the last time i was really, truly happy...

(forgive me while i take a break from the 21 questions...i'll get back to it soon)

ok, well maybe not the LAST time, but it's one time i can look back on and honestly say i was truly happy.

Godspell

my youth choir did it while my senior year in high school, and honestly it was one of the only times i remember being really, truly happy from about 9th grade on. governor's school was another time. (and weirdly there's a common bond there. more on that later.)

see, starting in 9th grade i was bullied. i'd never really fit in with my peers, but things had never been really ugly until 9th grade. i think i talked about all this before, but basically it started when we were keeping journals in my english class. mine disappeared and just as mysteriously reappeared but with comments - nasty, hurtful comments - written in red ink. so there was no way to make them disappear as the red would just bleed through white out. this continued throughout the year. my science work folder - a compilation of worksheets and assignments that i'd been working on for months - was stolen. it reappeared, and fortunately my teacher was understanding and didn't penalize me for it. things continued throughout high school - little comments here and there, a birthday party that i was only invited to because my dad was on a school board committee with the birthday girl's mother, so she was forced to invite me, wads of gum thrown into my hair the day i was leaving for my governor's school audition, and so on and so forth. after the science folder incident, i stopped telling my parents if anything happened. i didn't want them showing up at school for any kind of meetings because it only made things worse. i'd disappear myself into academics and music, and i pretended not to care. but deep down i did. and no one noticed. no one noticed that i was steadily climbing from top 20 to top 15 to top 5 (possibly 3 but i never knew for sure) at graduation. no teacher said anything about the girl whose grades were consistently going up - they were too concerned about the kids whose grades were slipping, too worried they were in some kind of trouble to notice that i was frantically waving my arms as i was drowning.

but when we did Godspell none of that mattered. i could lose myself in the music, in the story, in the parts i was playing. we didn't do it exactly as cast - there were more of us because they wanted to involve anyone who wanted to be involved - but still. my main part was the woman caught in the act of adultery and leading the (as we did it) trio of "By My Side". it wasn't my story, yet i so easily could feel what she must have felt - an outcast, a misfit, someone living in fear and waiting for the next stone to come never knowing which one might be fatal. after the show one night, one of our church members, a child psychiatrist who i think had a far deeper sense of something being wrong than even my parents did, came up to me and complimented me and even suggested i should find a way to pursue acting/musical theatre. (he wasn't the first to suggest it...my friend allie from governor's school was constantly encouraging me while we were there that summer, and after she kept after me and after me to come visit her at her college and look at Carneige Mellon where she was majoring in musical theatre...i didn't, but every once in a while i wonder what if...). while we were doing it, i felt loved, i felt accepted, i felt like i mattered. and some of my bullies came to see the show as there were people from school at my church and some of them who really didn't do that much showed up for auditions and were in it (some of these being in the group of my bullies). my yearbook disappeared after someone had signed it and later was slipped back into my bag. i opened it in fear but found messages from some of them saying how good i was along with comments of how they admired my strength, etc. in May before graduation. but for that period when we were rehearsing and performing Godspell i was really, truly happy.

so what brought this memory on?

thanks to camp broadway, i had an opportunity to see the new revival of Godspell on tuesday night. i'd been "warned" (not really the right word but it'll do) that there were some score changes and updates. there are a couple of new songs, one that opens the show and one in act 2. the one at the beginning i'm really not sold on, but i don't hate it...it's just different. i spent part of it thinking "wow, this has really changed. a lot." but then i heard the horn blaring the familiar opening notes and "Prepare Ye" started. the memories started coming back then, but hit full force during "God Save The People" where I started crying in earnest. other moments that got me were "On the Willows" (ok, that's kind of tear-jerky anyway) - but that also made me almost laugh as it's staged very similarly to how we did it...only they all took their fair share of grape juice (or whatever they're using) so the last person to get the chalice didn't have to chug. i was the last and i always had to chug the whole thing because hardly anyone drank and we had to put it under the little stage so it had to be empty. clearly the woman caught in the act of adultery and "By My Side" had me flat-out sobbing. the new song in Act 2, "Beautiful City" definitely fits in more musically with the score - explicitly evidenced by its weaving in with "Long Live God" and "Prepare Ye" in the Finale. the more i'm thinking about it, the more i like the song...but i feel like i need to see the show at least one more time to really say for sure.

in some ways it was hard to get past the memories, but in others it wasn't that hard at all. the modern touches and updates fit right in, and the staging is wonderful. the cast is excellent, and the chemistry between them all is brilliant. the show does have a lottery for tickets for four pillow-covered areas around the stage, and there is interaction between them and the cast...but also between the whole audience and the cast. the staging in full theatre-in-the-round style is exactly what the show needs. (ok, i might be biased there as that's how we did it too.) how will the critics like it? i don't know. but i do know i love it. for more than one reason.

some people say they would love to go back to their high school days. for most of my high school, there's not enough money in the world to make me go back there. but if it was for that period of time when we were rehearsing and performing Godspell, i would go back in a heartbeat.

thanks to this cast and revival, i was able to in a way, minus the shit i knew i'd return to when i walked back into school. it helped me see how far i've come, and it made me appreciate that time - and the few friends i had who stuck by me - all the more.

if you're in new york while it's playing, i highly recommend you get your butt to Circle in the Square and go see Godspell.