So I Watched a Musical About Corn This Weekend
And also about a Waitress.
I am who am because of problematic musical theater. I’ve talked about this several times before. But in high school, I was recruited to audition for Thoroughly Modern Millie. I, a Filipino-American who was in the choir, was approached by the theater and asked to audition well because I was in the school choir and I was Asian, and the only more problematic than getting a Filipino-American to play a Chinese Henchmen would be to have not-an-Asian play the role of Bun Foo. The not so fun fact is that this role was literally Chinese Henchman #2 in the original movie, played by none other than Pat Morita.
But musical theater and barbershop quartet in high school positioned me to crave the stage and when theater and ac apella aspirations didn’t manifest, my writing instincts led to me slam poetry which cascaded into a series of revelations and decision that culminated in the person who writes a weekly newsletter mostly out of their own bemusement.
In the intervening years, I didn’t really have the means to see much musical theater or theater really. I made the exception when Hamilton went on tour. My friend convinced me to see A Strange Loop (as described in the above hyperlink), and I think that was yet another pebble that cavalcaded into an avalanche.
The Fox Theater is approximately 25 minutes away from me. It’s an incredibly easy drive to the point where I could almost get there without GPS. Almost.
Earlier this year, I saw Six with a friend. This weekend though, I went to see Shucked!.
I went into Shucked! knowing three things.
1) It was a musical about corn.
2) It won some number of Tony wards.
3) The main character’s name was Maizy.
As it turned out, the musical about corn was actually about what happens to the inhabitants of a small, isolated town when ecological drift causes the near death of the singular crop and the subsequent reactions when an outsider enters the community.
And a lot of wordplay.
And it is a musical about corn, but it is also a tongue and cheek commentary on a scattering of topics. I don’t think any of the songs are gonna make it to my playlist rotation, but the musical told a good story and the Storytellers helped reiterate a key thing all creatives would be smart to remember: you should always leverage the medium you’re working with. There are things that theater is capable of doing that movies aren’t and the way that the narrators interact with the musical is not something that the silver screen can easily replicate.
It mostly got me thinking about all media is inherently political even one about corn.
The next day I ended up watching Waitress on MAX.
I have less to say about this outside of the fact that Sara Bareilles could have just sung “Sugar/Butter/Flour” for two hours and I would have been entertained and the musical ended up being so much more.
The main takeaway is that after this weekend, I went from being undecided on picking up a season pass next year to definitely getting a season pass. There is a joy in going into shows knowing exceedingly little and there are storytelling tricks that I think are worth keeping at the forefront.