Tiffany and I were talking about Broadway shows while Mrs. Bookman was passing out tests. We decided that the two of us and Laurel should go and see a Broadway show. We decided that we wanted to see Cabaret. So, after school, we talked to Laurel, and she was way interested. So, that night we looked up information online about Cabaret. We couldn't find any, so we tried to think of another alternative. We came up with Rent and Les Miserables. Les Mis tickets cost way more than we were willing to spend, but we could get some $47.50 orchestra seats for Rent, so we decided to go for it. We picked May 25th, the first day off for our Memorial Day vacation. Little did we know that the date we picked (5-25) would be unforgetable, and we would later learn that 525 was a number going through our heads 24/7. On May 25th, we were saying "So and so said that Rent will suck! They said it's just about gay people and we'll hate it" but then we kept asking eachother "Do you think I'll like it?" and we kept telling eachother "YES". Laurel's mom drove us down to the city and we went through Times Square, checked out the TRL store, since Laurel and Tiffany were in LOVE with Carson, then we went and found an EXCELLENT restaurant, Starstruck. I recommend it to anyone if you're in the Broadway theatre district, 738 8th Ave between 45th and 46th street. The prices were reasonable and the service was amazing. Then, we headed over to the Nederlander to pick up our tickets. Since we're spoiled little suburban brats, we had ordered our tickets ahead of time at Ticketmaster.com. So we never experienced "The Line" or anything like that (The Line had already been gotten rid of by 2001, anyway), but we still experienced Rent. We thought that the Nederlander was the coolest theatre by far. We went in, really excited for the show. We watched, and some of it confused us. But we laughed, we cried, we mooed. Our "udder" confusion could NOT stop us from mooing. During intermission, we asked Laurel's mom to explain it to us a little. She knew the general idea, because she had seen the opera that Rent is based on, La Boheme. We started to understand the general idea of the show. By the time it was over, we decided that we loved Rent. After the show, we went outside and got our playbills autographed by Manley Pope (Roger Davis). There was a psychotic redhead girl who was all over Manley, and we think that people like her are the reason that now, Manley leaves the theatre all in black wearing a hat after every performance. But we got him to sign our playbills, and we got pictures of him, too.
The next day, we all got onto Napster (Remember the good old days when Napster still existed?) and downloaded lots of songs from Rent. Then, Laurel bought the Highlights of Rent CD. In early August, my grandmother had a celebration thing for her upcoming 85th birthday, and my whole family went. My cousin brought her Rent CDs for me to copy, I was the happiest girl in the world. Less than a week later, I was in the car with my family on a ride over to my cousins' house in PA, and I knew all of the words to both discs. I returned the CDs to my cousins, and all was good. Later on that month, I saw Rent for the second time. It was a little more of an adventure, because Laurel, Tiffany, and I took a bus into the city. Our seats weren't as good, but we enjoyed the show more, because I knew all of the words, Laurel knew most, and Tiffany knew Seasons of Love. We were the first to start clapping, and the last to stop. We started a 'wave' in the mezzanine during Seasons of Love, we were the first and loudest to moo, we started the mezzanine level's standing ovation. And, after the show, we got our picture taken (as in they actually posed with us!) with Dominique Roy (an understudy for Mimi) and Dean Armstrong (an understudy for Mark).
Soon after August, came September. We had plans to go see Rent in November, but after the 11th, our parents didn't want to send us into the city. Our hearts were broken and we became more and more obsessed with Rent during our withdrawl. Laurel and I were at Starbucks one day talking about how we absolutely had to see Rent again...soon. We were planning and plotting, and a week later, after bowling, we hit Captain Video to buy tickets to see Rent the next day at 2 PM. We were planning on getting half-price tickets because I had a discount card that we thought would give us 50% off of $45. We were wrong, the discount was only off of the $85 tickets, and that was only good by phone. The only seats that they had left at this point were center orchestra row E seats 101 and 103. $85. We looked at eachother, then looked at the ticket man. And we said "We'll take them!" He printed out our tickets and we started jumping up and down. We kissed the tickets. We hugged, we screamed, we went to rent a video so that my mom wouldn't be suspicious as of why we came home from Captain Video empty-handed. Then Laurel slept over, and we discussed our plans, got everything set, told our moms that we were getting Starbucks, picking up our tickets for a show in Nyack, getting pizza, seeing Robinson Crusoe, then getting dinner and ice cream after. My mom dropped us off by Starbucks at 11 AM on that morning that was cold cold.We got our hot drinks and walked the shorter-than-we-thought distance over to the bus stop. We waited for the bus...Sarah called us at 11:45. No bus. it was supposed to come at 11:47. It got to be 11:48 and we were freaking out. Finally, at 11:51, the bus came. We got on the bus,� called Sarah (hi, Sarah) from Yagil's phone (Hi Yugey) and started singing Rent from the moment we got on the bus. Then we started talking about Rent. Then we talked about people, and got back to talking about Rent. Before we knew it, we were in the city. We called