The problem with mobile rush tickets is that you can think you’re going to get a solid deal for 25$ just by logging onto your app at 10AM and purchasing a ticket that you’ll pick up right in front of the theater when the show starts. Maybe my experience of immediately being able to purchase my first tickets through the app made me think that every other time would be so seamless. During the month of January when I had 2 days off due to winter break from classes, I tried to see theater if I could during the off time. Apparently, Thursday morning theater is some of the most damn popular theatre in the fricking city. Every week I would try to get one single ticket for myself, trying multiple times a week, and I would fail every single time. Would I ever succeed in my task? I wouldn’t, but I’d get the ticket someway even if it required me spending an extra five dollars.  This is another classic incident of me writing a “review” of the show weeks after and doing my best to recapture the feelings I had during the experience.

I like how as I start this second paragraph, it’s been two weeks since I finished the first. At one point I’m going to write enough of these in a row where I actually get back in the groove and I start busting these out without months in between. Because I do think it’s both interesting to see how I may feel reflecting back on an event that happened in the past, showing truly how much it impacted me, but at the same time, I think I include a lot of bullshit to like make it seem like I’m actually a writing a decent amount of words. With this play though, it started off a collection of incidents where I managed to sit in the first or second row for every show. Little did I know that my next time sitting in such a close vicinity to the stage would be over a month later, except I’ll just think it started off a trend. Granted, like a movie at a movie theater, sitting in the front row of a stage production isn’t always the ideal positioning. Especially when you find out the stage is like elevated 5 feet above from the ground level of which you are seated and you find yourself in direct eye-line with some very solid knees. I want to be clear that these were good looking knees and just because they were covered by a pair of slacks doesn’t mean I couldn’t tell the amazing piece of leg underneath. Why a singular leg? Legs. Every actor had great legs, and I don’t think there was a single woman included in the entire show.

I went to this show knowing nothing more except for that it was written by the Oscar winning writer of Moonlight, or rather the movie Moonlight won an Oscar though the script is typically important for that. I did think it was going to be a musical, and rather it was more a play with songs involved. A play that actually included songs as songs and not plot devices which is a rarity to see. What kind of songs they were though, hearing such harmonies between men of low voices, high voices, it was truly mesmerizing. I say that because in the past month or so, I’ve seen Broadway musicals where the two leads who were specifically in a singing play were supposed to harmonize and just two voices could not mesh nearly as well as 5 tonally different voices blended together here. I don’t remember the specific number of butts seen in the show, but I think it was around 3 bare booties. One remember’s all booties when they are but six feet away from aforementioned butts and I can safely say they were just as nice as the knees. And the moment of seeing butts did confirm that the previously mentioned knees hidden by slacks were some solid knees as well. I can tell a nice knee!

I mention Moonlight because as well all know that was about a gay black boy and him growing up throughout three acts of his life. Choir Boy is about the dealings of a black teenager in a Catholic prep school and his dealings with his life in that environment. Again, I wasn’t actually expecting a play with songs, rather thinking it’d be a full blown musical so I was definitely shocked by the tenderness, the pathos, the full blown devastation one could feel while in the midst of this show. It was much more emotional than I ever figured it would be, it was much more tender than I ever thought it would be, it was a much more beautiful story than I thought it would be. It didn’t answer all the questions, it didn’t give every character a happy ending, It felt real though. Real in a way of which I could try my best to relate even though I’m not a gay black teenager in a catholic prep school with a voice of an angel.

I do feel I was beginning to get on a roll and actually thought I was going somewhere with the review and then I realized I should’ve probably done that 500 words sooner. So I’ll there, and I’ll actually be proud of myself for retaining some of the knowledge of seeing this play back in January. Do I think about it often? I don’t, it doesn’t come up on my day to day interactions, but when expressing these thoughts here the whole play started to flood back to me. And that’s what I like, I like that maybe I’m not thinking about all these theater performances on the daily though there’s something within them that resonates with me long after I’ve seen them. I think that’s about all you can ask for in theater, at the very least make it memorable. So it goes.