The Impossible Dream

There is a moment in the musical Man of La Mancha where protagonist Don Quixote stands alone and begins singing. If you’re someone of certain aspirations, chances are you’ve heard the line without context. It’s the most popular song in the show and one that summarizes the Miguel de Cervantes adaptation so perfectly. With a quiet rumble, he begins to sing “To dream the impossible dream.” The rest is basically synonyms of this phrase, but the intent becomes clearer with each visit to the Thesaurus. Whatever delusional mission Don Quixote is on, he believes wholesale that he is going to complete it at any cost. After all, this is the very definition of quixotic. 

Sometimes life is worth the impossible dreams. The most noteworthy example is in long term goals, especially if they never seek to make any sense. There’s the basic, logical, even necessary ones that help you plan out a life (get married, buy a house, name your kid). Those are the possible dreams because they have been presented to us time and again as things people have achieved. 

The impossible dream is something that doesn’t really sound like it could ever be completed because it just isn’t manageable. This isn’t to say it can’t happen. It will just come at a grand expense, whether of personal time or reputation. It’s important to manage what goals you want to put on that list.

For me, my impossible dreams are often all entertainment related. At one point it was the goal of watching every film awarded Best Picture by The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS). Almost 90 movies later, and I can ramble off opinions on The French Connection with the best of them (did you know that they shot that car chase sequence without permits?). It’s a goal that took me years to achieve and patience of sitting down over and over, chronicling my thoughts and looking up trivia to make me appreciate the films more. Similarly, I watched all of The West Wing in time for the 2016 American presidential election. Considering that that’s over 150 episodes, that’s a real commitment. 

I’m currently working on a handful, including weaseling my way through A24’s entire release catalog. Given that this includes a lot of terrible films from their DirecTV branch and the ongoing success may mean that they’ll never close, it’s an impossible dream that delights me on an annual basis. There is something satisfying about always having a little bit more to cover because it means there is something else to explore. In the best of circumstances, that means you’re in for great discoveries. Life is too short to not keep indulging in new ideas, even if they’re dumb stoner jokes like A24’s Never Goin’ Back.

Then there is the impossible dream that I began chronicling on Optigrab and am now transferring here. It’s a bit silly, but I personally want to see every Tony winner for Best Musical. 

Yes, even this one

I can’t explain how the goal started, though it may stem from my time with the AMPAS challenge. When exploring the Best Picture winners, I found value in using them in a bigger context. You couldn’t just argue why a film was good, bad, or indifferent. You needed to understand what it said about the time. To me, every winner between 2000 and 2009 dealt with identity whereas 1990-1999 was recontextualizing cinema’s place in history. From there one can explore different logistics behind winners, such as personal politics and the fame of any one actor at the time. As much as AMPAS is about rewarding talent, history will quickly prove that they’re as much about recognizing the legends who have put in the hours and probably produced better work than what they won for. It’s a great irony, but then again calling something ‘Best’ and having it be true is close to impossible.

I guess that I see the Tony Awards as having a similar value in the zeitgeist. I am far less versed in theater. I have never performed in a stage show outside of school recitals. I was never the shining star, even if the vocal teachers tried to get my nasal voice to sound like Pavarotti. I was never going to be a singer. I was never an actor. I was always a writer and one who took forever to even figure out what he was trying to say. 

And yet I found myself winding up over and over in a theater, hearing a crowd cheer as the lights went down. The curtain would pull back and suddenly I was transported. About 15 years ago, my first real introduction to theater involved The South Coast Repertory in Costa Mesa, CA. Consuming dramatic acting has been of a greater struggle than the showier musical variety that played across the way at the neighboring Segerstrom Theater for the Performing Arts. I remember the shows I saw including Ridiculous Fraud, Doubt, The Importance of Being Earnest and Taking Steps. I couldn’t tell you anything about Taking Steps except that I still think about the set design where every cast member wanders around a two-story house, teaching me the lifelong value of staging.

