Who Lives, Who Dies, No Day But Today

Aside from Science Fiction and Fantasy, I have another genre that I feel passionately about: musical.

In everyone’s life, there probably is that one thing that kept that person going through tough times. It may be sports, music, art, volunteering, etc…in my case it happened to be musical.

It’s true that I grew up watching musicals (mostly Disney), but there was a brief period in my life where I drifted away from it – I stopped getting that warm and fuzzy feeling. I can narrow the “why” down to two things. First, my middle school decided to put on a back-to-back productions of Bye Bye Birdie and Hello Dolly! Being an alto (I can do mezzosoprano now, thanks to many hours spent singing Wicked soundtrack), this meant I had no shot at any female solo parts. Since this was 15+ years ago, there was no way I could audition for male solo parts. Lame. It was around this time that I also discovered my love for rock music, and there is no guitar or drums in classical musicals. Double lame.

So what was the issue here? In retrospect, I didn’t feel the connection at all. How was a middle-class awkward Asian girl supposed to relate to girls swooning over Elvis (I get that he’s the King of Rock, but I’m a fan of Queen) or an elite New York socialite matchmaker (that doesn’t sound like a fun profession).

Little did I know that in 7 years, I will discover the one musical that was on heavy repeat on every 2000’s theater geek’s iPod: RENT. The first Broadway musical to feature rock music and diverse, complicated characters. I saw a little bit of me in everyone – Mimi, Mark, Roger, Maureen, Angel, Collins, Joanne, and even Benny. Their emotions felt real. Their struggles felt real. I could relate again.

If you meet a RENTHead, I encourage you to ask them to tell you their RENT story – why that musical is so special to them. For me, it helped me finish college. I was taking a set of prerequisite courses needed to take the courses I ACTUALLY liked and wanted to take, and also trying to figure out if I wanted to do cars, airplanes, or satellites. When you have to spend 80 hours a week on something you don’t really enjoy…it’s rough. Really, really, rough. The idea of switching majors crossed my mind so many times…but I knew it was a bad idea, since those no-fun classes were just a phase that I had to get through. The message of “$hit happens, but live your life to the fullest,” for all of its cliche glory, got me through one day at a time…until the phase was over. I don’t think I listened to any music besides RENT for close to a year. Thank you, Jonathan Larson.

Fast forward 9 years and this new musical that I now am calling “My New RENT” is on heavy repeat. It’s about this guy who went from an immigrant to the first Secretary of the Treasury: Hamilton. Above everything that is awesome about this musical – the music, the lyrics, the character, the story – what makes this musical so outstanding that it resonated with so many people is that it tells the story in such a way that people in the 21st century can relate. As a storyteller, that’s something I strive to do with my characters. Hopefully, I’ll be able to deliver some snippets soon.

Who Lives, Who Dies, Who Tells Your Story?