Let It Go (A Semitone)

from USA Today

Idina performed

Let It Go

Along with Jimmy Fallon and

The Roots 

A completely different setting 

To the Oscars

Surrounded by musicians

Relaxed

Casual 

Playing classroom instruments

Everyone clearly

Having a total blast 

For whatever reason

The instruments they're playing?

Vocal exhaustion?

(The woman has flown across country

Twice in as many days

Performed at an intensely hyped 

Awards ceremony,

Her collaborators won a bunch of 

Said awards

And she's in tech rehearsals

For a new Broadway show

That's gotta take some sort of toll) 

The arrangement is down

A semitone from the original

And what a difference

A semitone makes! 

Without the microphones

Flying cameras or 

Hollywood elite 

Staring up at her

You can hear the full power of 

Idina's voice

The. Woman. Can. Belt. 

And oh god, it's 

Thrilling

The money note

It's just a D

Idina's got this 

Let the storm rage OOOOOOON.

YES!

Nailed it.

Read about Idina Menzel's performance at the Oscars, and the difficulty of belting, here. 

Let It Go

image from Billboard

Singing musical theatre 

Is hard work

You are required to 

Sing, act, and sometimes dance

All at the same time! 

Belting 

Sometimes referred to as 

Controlled screaming 

Requires technique. 

Training. Breath. 

Control of vocal chords

The diaphragm.

Being able to access

Every single body muscle 

Whilst singing about

Love, loss, and dreams. 

Movie musicals 

Along with the Patti’s and Kristen’s and Bernadette’s 

Have made it look effortless 

And that’s the performer’s job 

Right? 

To make it look easy. 

But the ease 

Belies the effort it takes

To be. That. Good. 

There is a theory

That belting changed

For women

With Lloyd-Webber’s 

Evita

Before Evita, women were usually belting up to B’s and C’s 

Think Don’t Rain on My Parade or Rose’s Turn or On My Own 

Yes, the women could/can sing higher 

But the money note sat right in a woman’s chest voice 

Noboooody is gonna raaaaaaaain.... 

Etc. 

Then Evita

And Patti. With a belt range from here to eternity 

And the game changed.

Belts were written and sung up to E’s 

Which sit higher in the voice 

And now we have our Defying Gravity’s and Surabaya Santa’s and 

Let It Go’s 

And in the words of Jason Robert Brown, 

Girls

Belting as hiiiiigh as they can. 

Bette, Pink, and Idina 

All performed iconic songs

At the Oscars last night

And in varying degrees, 

Nailed it, hit it out of the ball park,

Or weren’t quite there. 

Pink’s performance

Somewhere Over the Rainbow 

The slightly husky voice

Capable of deliciously pleasing

Vocal gymnastics

The end of the first section

“Somewhere beyond the raaaain” 

Rain, hitting the traditional money note 

Bb

Satisfying to the ear 

(And mighty satisfying to sing)

The chorus, one of the most well-known refrains, 

Somewhere over the rainbow

Needs to be seamless

Smooth

The octave jump between 

Some and where

One of those phrases that sounds easy

But try singing it

Without sliding

Keeping the where light 

Remembering you’re singing about 

Rainbows and dreams and lullabies... 

Pop singing is less precise 

Allows for riffing 

And sliding between notes

And showing off. 

Pop is about sound. 

Musical theatre is about story-telling. 

Pink sang

Someday I’ll wish upon a star 

And wake up (breath) where the clouds are far 

Be (breath) hiiiind me. 

Twitter was ablaze

PHRASING!!!! FOR THE LOVE OF GOD!

MUSICAL THEATRE 101!

DON’T BREATHE IN THE MIDDLE OF A WORD! 

And I’m certain no self-respecting music director

Conducting one of the most iconic songs of the 

Twentieth century 

Would have gone through rehearsal and said

“Those breaths in the middle are totally cool. 

Good job”. 

The song ended on a satisfying

Ab 

Rich, resonant 

The chords underneath creating movement

Resolve. 

A lovely performance, but too breathy

For musical theatre. Even a pop rendition of musical theatre.  

Perhaps it was nerves

Perhaps it was the 

“Oh-god-I’m-singing-THE-song-at-the-OSCARS-in-front-of-LIZA-FREAKING-MINELLI” adrenalin

Sometimes nerves just grab you by the throat

And no amount of rehearsal

Meditation

“I’ve got this” vibes

Will be controlled

Once you’re on that stage 

There is no going back

The show must go on. 

