ON Friday Night & Using Your Voice

This past Friday, I had been looking forward to a good night in. My life has been slightly crazy lately and the week had been heavy for everyone. A good night of bad TV and writing emails. De-licious, I thought. But here's the thing about the Universe: it throws me the most incredible curveballs. And instead, I wound up in a small room with Michael Arden, Jennifer Cody, Carrie Manolakos, Andy Mientus, Nikki M. James, Jeremy Jordan, Laura Michelle Kelly, Josh Young, and Sutton Foster.

How did that happen? Let's back it up. My Friday night started with my most favorite boy person and a quick catch up at a bar. This already would have been a great night, but then, a friend posted that he had an extra ticket to a concert that night. A concert that included a handful of the most incredible talent on Broadway (and TV, too! holler musical theatre stars on TV! you know I love me some Bunheads!) singing songs from one of my most favorite writing teams. In a penthouse. Over looking the Manhattan skyline. Um, yes, I would like the extra ticket, thanks.

I (literally) ran home, stopped at the bank, threw on a dress and heels in my kitchen, and (literally) ran out and to the concert. And after that week, with its sadness and fear and disaster, I sat in a room and listened to these voices sing from the places in their being that so few allow to be seen, and I felt magnificently alive and grateful.

Sometimes I forget what our voices can do. We can ban together to collectively support, we can yell, we can speak up for what we believe in. And we can sing, uplifting ourselves and those around us with nothing more than breath support and vocal cords vibrating together. And if we are incredibly lucky, we get the chance to do this on stage, to sing for others. I was so moved that I went back to boy I'd started my night with and told him all about it, my head not even fully wrapped around what I had just experienced but my mouth needing to talk about it.

Recently, someone told me the story of a woman rescued in Haiti, after spending several days buried under the wreckage. When she was pulled out, she started to sing. Arms up, full voice, singing. SING.ING. What an image. Let us be so lucky to sing for those who are still buried underneath the weight of their world, and let us rise up out of our own turmoil, reach our hands up, and sing.

Boston, we Love you. Texas, we Love you. The midwest and the south and the west coast and the everywhere and everyone else's, we Love you.

"This will be our reply to violence: to make music more intensely, more beautifully, more devotedly than ever before." - Leornard Bernstein