Weekly Margin 2020, W12: What I Didn't See, and a Memory of Such Stuff

This week I was supposed to see The Minutes at Second Stage, Caroline or Change at Roundabout, and Love Life at City Center. While I'm still quietly holding out hope that I'll see Caroline eventually, I have no expectations for the others, and I'm glad everything's shut down to try to keep as many people safe as possible. For now, that has to be enough.

I keep thinking I should make my usual list of the Spring season, look into ticket lotteries, rush policies, their presence on tdf. Making this list has been on my To Do calendar for a few weeks. Now it seems like a task designed to invite more heartbreak, wondering which shows are never to be.

I thought instead of looking forward into an unknowable future, and with no current theater to discuss, perhaps I should look back further.

Twenty Years a Theater Junkie

Twenty years ago, I visited my sister - then a freshman at Columbia University - for my spring break. We had a fun first-visit-to-New-York planned: Central Park, Empire State Building, New York pizza, Staten Island Ferry, and my first Broadway show. Twenty years ago, my life changed forever.

Let's be clear, I was already a theater fan. Both my parents grew up loving live theater, and they took us to a lot; as well as playing All the Cast Albums on road trips and at home (and let's not forget that fateful day Dad showed us the VHS of Into the Woods). My Mom is such an advocate of supporting live theater that we saw all the community theater my small town had to offer, some of which was great and some of which was ...  you know, not great. But I was predisposed to have my life changed, I suppose.

Seventh grade is a bad year for many people, and it certainly hadn't been a good one for me so far: nearly all my friends from sixth grade and beyond suddenly stopped talking to me (I still don't know why), my best friend and sister had left for college, and I was feeling a bit rudderless. Two big things happened that year: Mom took me to audition for my first community theater youth show, and Mom sent me to New York to visit my sister.

I'd seen, at this point, a range in quality of live theater: school shows, community theater, non-Eq tours, and the occasional quality Equity production (I can think of three: the Broadway company of Beauty and the Beast in their LA run; a lovely production of She Loves Me playing in Roanoke; and one of the tours of Les Miserables, starring the future Tony-winning Alice Ripley as Fantine). But sometimes the right thing has to find you at the right time.

Perfect Memories: Pachebel in London

I was a teenager, which meant my skills at preserving or treasuring moments were getting better, but still not fully developed. It was warm, but not too warm, in that way that London summers are so much better than Virginia summers. Warm, but not drowning air. We'd been walking around all day, museums and blue plaques and such. Used bookstores. An ice cream cone with flake. The sun was at mid-afternoon slant and not too obtrusive. Mom and I had wended our way through Covent Garden - stopping at Lush for Mom, at Pollock's Toy Shop for me - and we were strolling the second level, when we heard the strings start. We leaned over the railing and looked down into the courtyard below. There were little cafe tables set here and there, each occupied. And there, just under the bridge of the second level, was a string quartet, playing Pachebel's Canon in D. I don' think I knew the name of the piece at the time. Without a word or look of decision, we stayed there, pressed against the metal rail, watching from above, as the melody repeated and repeated, growing in complication, caressed by the quartet. When they finished, we stepped back and continued walking.