Then the In Memoriam

Wind Beneath My Wings and 

Bette. Oh Bette. 

How to sing musical theatre 101. 

She walks out, cool as a cucumber

Takes her place

And starts singing. 

Her face radiates calm

She is in control

She is telling a story -

Dear friends who have departed

I am singing this for you.

A quick sneaky little mid-phrase breath - 

You always walked a step (breath) behind - 

But her face remains calm

It’s about the song. Not about her singing the song. 

She connects with the audience 

She connects with the words, the text, 

Thank god for you

Vocally

She sang the song in a lower key

From the original

Riffed down rather than up

Never belted higher than a B

Came straight off the top notes 

But it was all about connection

Control, calm and 

Breath 

Finally, THE. BIG. NUMBER.

The most written about

Played, covered, and parodied 

Record-breaking Disney tune

Since Part of Your World,

Let It Go

Sung by Adela Mazim. Oh Revolta.

The musical theatre community may never forgive you... 

(I’ve done it myself. Fraught with nerves

In a presentation

I kept referring to my co-presenter, and good friend,

As Ethey, instead of Ethel

I didn’t even realize what I’d been saying until afterwards

When everyone asked

WTF?!

It’s mortifying) 

So Idina. 

The beltress who is

Maureen. Elphaba. Queen Elsa

Emerged amidst 

Sparkling Swarovski crystals 

She looked tense

You could almost read her inner monologue

Stay connected. BREATHE. I. Got. This. 

And it made us nervous to watch

Oh god, she’s gonna crack...

But the notes kept coming

Clear and strong

And while it’s a song she has sung

Many times over

Unlike Bette, it’s not standard repertoire, yet.

She’s not had years to perfect the performance of it 

It wasn’t about story-telling

Or being an ice queen liberated from the strictures of a patriarchal society. 

It was about BIG NOTES.

AND BELTING. 

You could see the relief in her eyes

Every time she nailed a big note

It’s an awesome song

It speaks to us

It’s empowering

It’s gutsy, 

It builds and swells, 

And right to the last phrase, 

I held my breath...

She might actually nail it?! 

Let the storm rage....

That last money note, 

A bitch of an Eb

OOOOOON... 

Her voice cracked. 

Dammit! 

Too forcefully hit 

Too much tension. 

I pity the woman

Who’ll play Elsa on Broadway.

Eight times a week of 

Let It Go is going to wreak some sort of damage. 

In one night

Pink, Idina, and Bette, showed us that 

Belting is hard work. 

Even for highly regarded 

Pop stars and Broadway veterans known

For their belting prowess

(Except for Patti. Nothing seems hard for Patti. Watch this and you’ll understand what I mean). 

Somewhere beyond the excitement 

Of the big belt 

Perhaps we need to return 

To story-telling 

Where the music serves the story

Rather than “controlled screams”

Of terrifying heights

Dominating our minds and vocal chords 

And for the belt

Learn to 

Let it go

Read about Idina Menzel's completely different performance the next day! 

Repeat

There is something comforting in the fact

That every day

A show is being performed

The people are singing

Masquerades are on parade

Children are revolting

Somewhere around the world

The story of a boy band is being told

In neat

Introduction, climax, denouement form

With feel good songs

And slick choreography 

Every day

The performers are singing and dancing

The costumers re-hanging shirts and wigs and dresses

The stage hands striking and re-setting props 

And getting ready to do it all again

No show is ever the same twice

The audience is always different

Sometimes a line is dropped

A prop forgotten

The cast slightly shuffled

And every day

There is someone in the audience

Watching it all for the first time

Laughing, sighing, gasping

And walking out of the theatre

Feeling happier

Feeling uplifted 

And I get to meet that someone 

Eight times a week

And I get to watch it all

Eight times a week

And feel comforted that 

Every day a show is being performed. 

The end. 

What do you do with a BA in English?

Sitting in my robes in Royal Festival Hall
Graduating with a Masters
I feel like I'm six years old playing make believe
The robe keeps slipping off my shoulders
The ridiculous hat keeps sliding down my forehead
It doesn't feel real
This past year. I still can't quite put it into words.

I thought that with my Masters
I would be amazing,
But I still don't feel like I am.
I still can't belt an E
I have worse stage fright now than when I started
I want to be brilliant yesterday
I want to be wonderful super fantastic coolness remarkable
Right now!
What does it mean exactly to "have potential"?
What do they see that I, still, after all this, can't access?

