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Musical Theatre
Years before the Greatest Showman, starring Hugh Jackman and Zendaya, there was the Broadway musical Barnum, ‘the New Musical,’ 1980. Yes, that was a million years ago, and I hardly know that person, that clown. The music, though, the memories, are still with me. Every now and then, a few notes in the back ground spark a full melody and suddenly my head is exploding with an orchestra and a band. Do they even have orchestras and bands any more? Robert Peterson, in the Music Man, “I always believe there’s a band, kid.” Yes, that’s little Ron Howard before he joined Happy Days, and Shirley Jones, the Partridge Family mom. And this is me, practicing to be cast for Barnum, 1985, San Antonio Little Theatre…
The things you find as you take books off shelves, dust, put some back, put some in boxes to take to half price. I am talking myself out of name dropping. Mostly. I adored all of these people. It was a moment in time I would have liked to have sustained. Myrna Von Nimitz, the music director of SALT, my name drop for today, she was a significant player in my life. A magical player. In terms of ‘feelings,’ she rises to archetypal status, the benefactor in “Great Expectations.” She let me into her world. I didn’t belong in that world, any more than I belonged in Narnia, but I went there and it was a solid, surreal, and magical place.
