I’m the only 18 year old I know who has seen 11 Broadway shows, three Broadway tours and two off-Broadway productions. Most of these I’ve seen within the last three years, but I feel certain shows truly represent different periods of my life.
One of the first productions I saw was “The Play That Goes Wrong.” My boyfriend got me tickets for my 16th birthday after I had starred in my first onstage performance, which was “The One-Act Play that Goes Wrong,” a shortened version of the off-Broadway comedy. To me, this show resembles a major part of my life. I met my boyfriend and my best friends through “One-Act” and found a whole world that I love being a part of: theater.
To this day, I help my high school’s drama department, selling advertisements and bravo notes for their show’s playbill and painting sets when I can. I always go back and reminisce about moments during “One-Act” rehearsals and laugh about how my life truly changed by playing Annie, the overzealous stage manager. Seeing “The Play That Goes Wrong” was not closure on my production, but a reflection and reinforcement of good laughs.
Between seeing that show and now, I have added a long list of productions to my “Have Seen” list: “Hadestown,” “Chicago,” “The Great Gatsby,” “Hamilton,” “Back to the Future,” “& Juliet,” “Romeo & Juliet,” “All in,” “Sweeney Todd” (twice), and “Merrily We Roll Along.”
My first week moving to New York and attending Hofstra University, I was the most home-sick I have ever been in my entire life. My boyfriend suggested we take a day and go to the city, which I very much needed. Sarah Hyland and Andrew Barth-Feldman, single-handedly two of my favorite celebrities, were in the off-Broadway “Little Shop of Horrors” at that time, so my boyfriend’s dad bought us tickets to see the show. “Little Shop of Horrors” may not sound like a show that resembles how I was feeling at the time, but it genuinely made me feel so heard.
While watching, I was comparing myself to Seymour the whole time, but in an interesting way. Audrey II, the plant, offers Seymour fame, fortune and happiness, but it’s all a trap. Homesickness, in a way, made me feel the same; home seemed like it was the place I needed to be, but, in reality, I was building a new life for myself in New York. I wanted to meet new people and learn to become a hard-hitting journalist – I couldn’t do that at home. Even though home seemed perfect, was it actually in the moment? Seymour and the entire cast getting eaten was an ironic way to make me feel comfortable 100 miles away from home, but it worked.
The next show on my radar is “Good Night and Good Luck” produced and performed by George Clooney. As I begin my journalism career at Hofstra, I am constantly discussing Edward R. Murrow and his impact on the journalism field. Clooney bringing his story to life again (first as a movie and now as an onstage production) feels like a push in the right direction for news and journalism today. As I immerse myself in journalism classes, I feel like adding a Broadway show to that will only benefit me, and it’s not like I’m not used to seeing a Broadway performance in my free time.