What do I want to be when I grow up?
I want to be Mary Poppins and Maureen Johnson and Miss Honey
I want to sing and dance and act and write
What I really want is to play roles I've written myself
Perform my own material
I want to travel
I want own my own house
I want to live in the same continent as my love
I want to sing and be able to write good music
I want the praise of my superiors and my cohort
I want to feel accepted
I want to be happy within myself and proud of my own achievements

What do you do with a BA in English (/History)?
You travel the world
You fall in love
You have visions of living in happily married bliss on the leafy north shore
And you have your heart broken
And you re-assess
And you say "fuck it".
And you leave everything you know and move to a whole other country
Where everything is the same but different
And you deny that you're experiencing culture shock because you are already
Widely Traveled
and Older than the average student
And have Life Experience

But really, you're still young
You're still at the beginning
Even though actually you're already part of the way
And actually,
No one knows what is next
No idea.
It's what makes people scared, greedy, snide, arrogant
Everything
Because none of us knows what is next
Yes we can dream, we can plan,
VITAL!
But actually, we have no idea
It doesn't scare me
(actually it does, but, in this moment, it's liberating)
I can do whatever I choose.

The Principal of the School at Graduation
Do something every day that scares you
Today, again, I choose to blaze a trail of my own
To remember to stop looking around me and totally freaking out that the other peoples paths look better or different to mine
In the words of Elle Woods
I've got to find my way 
In the words of Sondheim
It's our time, breathe it in, worlds to change and worlds to win

What do you do with a BA in English (/History)?
You get an MA in Music Theatre,
You take a deep breath
And -

The Stage

It’s when you get inside the theatre

And you can smell the hazer

And see the depth of the stage

That you remember what all these hours have been for

You walk through the wings

And stand under the glow of the lights

And feel a sense of relief

Feel like you’re home

The delicious adrenalin sheer hard gut busting work of it 

Because sometimes you do wonder why you’re here

Standing in line with hundreds of others

Belting as high as they can

Articulating gesticulating and explicating

But it’s the relief of being there

On the stage

Working with the director and the lighting designer and the costume designer and the stage manager and the musical director and the musicians and the ensemble and 

All the myriads of people who work unseen to make the magic happen

Not really magic

Just sheer hard work and determination

Hour upon hour of rehearsal

Sometimes you wonder where a whole afternoon went

Because when you look at the script, you’ve only covered a page!

But the continual repetition and drilling and finding meaning in the text

Is where you find the magic 

Meters of fabric

A team of dedicated souls 

And a room

Become transformed into countless other worlds

Where people sing and dance and act

Often at the same time! 

And it makes you so happy

Makes your blood pulse through your very being 

And reminds you why it is you chose to be here

The end. 

Synchrone

And one day you are walking down the street in Glebe and you see a flyer for a lady named Keyna who teaches piano and flute and you think, that is an excellent name for a musician, and I would like to take flute lessons again. And you call her and it takes you nearly six months to organise a lesson and finally you meet and you discover you have met a kindred spirit. And every week you share music and meditation and it is fun and lovely and inspiring. And she makes you better than you are, and she inspires you to work hard and suddenly you found you have passed your eighth grade flute exam and it makes you happy and proud and gives a great sense of accomplishment. And then you sing her original music and it just makes you so happy. 

And then you discover that she is playing in a new duo called Synchrone and they are playing French music. And you go along to the Flute Tree at Leichardt and for an hour or so on a sunny Sunday afternoon you listen to delightful music that touches your soul and makes you want to move to Paris and drink wine and eat pastries and be surrounded by beautiful people who play beautiful music in pretty little unsung venues. And they do a lovely cover of the theme from "Amelie" which is one of your favourite movies of all time and you smile because music makes you happy. And sharing music makes you happy. 

In the words of Felix Riebl, if only the whole world could be made of people like these, then the news would not be telling me of all that warfare endlessly. The end. 

