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There’s something surreal about sitting in a ballroom packed to the brim with hundreds of “Six” fans — most of them young women and teenage girls — and watching them unabashedly belt out the musical’s soundtrack in a cast-led singalong.
I hadn’t seen “Six,” which turns Henry VIII’s six wives into pop queens — it doesn’t begin performances on Broadway until next month. But the joy on the faces of these fans, their fearless dancing, felt deeply familiar. Not too long ago, I was one of them.
This was my second day reporting on my first BroadwayCon, an over-the-top theater convention in Midtown Manhattan for over-the-top fans. A quick crash course: Take the most intense theater buff you knew in high school — you know the one — and multiply that person by 5,000. Let those enthusiasts dress up as their favorite characters and lip sync to their favorite showstopping numbers. Give them a chance to meet their Broadway idols and get their prized Playbills signed. Just for kicks, leave a grand piano unattended in the hallway and see what happens.
I’ve long considered myself a Broadway fan, which made my assignment last weekend for The Times’s Culture desk particularly fun. Wandering among costumed fans — several striped Beetlejuices, a handful of Hamiltons, an 8-year-old in a “Phantom of the Opera” mask — and weaving through the occasional pop-up singalong session in the hallway, I felt right in my element.
I didn’t always consider myself a theater fan — not in the way 8-year-old Phantom already is at his age. I grew up watching the Tony Awards with my dad and listening to “Les Misérables” in the car with my mom. But beyond that, theater was a passing interest, one that really emerged only when touring productions stopped at the Fox Theater in my hometown, Atlanta.
That changed when I was 11, a few months after my dad died. My mother and I jetted off to New York — my first time in the city, my first show on Broadway — eager for a distraction.
In hindsight, “13” — about a Jewish kid whose family life is crumbling around him at a pivotal moment in his adolescence — wasn’t exactly an escape. But the best theater reflects your reality rather than pulling you out of it: The show was the first piece of art I really connected to, the first cast album I purchased and played endlessly.
By high school, I was a full-fledged fan. I started stage-managing school productions and attending Georgia’s annual state thespian conference. I discovered this strange, kind community full of people who shared the same passions, who could scream-sing “In the Heights” with me, who could engage in a heated discussion about the film cast of “The Last Five Years.”
BroadwayCon is that community but with a much bigger microphone. I was in a massive crowd of strangers, in a city I moved to eight months ago, and I hadn’t felt more at home in years.
It was different now, of course — I went to BroadwayCon as a working reporter, not as a fan or participant. Reporters are supposed to bear witness to a story without getting involved. Part of me felt the instinct to sequester the Broadway fan side of my brain from the reporter side.
But here’s the thing: We’re all influenced by our background, our experiences — even objective reporters. Being excited about theater isn’t something I need to hide or push down. At the convention, it was an asset: Growing up as a part of this community gave me a deeper understanding of the people I talked with, of why that weekend mattered so much to them.
(O.K., yes, outwardly, I need to push it down a little. Apparently declaring my love for Aaron Tveit, who stars in “Moulin Rouge! The Musical,” isn’t “professional” or something.)
So when I looked out at the hundreds of young fans singing along with the cast of “Six” on Saturday, I didn’t really wonder why they listened to the soundtrack on repeat, or spent months creating costumes, or grew obsessed with a show most of them probably hadn’t seen yet. A few years ago, I was them. Part of me always will be.
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A Convention for Broadway Fans? They’re Singing My Song - The New York Times
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