Musicals, Old Friends, and the Last Time I Saw This Much Pink and Green
To Wicked and the friends that made me.
The premiere of Wicked and their inordinately large marketing budget—which has made all content on social media for the film completely unavoidable—has got me thinking about musicals, old friends, and the last time in my life I saw this much pink and green.
On Musicals
For those of you who don’t understand Wicked’s dominance within the current internet zeitgeist, let me begin by saying that the Wicked hype is well deserved. Not only is Wicked the fourth-longest-running show on Broadway, but it’s the kind of musical of which its importance transcends its medium, becoming a cultural phenomenon that supersedes its original form.
There are many reasons for this—the music moving, clever, and frankly magical, the ensemble of characters all complex and likable, the set design and costuming immersive and enchanting, and the story full of twists and turns as it explores themes of female friendship and discovering ones self, prejudices and politics, perception and rejection and the longings of the human heart.
Simply, what isn’t there to like?
More than any of these reasons though, I believe Wicked’s impetus in the modern Broadway scene has much to do with it being an entry point for so many of us into the world of musicals—at least it was for me.
Everyone remembers their first musical—and yes, I do mean more than the touring production of High School Musical to suburban hometowns across America (no offense to diehard High School Musical fans.)
But I’m talking about the first real production that many of us saw—performed by people who did this for a living, not just a local community theater. And for me and many others, that was Wicked.
My memories relating to Wicked are many.
I remember hiding out in my bedroom with my twin sister, rehearsing “What is This Feeling” over and over until we got the timing just right. (I was always Glinda, no surprise there.) We played the songs until our vocal cords hurt from taking turns singing and trying to hit all the high notes, and we hung the classic Broadway poster with Glinda whispering to Elphaba on our wall, our bedroom being the only space where we felt we could release our mutual closet theater kid.
I remember the feeling when the lights dimmed the first time I saw Wicked live. It was 2012, and my grandparents took us for Christmas. I remember the way I felt my eyes had been opened and my heart had come alive as we left the theater. We listened to the music the whole ride home.
And I remember the way we wept sitting on the cabin floor at our family reunion the summer after my cousin died, as my aunt sang “For Good” in his memory. He was a theater kid in high school and he passed away due to a heart condition.
All this to say—
Musicals move people.
There’s something about story and song that are inseparable. Oftentimes in my own writing, I’ve found that the only way I can properly express a character’s emotion is through song.1
Wicked was only the beginning of my love for musicals, and I know it was for so many others as well. It opened the door to a world of joy and music and became the entry point to a form of storytelling that has changed our lives, for good.
On Old Friends
I’ve heard it said
That people come into our lives for a reason
Bringing something we must learn
And we are led
To those who help us most to grow
If we let them
And we help them in return
Well, I don’t know if I believe that’s true
But I know I’m who I am today
Because I knew you
—“For Good”, Wicked
Many a friendship has been forged over a love of musicals.
Ana would never admit it to you, or at least she never would have when we were in high school, but she learned every word to Hamilton in the passengers seat of my little black Toyota Prius, ambling around the suburbs with nothing better to do than try to expand our vocal range and pretend we were Schuyler sisters.
Ana and I are nothing alike. Ana always wanted to be cool and I never quite was. She was a varsity softball star and the closest I ever got to making the team was becoming JV manager. Ana always cared about what people thought and I never cared what people thought (so long as I had a higher GPA than them—no joke).
Junior year, Ana threw a party and invited everyone who was cool to her house. To no one’s surprise, my twin and I got kicked out of the party before the sun even went down, presumably because we were being too obnoxious.
Which checked out. We were obnoxious. But we were also pissed and stubborn and wanted to make a point.
So we blasted “Rock Lobster” by the B52’s from the Prius speakers and crab danced in Ana’s driveway until she yelled at us to leave her house. That’s our biggest fight to date.
Ana and I have been friends for over 13 years—I am her weirdo, her permie pie, her Stellaluna (yes, the fruit bat who thinks she’s a bird), and Ana is my best friend who:
Will never not turn heads at a party when she starts dancing.
Walked onto the Notre Dame cheer team with literally zero years of experience.
Works in sports business like she always wanted to because she’s just a badass.
Simply put, Ana and I are not the same. She is Cece and I am Jess from New Girl. We are a completely different breed. Yet, we are still best friends. And that is because we are old friends.
Somehow, someway, there’s a magical invisible line which is the threshold in which a good friend becomes an old friend. Maybe it’s the friends that pass some combination of tests—years, miles, disagreements, annoying boyfriends and other questionable decision making. These are the circumstances that weed out friends of convenience from forever friends.
