For my high school theatre finale, I had the pleasure of playing the charming swindler Harold Hill in The Music Man.  Golden Age musical theatre had not been my particular forte at the time (what vocal ability I had was cultivated on the more modern likes of Coldplay, U2, and 2010sBroadway), but as always, I enjoyed the push into unfamiliar territory.

Though, given its age, the show required a bit of massaging and re-working to better fit contemporary expectations and attitudes, its familiarity and scale gave us the chance to assemble a wider community around the theatre: in a departure from the norm, faculty and staff members were invited to join the cast (the Quartet, for instance, were all “adults”), making the production feel much more like a school-wide endeavor and, on a personal level, a satisfying way to go out.  Plus, “Ya Got Trouble” isn’t a bad number to cap off a high school theatre career.