Indigo Trio

They say there is nothing new under the sun

But change is the only constant

Find new for yourself

Discover a new everyday 

Singing with Indigo Trio was a delight 

To learn new music that no other singer has sung before

To explore new songs

To play with other musicians and discover the new

Make changes

Every morning

Under this sun of ours

That glowing ball of chemistry

Is a new day

Original. New or back to the source from whence it came

All is light

All is song and dance 

To find the new and make it your own

To be unafraid and just go out and do it

To conquer the old sayings 

And make change 

Make bliss

This is delight 

Jason Robert Brown

And one day you find yourself in a theatre surrounded by a bunch of avid theatre nerds and you are all there because in time and space you have sat listening to the original cast recordings over and over and some of you have performed in amateur productions of his shows and the music is what gets you. And although it is not a large venue, it is entirely intimate and you can hear his breath and the plosive p’s and b’s and t’s and feel the pressure of his pinky hitting the top notes of the piano. And he excudes so much energy so much passion so much life as he plays and sings the songs you know so well but suddenly tonight they are new because the brain that wrote them is performing them in front of you and you wonder how he can possibly still be sitting with all that energy surely he must be floating surely the way he taps his foot so insistently that the whole auditorium can hear it feel its pulse surely he must need to stand but his back is straight and there he is sitting playing the piano and singing. And he is utterly marvellous. The way the music is driving and full of vigour but the lyrics are melancholy and funny all at once and the whole room is transported to intimate worlds far away in the land of America but still so familiar it could have been your own living room. You have had that conversation. You have had that heart break. You have felt that loneliness. You have shared that laugh. The magic of watching the craft come to life. Feeling like you are there as he writes the notes the chords the lyrics  the song is created in front of you before your eyes inside your very ears. And all there is is a piano a microphone and a man in a spotlight. And it is lovely. It is breath-taking. It is music. The end. 

Part of It All

There is a song in the musical [title of show] called "Part of It All", in which the two leads Hunter and Jeff sing about wanting to be a part of the buzz, excitement, inevitable post-show blues, and life that is show business. And it is lovely when you are in the midst of it, and feeling exactly part of it. When you spend your days singing and dancing and fluting and running to the theatre and from rehearsal to rehearsal and you go to sleep dreaming about inversions and chord progressions and you spend your nights covered in white paint and hair gel and glitter and the thrill buzz excitement of being in front of an audience. And you wake up ready to start all over again. And if that is being part of it all, I love it with every inch of my being. 

Christmas Stocking

Christmas has passed and it’s now the season for taking stock of the year. Some of this year has been awful. But you breathe into the pain, and you just keep breathing, and suddenly you find that you are surrounded by an absolute plethora of amazing food, music, family, friends, and theatre. And you come to the end of the year with the ability to say that much of it has been utterly wonderful. In no particular order, the beautiful, inspiring, exciting, and lovely things in my life this year have been...

• The Eveleigh Farmer’s Markets with my bestie Len
• Starting dance, singing, and flute lessons again
• Starting Flusical with Flick
• Starting the Movie Musical Project
• Learning to cook pasta, ice cream, polvoron, bread, pastry, and cheese from scratch
• Quitting the security of a full-time job to pursue theatre and it being utterly wonderful 
• Getting paid to watch Jersey Boys several times a week
• Moving to Ashfield with beautiful housies 
• Developing my personal meditation practise, obtaining my Meditation Facilitator’s Certificate, running morning meditations in Glebe
• Performing in The Pajama Game and meeting all the beautiful wonderful people at Strathfield Musical Society
• Singing with the Bling Band
• Running my first City to Surf  
• Discovering MusicalTalk, Seth Rudetsky, Amy Krouse Rosenthal, and Superforest 
• Knowing that I am surrounded by the most beautiful, talented, wonderful, supportive friends
• Knowing that I have incredibly beautiful, talented, wonderful, supportive families 
• Working with amazing people 
• Seeing Shoshana Bean, Donna McKechnie, Stephen Schwartz, and Liz Callaway perform in Sydney and Brisbane 
• Being accepted into the London Central School of Speech and Drama Masters of Music Theatre program

Yum and Fun

My goodness what a weekend! There have been so many moments of inspiring, beautiful, and lovely in the past three days that I barely know where to begin. I performed in my first dance concert since I was 14, I visited the North Sydney Markets and Eveleigh Farmer’s Markets and wished all my wonderful vendors a Merry Christmas, thanking them all profusely for the past year of amazing locally and organically grown delights, I cooked up a storm with my housie/bestie Len, I met a ton of performers, musicians, and techies, I partied, I watched the 8th Annual Cabaret Showcase, and I marveled at the way the weather can change from bright hot sunshine to cold and rain and even snow in Australia in December (?!?!?!?!?), all in the space of 48 hours. Crazy!!

