i have a confession to make

i have a weakness for musicals.

if i wanted to tell the whole truth i would even say i have an extreme liking/borderline obsession for them, but i'm not.

i grew up listening and seeing musicals. from the age of 6-16 i saw at least two musicals twice a year, and that's not counting regular plays. that's at least twenty musicals in my lifetime, and i know i'm underestimating. i've seen the famous ones and the not-so-famous ones. i've seen musicals at the fabulous fox theater in atlanta (which never fails to take my breath away) and i've seen them in dinky little no-name theaters.

a lot of my friends shudder at the idea of musicals. "people singing and dancing? that's not real theater."what is real theater then? what is more demanding of an actor than to hit a note perfectly and make his or her mark during a choreographed move? the only thing i can come up with is comedy, which is just as trying as musicals. it's all about the timing. people do not apprectiate comedy or musicals as much as drama, but then again a lot of people don't know good theater when they see it. these are the same people that think walk the line is the epitome of a musical. pfft. hardly.

the real reason i like musicals? the absolute most fantastic thing that makes me get goosebumps when watching these plays?the fact that words aren't enough.words aren't enough for the characters to express themselves, to say what they are really feeling. they need to move and more importantly they need to sing because just talking isn't doing it justice. they sing about love, hope, fear, anger-- every emotion is poured into a song that echoes throughout a room with such a force that it will be left resounding inside your head for days. you ache to hear that same sound again. you want to hear the woman's euphoria in discovering her true love over and over again. you try to wrap your mind around how a man can be so anguished that when he sings it sounds even more tortured than if he was telling you about his pain in a monologue. it doesn't matter if he's belting it out as loud as possible or if it's calm and low-- you know exactly what he's feeling, down to your very core.

and don't even get me started on the music. the ability of a composer to match the music with words and feelings is truly amazing.

i love musicals because the characters on the stage have emotion that runs so deep that words aren't enough. i crave that type of emotion. i want to feel something so strongly that talking about it isn't enough.

the musical song i'm listening to while writing this: "i'll cover you (reprise)" from rent disc 2.