to reflect.

The Impossible Dream - Dale Wasserman

1968

My father retired from the United States Air Force in 1967. To this point, my entire life had been spent on a military base. We moved to Summerville, S.C., and I was thrown to the vicious wolves of segregation without explanation. On the fighter training base, my elementary classmates included Japanese, Arabic, and Iranian, along with Americans of every race from almost every state. I had no comprehension of the horror of the real world. Hair the musical and its cultural shock of the blatant depiction of drug use, sexuality, and nudity was in line with the alarms of the racist and polarized society I had been thrust into. This song was a flicker of enlightenment that I could find my way to understand it.

Aquarius/Let the Sunshine from Hair is best known for the release by The Fifth Dimension. - Gerome Ragni and James Rado

1970

Going through the internal civil war of puberty while exposed to a new world of liberal thought, I began to challenge my childhood faith. This song was my first introduction to Andrew Lloyd Webber, which would impact my life in music and future work. Sixteen years later, I would be the musical director for this great musical, Jesus Christ Superstar, in a regional theater. The opening fanfare is forever etched in my mind. Can you hear it, the regal first fifteen notes? Ba ba ba, BA, BA, BA, ba ba ba ba, ba ba ba, ba ba, like the first notes of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony, are timeless. It aided me in deciding the question, what did I believe?

Jesus Christ, Superstar - Andrew Lloyd Webber, Tim Rice

1984

A Little Night Music premiered in 1973, but in 1984, I understood the meaning of the heart-rending song, Send in the Clowns. While a rising senior in college, I was set to become formally engaged to a young woman I had dated for two years. I knew I had met my Maria, my lifetime partner. Her name was Pam, and she was a sophomore. She wanted to get married immediately to escape her parent's house. I had committed to not marrying until I graduated due to finances and to be able to provide properly.

She wouldn't wait one year. While away at a conference, she dumped me and three weeks later married a freshman she had just met a month earlier. I was devastated and did not date for five years. Interestingly, I won the college's talent show my senior year with this song, costumed and made up as Emmet Kelly. I guess you can say I felt it deeply, especially Judy Collins rendition.

Send in the Clowns - Hugh Wheeler

1985

My first contributing entry into the theaterical world came in 1985 when I was invited to become a regional music director with a Community Theater. The first production I directed was Oliver. Still, feeling the devastation of my broken heart, the song Where is Love? became my mantra. The innocence of an orphan raised the question so many of us have pondered.

Where is Love? - Lionel Bart

Following Oliver, I directed Joseph's Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, Fiddler on the Roof, Jesus Christ Superstar, The Sound of Music, Sleeping Beauty, Brigadoon, and Man of La Mancha over the next two years until I left for graduate school. The experience anchored my passion for Broadway. Economic choices of survival and children being born left me limited in time. I stayed involved with the stage through limited contract productions and the proverbial label of consultant. We are legion. (Laughing)

2016

In 2016 and 2019, I lost my mother and father after living long monumental lives. This meaningful work from Andrew Lloyd Webbers Cats still speaks to me.

Memory's - Andrew Lloyd Webber, Trevor Nunn, Richard Stilgoe

***

My marriage of many years failed and ended up in divorce. This experience conflicted with every notion rooted in my first crush's foundation, Maria. The melancholy of failure is exceptionally illustrated in my favorite Broadway musical of all time, Les Misérables, and the song I Dreamed a Dream. Though the song is from Fantine's perspective, it hit home with my failure, some of it mine, some not.

2018

In September 2018, my son was killed by a man who turned into the path of his vehicle and hit him head-on. Nothing prepared me for this devastation. The passion, urgency, and desperation of Bring Him Home from Les Misérables best illustrates my broken heart. There was life before Hampton was killed at the age of twenty and an altered life after.

Bring Him Home - Claude-Michel Schönberg, Alain Boubil and Jean-Marc Natel

2021

Through darkness comes light, and I find myself at a stage of life best illustrated through the musical Wicked's Defying Gravity. I am not alone in experiencing loss or heartbreak, but how I choose to live today is my choice. The tendrils of music, so connected to my heart all my life, became too emotional with my internal pain. It is my responsibility to Defy Gravity, no one else's.

Defying Gravity - Winnie Holzman

Present Day

Vocal Media + and writing as an outlet have filled the void, the holes, ripped into my life. To end this Playlist, I return to my beginning, The Sound of Music and the timeless message of Climb Every Mountain. As my shattered heart mends, I may return to the theater one day. Until then, I am only a patron. Maybe it's time to master writing a novel, or a script, return to composing, and merge the past with the present as it started many years ago with Broadway, where my life has happened. The idea has possibilities, and the future is exciting. Come, climb with me.

Climb Every Mountain - Rodgers and Hammerstein

*** *** *** *** ***