And now to the yum factor. Following the cancellation of other exciting Saturday night adventures Len and I decided to put a rare weekend night at home by baking up a storm. Len put his recently acquired Italian culinary skills to the test and whipped up the most incredible roast pumpkin ravioli in a thyme butter sauce. Dear future girlfriends of Len, this man is a seriously amazing cook. No seriously. Freaking amazing. The promise of the addition of roast garlic to reprises of this dish is something I’m very much looking forward to. Dear Len. Please stop reading the blog and get baking. Many thanks... :) I had some left over plums and cherries which weren’t going to last much longer, so making a variation on a Cyndi O’Meara recipe for a lemon tart, I whipped together a cherry pie. It was ridiculously easy, and oh so very, very tasty. And I realised afterwards, with considerable joy, that I knew where every single ingredient came from, and just about all the farmers who had worked to bring me these goodies. The eggs and plums came from Champion's Mountain Organics, the honey from Malfroy's Gold, the cold pressed macadamia oil from Hand n' Hoe Organics, the flour from Demeter Farm Mill, and the cherries from Yuri’s Sustainable Produce in Orange. 

Beautiful food, beautiful music, performing, and spending time with amazing people. Life really doesn’t get any better than this! 

A Midsummer Night's Dream

I just returned from a most delightful evening at the theatre. And by theatre I mean the outdoor amphitheatre at Centennial Park. The production was A Midsummer Night’s Dream staged by Wild Rumpus Productions. The audience sat beneath the trees with picnic rugs and hampers full of food. We had Mersey Valley cheddar and Jalsberg and dips and berries and fresh bread and wine and juice and olives and eggplant and semi-dried tomatoes and fresh tomatoes. Is it obvious that we feasted? And as the sun set to the west, the players gathered around us to tell the story of lusting lovers and impish elves and fairies. No set, no props, beautiful simple costumes, simple lighting, and some wonderful good old-fashioned story telling. This was Shakespeare at it’s best. Wild Rumpus Productions claims in the program notes to create performances “that are bold, irreverant and of the highest professional standard,” and that they did. Young and old, from the four-year-old pink fairy sitting behind us, to the oldest grown-ups were all kept entertained with spirited and playful performances that bought the Shakespeare text to life. Can life get any better than this? Sydney on a beautiful clear night, summer fruits coming into season, wonderful friends, fabulous food, and a night out at theatre. My Oberon! What visions have I seen! And thankfully, not a dream, but the stuff that dreams are made of. Wonderful.  

Wild Rumpus' production of A Midsummer Night's Dream is running until 28 Nov, every Friday, Saturday, and Sunday at 7.30pm. Highly, highly recommended! Tickets can be booked here. 

Stephen, Shoshana, and Donna, OH MY!

Sydney is just under 16,000km from New York City, and if Luisa can’t be on Broadway, then you must bring Broadway to Luisa! And fortuitously for me, Broadway well and truly came to Australia this week. In the past 7 days, I have seen composer Stephen Schwartz (Godspell, Pippin, and Wicked, among many others), actresses Shoshana Bean (Hairspray, and Wicked), and Donna McKechnie (A Chorus Line, Follies, Company, among many, many other shows)!

Last Sunday found me at the City Recital Hall in Angel Place surrounded by a full-house of fellow musical theatre nerds for “An Evening with Stephen Schwartz: Festival of Broadway”. The evening was a showcase of Stephen Schwartz’s music, beginning with Godspell and ending with “the W show,” Wicked, along with a discussion between Stephen Schwartz and Michael A. Kerker, (Director of Musical Theatre for ASCAP - the American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers). Directed by questions from Kerker, Schwartz discussed the processes behind developing a musical, his journey to the Great White Way, what it was like to have three shows playing simultaneously on Broadway, working with Alan Menken on the Disney projects, traveling to Denmark with a commission to write a new musical celebrating the life of Hans Christian Anderson, working on a new opera, and the story behind the inspiration for Wicked. 

