Learning Passion (Blog Post #2)

A text that I encountered in the past that has made an impact on my life is the stage version of the musical Hairspray and Wicked. Now I know people call Hairspray a faux-musical and Wicked is cliché and overdone. They’re not Pulitzer winners by any means but they were the first musicals I saw at an age when I understood more than just the spectacle of it. I was 13.

My parents had always taken me to see Grease whenever it came into town and to me that’s what a musical was. It wasn’t “Broadway” as I know it now. It was natural that they sang in the movie. My uncle Tony had bought tickets for Hairspray and took my mom and I. As the play went on I lost myself in the idea that these regular people like me were doing these amazing things. Singing, dancing, acting, all at the same time. It blew my mind!

Just the story itself, a girl who defied what everyone else thought and believed for what she thought was right and then she changed the world. Even though it was a play, that idea stuck with me, the idea that this one person could change things. Be somebody and do it in such a way that seemed effortless. (I’d soon find out it wasn’t effortless to just sing and dance). The final song in the show is called “You Can’t Stop the Beat”. It is this powerful dance number where everyone takes a stand for what they believe in and what they want in life and basically tells anyone who doesn’t like it can shove it. The lights were going, the stage was alive with choreography and I sat in awe as these people, just like me, performed. On that day something ignited within me. It may not have totally engulfed me as a person but it was ignited.

The next show my uncle Tony had tickets to were Wicked. The touring production was coming through Chicago for the first time after a successful Broadway run. However, my uncle passed away before telling anyone about the tickets. One day, when I was helping my mom sort through his things I came upon them. Luckily it was the week before the show date. My mom gave the tickets to my cousin and I. We went to the show and by the end of the first act the flame turned into a wildfire.

At the end of the first act the main character, Elphaba, (or the Wicked Witch of the West), sings a song called “Defying Gravity” and she sings about how no one is going to stop her from believing in what she believes in. She will prove that she isn’t wrong even if she has to do the impossible. Yet again, here was another main character, a normal person just like me, doing something so amazing, performing. Maybe it was the high notes she belts or maybe it was the fact she rises in the air but after seeing that show, that flame engulfed my entire life. I knew that I would stop at nothing to do something great. No matter how small other people may think it was. No matter how many people were going to tell me no, I had to. Till this day, I strive to do my passion justice.