Every Story Is a Love Story

Hey Raven,

Light and air have not been our friends this week. Someday life will be as easy for you in the outside world as it would be inside a hermetically sealed bubble. Someday soon I hope. In the meantime enjoy another post about things I like (read: another way to tell stories).

This way to tell stories comes accompanied by music making it, in my opinion, one of the most fun ways to tell a great story. I love music, poetry, and theater so of course my favorite medium would be a combination of all three: the musical.

Time for some Owl history. I grew up in a school district that prized the arts and my high school took theater and choir both very seriously. I estimate we had 5 different choirs by the time I graduated, each specialized in a different type of music (from gospel to international folk to more traditional choir music). Even more amazing than that was our theater department, which managed to put on more than 10 different productions every year (for those keeping track at home that's more than one production staged every month from September to June). We also played host to a summer theater camp that mounted a musical every summer. From my freshman year on I worked behind the scenes on a lot of different productions in a lot of different capacities. It was one of the most enjoyable parts of my high school experience. It's also where my love for musical really developed because in addition to the summer musical my school usually at least 2 musicals during the regular school year. And during my time there we put on shows that have become some of my favorites including, Kiss Me Kate, Les Miserables, My Fair Lady, Little Shop of Horrors, Into the Woods, and West Side Story.

Since high school my love for musicals has expanded though I did not have as much direct access to awesome on stage productions. Fortunately movies have obliged my deep love of the medium allowing me access to great adapted musicals or movie musicals like, Singing in the Rain, Rent,  Fiddler on the Roof, Grease, Sound of Music, Hairspray, Phantom of the Opera, Oliver!, and so many others I can't even list them all.

I love that musicals can bring a fun, lively face to a comic love story or push one more heartrending moment into a tale of tragedy. In a good musical the songs should deepen both the story and the emotions while sustaining the mood for the audience. It's a tricky business and can sometimes be disastrous (if you've never watched a musical take shape from behind the scenes just believe me when I tell you that every magical musical performance you have ever seen was made up of a lot of less than magical moments during production). But when everything comes together the end result can be truly transformative and memorable. I can still remember the face of the actor who played Jean Valjean in Les Miserables as he confronted Javert and claimed his numerical identity - damning himself to a life on the run. *Potential Spoilers Ahead* When I listen to "Every Story is a Love Story" I remember the theater lights dimming around me as two lovers are entombed to face a slow death together, captured but not defeated.

I wonder if those experiences would have hit me as hard without the music that came with them. I wonder if I would remember the productions anywhere near as well if I didn't have youtube to jog my memory of my favorite song or moment. Probably yes. After all, theater will always be a great love of mine - music or no.

Do you have favorite productions or songs, Raven? Next post I think I'll list my top 5 of each.

See you soon and can't wait to read more tomorrow!