High School Musical Redux
I am on the receiving end of an endless supply of PR email pitches, related to music (“Check out the latest ramshackle country punk group!”) to babies (“No More Wipes!”) to indelicate women’s health issues that are so embarrassing to read, I gasp and hit delete to save my delicate sensibilities. (Vagisil can’t help that its CEO’s name is Keech Shetty, or the fact that I have the maturity of a 12-year-old boy every time I read the brand name and CEO name in the same sentence.)
But I recently got one from a casting agency that made me sit up in my seat.
They’re casting a reality TV series that will reunite high school musical theater casts from the ‘80s and ‘90s to perform their pubescent magnum opuses. And they want ME.
Brighton High School “Anything Goes” 1983 performers: who’s in? This former corps dancer with no speaking parts is ready for her close up (provided the lens is smeared with a touch of Vaseline, and I’m given some time to stretch and wrap my knee.) How refreshing will it be to approach our high school drama from a middle aged POV?
For instance, where we once scampered out in fishnets, top hats, and tap shoes onto on a bow-shaped platform that extended into the audience, the 2019 update could see us stopping for the obvious question we left unasked back then: who built this platform? Was it Mr. Tschorke’s wood shop class? Because everyone knows that’s just a front for getting high in the photo dark room next door. Structural integrity doesn’t seem like it was their top concern. Then again, the dancer’s combined weight load in ’83 probably wasn’t a top concern either.
Could we approach one episode from a dietary standpoint, and by this I mean, how DID Tab, chocolate ice cream, and sesame bagels count as a balanced backstage meal for me in ‘83? At least until Saturday nights when I got in a few servings of grapes, thanks to Messrs. Bartles and Jaymes? Comparing what I ate then to the maniacally healthy diet 50-something me must follow in order to not gain weight every second of every day (mostly celery, with a dusting of chia seeds on Cheat Day): so much room for tears and desperation, which we all know is the heart of good reality TV.
We can also, hopefully, have the conversation that simmered just under the surface in the early ‘80s: the director is not “loud” or “showy” or “flamboyant.” He’s gay, and that’s cool. Should have been cool then. The entire high school owes that man, as well as the middle school choir director, an apology for being so repressed, and while we’re at it how about apologies for all the other marginalized kids and adults who performed a harder acting role than any of us onstage had that year?
I could see this show having endless spin-offs. High school class officers: reunite and re litigate whose job it was to plan the stupid prom, anyway, and why was the Treasurer ALWAYS late for meetings? High school language clubs: let’s see who can still conjugate “schmecken” or “vivre” or “corer.” Follow up question: was it worth all the flash card hours? How about putting the two powerhouse regional football teams back together to replay The Big Game? The only eligible players are the one who still fit into their uniforms, and both those guys will probably snap an Achilles.
I love the idea of reuniting the cast of one of our high school shows to see if any of us still have it, “it” being defined as four working limbs and hairlines/waistlines within a 50% tolerance of ’83 values. Mr. Tschorke’s woodshop kids can do the measuring.
Besides, thirty-five years ago as I shuffled off to Buffalo while wielding a white-tipped cane, I had no idea how fitting the eponymous song lyrics would be in 2019:
The world has gone mad today
And good’s bad today,
And black’s white today,
And day’s night today…
Anything Goes!
Yeah I mean Patti Lupone’s version is ALSO good, if you like things like professionalism and talent. I happen to think they’re overrated.
*** Did you mark your calendar yet? April 13, 2019 – Next Midlife Mixtape ’80s Dance Party at the Cat Club San Francisco. Featured bands and the beneficiary of that night’s fundraising TBA, but get it on the calendar and start rounding up your friends now!
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