Musical Theatre and Love
what's healing me lately
I’m dating someone who works in musical theatre and lives in Scotland. She’s a singer, playwright and poet. My friends are not surprised by either of these demographic facts knowing my personal special interests, nor is this news to me that I do have a bit of a type: Talented with a capital T. And we all know the most talented people out there are singers / theatre artists because they so often do so many things - sing, dance, write, play - they are multi talented, triple threats AT LEAST - aka the hottest. If this is a controversial opinion, I’m happy to die on this hill.
Dating a theatre artist is additionally not surprising from a classical Freudian perspective, (try not to eye roll too hard here). The whole you end up dating your parents thing is kinda a bit real. My Mother was an actor / ballerina / theatre artist after all (Groans loudly). More accurately, though, this aspect of my girlfriends authentic Self - her theatre self, reminds me of my mother because theatre and dance were one of the only places she and I seemed to organically connect through, though I do have contradictory thoughts on this assessment I will not detail today. There’s a whole book for that.
My mother grew up in the theatre and so, that’s how she raised me, and my father was all for it as well. A drummer and economist who grew up going to the Boston Ballet with his Grandmother - “Great Grannie Maine” and of course nearly every performance of my “career”. In the 80s, my parents would apparently go to “the disco” to dance, but never to Studio 54. So while my father would never identify as a dancer and never pursued professionally his musical talents, he’s always been into that world too.
For my Mom though, it was much more a life long special interest - dance, theatre, the performing arts. Even when she retired from the brutal world of professional ballet as a company member of the Cincinnati Ballet, she continued to perform on the side, and eventually became a ballet teacher and director in Westchester where we lived. She helped with many of my self-produced shows growing up (which of course were plentiful), just like she helped her dad on all so many of his shows in the 60’s. While training for a professional ballet career in Marietta, she also participated in the school theatre productions. The character “Corey” in Boy Meets World is supposedly named after her due to being theatre geek friends in high school with the shows creator, Michael Jacobs. The name my Mom goes by is Cory, though her “real name” is Coral.
The irony of having a parent who literally uses a more masculine version of a very feminine name like so many gender non-conforming / trans people, but really struggled when I changed my name and pronouns for gendered reasons is not lost on me.
Everyone benefits from going on a “gender journey”.
Everyone.
Though I’ve had a love-hate relationship with dance, regularly referring to it as “the most complicated relationship of my life” it is ultimately a huge part of who I am, how I express myself and what I love through and through. I’ve learned to accept it is 100% a lifelong special interest of mine and my “superpower” as my best friend calls it. My Mother is the one who introduced me to this big wide imaginal world that has given (and taken) (and given) so much. From twirling around in the living room in a one of my many tutus with The Royal Ballet’s Swan Lake or The American Ballet Theatre’s “Giselle” on the tv while I impersonate their moves on my “twinkle toes”, as my father called them, to putting me into ballet at age 3, school productions in the 1st grade and trips into the city to see it all live. I grew up in the performing arts.
Her Father, my Grandfather - “Granddaddy”, sits painted into the side of a red brick underpass wall in a quaint Atlanta suburb where the first coco-cola was sold (allegedly) because he was the musical theatre guy in Cartersville for forever. He was the radio host, the local magician, the technical guy, heir drosselmeyer in the yearly Nutcracker production, the King in the King and I with my step Grandmother - “Ollene” a tall, thin, porcelain skinned red-haired woman with at least twelve other sisters of european and cherokee descent. She was my favorite grandparent though we weren’t related by blood. All of my grandparents blood or otherwise have passed so I feel safe enough to admit, yes, I did have a favorite grandparent.
Did you? Is that problematic? (tell me in the comments kindly pls <3)
Ollene was a singer and pianist. She was known for her beautiful long agile fingers whisking away angelically across the keys. We often played Heart and Soul together at the brightly wooden professional piano tucked right under the carpeted stairs of their three-floor wooden-cabin-esq home in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains. She and my grandfather got together through the theatre, though it was an unethical nonmonogamous start of their romance, leaving my grandmother “Grammie” (also a singer / performer at heart though she ended up a scientist for Johnson & Johnson) as the last one to know in the small town and leading her to take my Aunt and mother up north to Jersey to start over.
My grandfather and I apparently share a love for singers. Some branch of psychology would brand this as an expression of my disowned self. My disowned Singer. Since a part of me believes I am not that and cannot be this, I project out this denied part of self onto someone else, pedestaling them at best or at worst, believing this aspect of them is so important it outweighs abusive or unhealthy behaviors. Not good.
In my current case of lovestruck romance, I believe it is definitely about the power of meeting someone just at the right time in your personal journey to help you grow in some profound way, which ends up being quite healing.
Like the time my girlfriend and I sang in the car as we drove around the Highlands and I ugly cried listening to her hit the high notes of defying gravity - a song I have vivid memories of belting out in the car with two of my best friends I did theatre with in high school on the way to school, and the cast party that was just every single person singing every single word of Wicked because it was the hot, new and mind blowing musical of the late 2000s.
Or the time I put my self consciousness aside and sang “Til There Was You” to her while she laid in my arms trying to fall asleep while in physical pain from a chronic condition. A beautiful love song that is now “her song” or rather “our song” and I can easily sing on demand when she needs soothing, especially with the distance.
Or the time she requested I sing to her in the car on our drive back to the city (Edinburgh) lavishing me in compliments and assurance that I do in fact have a good voice. That I can in fact sing. That it is really exciting for her that I can. All making me confront the reality that I do love to sing and should more.
That’s the sort of love I’m in these days. I’m very grateful for it.
It’s helped me notice there is a calling back to the stage, back to the theatre, back home. That the performing arts is my comfort zone, despite having so many questions about it the past few years after closing my dance company, realizing I’m autistic and recovering from burnout, moving back home to NYC - the place where if you can make it there, you can make it anywhere.
My loves love of music and theatre awakens my love for it. Reminds me it is real and an incredible resource for my MindBodySpirit System. A love that had absolutely been impacted by the pandemic as a theatre artist, a choreographer and dancer too. Prior to pandemic shut down, I was used to choreographing, teaching and setting a piece on my no mirror movement dancers every week for at least three solid years. Since our operations concluded essentially after the shutdown, it’s been a void in my life that I have only recently truly acknowledged as such. Finding my way back to performance, back to dance, back to the theatre has been a journey, and this love has made it an incredibly healing one.
With love,
Lucky
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