Regardless of how old friendships are forged, we can all agree—the rules for old friends are different. I love this excerpt form the song “Old Friends” from Merrily We Roll Along, written by the forever wonderful Stephen Sondheim, which hits on exactly what I’m talking about:
[FRANK]
Tell you somethin':
Good friends point out your lies
Whereas old friends live and let live
[MARY]
Good friends like and advise
Whereas old friends love and forgive
[FRANK]
And old friends let you go your own way—
[CHARLEY]
Help you find your own way—
[MARY]
Let you off when you're wrong—
[FRANK]
If you’re wrong—
[CHARLEY]
When you’re wrong—
[MARY]
Right or wrong, the point is:
Old friends shouldn’t care if you’re wrong…
—“Old Friends”, Merrily We Roll Along
I side with Mary.
The key to old friendships is leniency. Not for lack of care, but out of love.
At least to me, old friends are the ones who put up with your BS over the years, first begrudgingly, then with willful tolerance, and then so much so that anticipating your bad habits becomes second nature and all of the terrible parts of you—your stubbornness, lateness, shamelessness—become endearing rather than an inconvenience or a deal breaker.
And so Ana and I are still best friends, and I think she would agree that the secret to the longevity of our friendship has indeed been a lofty combination of both love and leniency.
On the Last Time I Saw This Much Pink and Green
[FRANK, CHARLEY & MARY]
Hey, old friends
How do we stay old friends?
Who is to say, old friends
How an old friendship survives?
One day chums
Having a laugh a minute
One day comes
And they're a part of your lives…
—“Old Friends”, Merrily We Roll Along
I can’t be the only one who remembers when customizable high-top Converse were all the rage, every girl and her mom customizing their Converse with yellows and purples and turquoises and prints from black and white polka dots to the logos of their favorite baseball team.
Designed online, shipped to order, and sixty plus dollars while the recession was in full swing—the customizable Converse were the epitome of 10-year-old Seren’s deepest desires and the object of her greatest envy.
And who had these covetable shoes—but Kayla.
Kayla is my oldest friend, which also makes her my best friend.
We became best friends in second grade when we each simultaneously walked out of our houses and realized that the girl from Mrs. Bieberdorf’s class was also the girl living three doors down in the same cul-de-sac. So there we were, Kayla and me, growing up three doors down from each other in the suburbs of East Mesa where everything is brown and the summer is so hot that the bottoms of your feet feel like they’re cooking through the soles of your shoes.
Speaking of shoes—
Pink, the color of my face blushing with joy when I saw the custom Converse on Kayla’s feet. Green, the envy I felt that I could never have a pair of shoes like that.
They were high tops, hot pink with green details and this pink and green recycling patterned fabric on the back of the shoe and the tongue. I had never seen such a pair of shoes in my life, nor would one ever exist again.
Okay, I have a confession to make.
I’ve always been envious. Like, really envious. If you know anything about the Enneagram, I’m a four—which apparently means I struggle more with envy than the average person. Checks out.
Hot pink high tops unfortunately weren’t the end of my envy. Through middle school, I was always envious of my friends who were prettier or better at instruments or could actually throw a dodgeball in PE. And into high school, I would die inside every time someone would wear a cuter outfit than me, which was often, or even out-score me in a math test, even though I hated math.
For the majority of my life, I’ve been fueled by competition, which was always fueled by envy. And I didn’t realize I still struggled with this so severely until recently.
Somewhere along the way, watching your friends show off their custom high tops takes the form of watching your friends get into new relationships, get dream jobs, get engaged, start talking about having babies, have babies…
…while you’re still singing along to the same musicals and posting your writing on what’s practically adult Tumblr like it’s still 2013.
Kayla got engaged in June, and I couldn’t be more thrilled. But it’s taken practice in learning to celebrate my friends in the midst of my own lostness.
And part of this is realizing that my friends, especially my old friends, are a part of me and my life—their joys, my joys; their sorrows, my sorrows; their successes not something to be compared, but a small gift I get to share in.
So I want to end here, with a toast.
To our friends, old and new—knowing you has changed us for the better. Thank you for changing us, for good.
With love,
Perm
A Playlist for You
If you couldn’t already tell, I love musicals. So, I pulled a few songs for you from the musicals I love that capture some of my feelings about friendship :,)
Side note—I don’t usually share the songs I’ve written for my own musicals, or any of my songs really, but let me know if you’re interested and maybe I will finally share them lol.
Watched the movie. It was long
I’m interested