Hearing showtunes played by a full symphony orchestra is always a treat, and watching Liz Callaway, (another Broadway veteran, and also the singing voice of Princess Jasmine in Aladdin and the title role of Anastasia) was fabulous, but my highlight of the evening was definitely Stephen himself singing and playing his own compositions. He played early versions of “The Wizard and I”, and shared how the song, and subsequently the Wicked plot, progressed from early drafts to the version we know (and utterly love) today. The night finished with a beautiful rendition of “For Good,” with Schwartz playing solo on the piano. “For Good” is a moving ballad of friendship and reflection, and to be sitting three rows from the composer himself, was nothing short of glorious. His warm spirit and youthful sense of joy absolutely shone through, and I just melted. 

Three days later, I jetted up to Brisbane for the evening to see “Broadway to BrisVegas:  Shoshana Bean Live in Concert”. The venue was the Brisbane Powerhouse, a former power station, that has been converted into a cultural centre in the lovely suburb of New Farm. The show opened with a jazz version of “Wouldn’t It be Loverly” from My Fair Lady and not a schmaltzy Michael Buble kind of jazz, but a vocally gymnastic riffed tribute-to-Ella kind of jazz. Wow! I had chills up and down my spine all through the song - a reaction I had right throughout the concert. The following numbers, including “Down with Love,” and “My Funny Valentine”, showed off Shoshana’s vocal range and ability to seamlessly transition from swing to sultry to sumptuous. The pianist, James Sampliner, also the MD of the evening (and later I found out the MD of Legally Blonde The Musical... OHMYGOD!), was an amazingly gifted musician. The audience was as much in love with him as they were with Shoshana Bean, and throughout his dazzling and spirited solos I could not believe that the piano was able to stay in one piece or not fly off the stage from all the energy poured in through each number. 

After honouring the “classics,” Bean moved onto more contemporary Broadway composers, including Jeremy Schoenberg, Jason Robert Brown, and Georgia Stitt. Although she is well known for her Broadway showtune belting, the stand out numbers from the evening were from Bean’s own (debut) album, “Superhero”, written by Ms. Bean herself. It was amazing to see her singing her own material. It was almost as if she had stripped off a veneer (warm and beautiful as it is) to reveal her true self (equally as warm and beautiful), and it was breath-taking. Another highlight was Shoshana sharing her horrifying realisation, when she was about 13, that she wasn’t black. And so she sang a medley of all the parts she will never get to play as a white woman - ranging from AIDA, RENT, Porgy and Bess, Once on This Island, Ragtime, Children of Eden and Dream Girls. She jumped from pop to musical theatre to opera and back all within a breath. Hilariously brilliant. 

Her belting, her riffing, her legit voice, her comic timing, her melty jazz voice, her perfectly not annoying pingy musical theatre twang... oh my! I LOVED IT! Am I gushing? She was gorgeous. I floated back to my hotel room totally and utterly inspired. And what about the effort of flying up to Brisbane to be there for less than 12 hours, and enduring a 6 hour commute to work the next morning, all for one hour(ish) of musical theatre? So worth it - so worth it in fact, I’m seeing her again tonight in Sydney! WOOHOO!*

On Thursday night, I headed out to the Factory Theatre in Marrickville to see Broadway royalty Donna McKechnie perform her cabaret show “My Musical Comedy Life”. McKechnie swanned on stage, looking every bit the Broadway performer, with fake eyelashes, theatrical make up, and glitter everywhere. The script felt rehearsed and a little overstaged, and I worried that McKechnie wouldn’t be able to hit all the notes after her first number left her out of breath, but while she found it difficult to speak between numbers, her singing voice was still clear and strong. And despite arthritis and her age, she can still dance! 

A Chorus Line was the first musical I saw live, and I spent many inspired hours of my childhood listening, and dancing along, to the original Broadway cast recording. The ultimate moment of the evening for me therefore, was of course “Music and the Mirror”. The number was made all the more special by the back story of how the song came to be (it was the last number written for the show), and seeing McKechnie at sixty-nine years of age still belting it out just like that disembodied voice that has floated out of my grandma’s stereo so many countless times bought me to tears. 

*I’m home from Shoshana Bean at The Factory... what can I say?! AMAZING. I am completely and utterly inspired and excited. The past seven days have been thrilling. I want to sing. I want to dance. I want to write music. I want to listen to every musical ever written. I want to see a thousand Broadway shows. I want to live in NYC and be surrounded by all of this day and night. Thank you thank you thank you Stephen Schwartz, Liz Callaway, Donna McKechnie, Shoshana Bean and James Sampliner for traversing 16,000km of continents and ocean and bringing a touch of Broadway to the land of Oz. It has been nothing short of WONDERFUL!