Sarah and left her a really scary voice message with us trying to sing like in Tune Up #1. Then we actually got out of the Port Authority with little trouble at all. But we turned the wrong way down 8th Ave. We didn't realize till we were at 37th street that we were supposed to go another way. So we casually turned around and finally got to 41st street, happy to see some familiarity. When we saw the signs for the Nederlander, we were ecstatic! We couldn't believe we were really there! We went in, looked at the art on the walls, the cool murals on the door, and finally, after what seemed like hours, they let us in. First, we walked up to the front� row, center, and sat down. Then, we got up, touched the stage in like 6 places, and sat down in our seats. We were singing Rent songs in our seats (VERY quietly I might add) but the bitchy ladies in front of us turned around and just said in a mother-ish tone of voice "Girls..." and we stopped. For a little while. Then, the show started. Little bitches in front of us probably thought we'd be screaming the whole time like it was an Nsync concert. No. We lip-synced the whole time and the cast KNEW IT. Sometimes Laurel and I would just look at eachother and be like "OH MY GOD!" and then snap back to the play. The absolute BEST part of the play, though, I'd have to say, was during Seasons of Love when we started singing along, started the clapping, and waved our hands to the beat. Jodi Carmeli, a member of the ensemble, saw us, we are SURE, and she started laughing. The other cast members saw us too. But we could see Jodi looking away, trying not to see us, trying not to laugh. Then she lost it. And we lost it. And after Seasons of Love, we gave them a huuuuuuge standing ovation. We tried to do the La Vie Boheme dance, but we haven't mastered that yet. And, we are proud to say that we started the standing ovation at the end of both Act I and Act II. After the show, they were collecting money to give to an AIDS charity. We had very little money except for our bus fare for the ride home, but we donated about a dollar each...giving close to 20 cents to each cast member holding a basket. We got quite a few autographs...no pictures. Andy Senor was sooo full of himself. He wouldn't carry on my tradition of signing the playbill with my pink pen. He insisted on signing with HIS Sharpie. We saw Manley, but, knowing that he didn't want to be bombarded, and us being the respectful people that we are, we left him alone.� However, that third one was by far our best Rent experience. When the show started, we had tears in our eyes cause we didn't think we'd actually be there. And this time, the cast members seemed to notice us, sitting there in the sixth row, singing along with them. Now, maybe they really didn't and maybe they did, but it felt like they did, and that's what counts! Now, a lot of people helped us out on that Rent excursion, and it would be wrong to leave them out. First of all, Evania, who probably doesn't even want to be associated with us after the scene we made in Captain Video, came with us to Avanti and to Captain Video and she stood by us when we ordered our tickets. Then, she pretended not to know us when we started kissing the tickets, but that's okay, cause we love her anyway. Then, Yagil, our biff, lent us his phone, and he didn't get it back till December 1st. Next, of course, we have to recognize Sarah, the flyest dawg we know, who we called about 525,600 times. And we left her some really scary voice messages...but we know she's probably (hopefully...) heard worse. We also could not have made this trip possible without Sarah's friend Courtney, who we called when we got lost in the Port Authority cause the damn counter people didn't wanna help us, and she tried really hard to help us, and we eventually figured out where we were going. We also have to express our apologies to Sarah's roommate's sister because we think we scared her a lot. We called, she answered, and we were talknig fast and yelling at eachother and singing at the same time, while trying not to scare more innocent people.�� And, we can not forget the lovely woman from Chicago who carried a bag just like one of the homeless people in Rent did. But we didn't tell her that. She was a very nice lady of about 25, we panicked together when the man told us that the bus didn't go to Nyack. Laurel told her that our parents didn't know we were here, and she said "Tsk...that's not a good thing, girls".� When we got off the bus, we tried to help her find her friends. We showed her our map that we were so well-prepared with, and sent her on her way.
January 26, was our most recent time to date. I have to make this brief because Geocities will make me add another page if I go over what this box will allow. So, after the next timem, this time will also be expanded upon. Yay. Laurel and I went to see Rent again. We had gotten home from the dance and I IMed Sarah and told her that Laurel and I were going and then Shirey told Sarah she wanted to go see Rent, so the 4 of us went. Laurel and I got there earlier than we thought, so we stood on the ledge by the OBC singing and we pretended to be the OBC. Then Sarah and Shirey came and we were freezing and went to Starbucks where Sarah got a cold frap but I will leave that business between she, herself, and her. Then we went and we ended up having really retarded partial-view seats but that was okay, cause Laurel and I moved our chairs to accomidate ourselves throughout the show. It was still an awesome show, though laurel couldn't enjoy the 2nd act cause she was too scared of getting caught :( I feel bad. Anyway...our next plan is to hopefully see Rent the Tour in Stamford, CT this next week. I hope we can!
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