I think I lucked into musicals because they’re just more enjoyable. One weekend your grandparents are whisking you off to see The Producers, the next you’re seeing Fiddler on the Roof at your school for the fourth time (I knew people). It was something I could latch onto in large part because it was the attractive idea of narrative through song. These weren’t just pop hooks. They had deeper catharsis in the melodic choices, and suddenly you were mesmerized that so much could be said in such a truncated space. There was also the pageantry. You can’t go wrong with a lavish set as performers of any caliber of talent get on stage and express themselves. Sure you want professionals, but local theater could feel like your own secret. 

Musical Theater West's production of My Fair Lady (2015)

That is why I am not as picky about where I see the musicals as most people likely are. It’s true that I would’ve loved to see Ben Platt in Dear Evan Hansen, but I don’t live in New York. I am not affluent enough to sneak in the backdoor of Broadway. I’m just some guy from Long Beach, CA who happened to be near a thriving theater scene. If it’s not at one of the schools, it’s at The Long Beach Playhouse or The Carpenter Center. The options are limitless and thanks to Lucky Seat and Today Tix, the accessibility has become a lot easier. To me it’s not so much about the level of professionalism as it is the spirit that goes into the acting, to watch actors put their heart and soul into every note. Even a bad show could have a great performance or the other way around. Except for Rent. Rent is unable to be saved at this point.

The best thing to happen to Henry VIII since Herman's Hermits

But I think exploring theater on stage and nonstop visits to YouTube has opened my eyes to how theater grew. For instance, the collected works of Rodgers & Hammerstein may seem cornball, but they were far more progressive than a lot of cinematic parallels. Shows like The King and I and South Pacific were ahead of their time in showing interracial relationships in normalizing ways. Later on, you get more of a split between the intellect (Stephen Sondheim) and the showman (Andrew Lloyd Webber). Even later you got the very fabric of a songbook changing with the hip-hop/Latin-flavored In the Heights and even later with the house music take on Henry VIII’s wives called Six: The Musical. It’s amazing how this form of live entertainment has evolved since the days of Gilbert & Sullivan, and most of all it’s still refreshing to see live.

As of this publication, I have only seen 20 of the 70 Best Musical titles with almost half of them being from the past three years. While I have loved live theater for some time, I have had a renaissance of sorts recently. It’s in part from knowing local venues to whet my appetite. It’s also just from forming a deeper interest. Even then I don’t really know much of anything about the history of Tony Awards. If you run off any of the drama queens, you’d be shocked at how few I know. I don’t know any of the myths and legends, or any of the taboo etiquettes that performers base their lives around. It’s an area that I can continually learn new things about whether in person or in research.

So why this goal? Because I don’t know that I could ever achieve it. The reality is that I’m forced to jump at opportunities instead of merely renting a disc from Netflix. Availability is difficult because as you know life gets in the way. Sometimes I just can’t get out to a theater. Others, as is the case now, is because of cancellations or postponements. However, I do imagine the great difficulty it will be to ever track down a theater who wants to put on The Will Rogers Follies just to help my checklist (you couldn’t just give it to Once On This Island and make my life easier, could you?). Also, I’m eventually going to have to sit through shows I am not looking forward to, like Jersey Boys, which makes it impossible on a tolerance level alone.

Falsettos (2016)

This isn’t to say that this is the only theater I consume. I see around a dozen shows annually right now, and a lot of them are just as entertaining. For instance, I’ve recently seen Ragtime, Little Shop of Horrors, Falsettos, and Something Rotten. I would consider all to be very good for different reasons. 

My knowledge is growing and I do crave learning more about this art form in the hopes of feeling like more than a spectator. It is hard because I am not charismatic enough to stand onstage or joust opinions with the actors who are decades into their craft. I’m sure there is some value to my position in all of this, but considering how harshly depicted critics can be in pop culture (here’s looking at you Birdman), I do already assume some animosity is there.

So why have this goal? For one it gets me out of the house more often. It’s important to have the motivation to feel inspired by the world beyond your basic needs. While some would argue that art has a superfluous quality, especially since ALL opinions are subjective, I do think they do open up different important facets. It’s as much a form of expression as it is presenting ideas in a way that will make people want to listen. 

It will make them remember messages, such as mental health in Dear Evan Hansen, far better than simply reading the pamphlet your psychiatrist gave you last week in therapy. Most of all, it unites and gives us something to talk about. I’m probably going to talk about it more in the future (and not always tied to reviews) and give you a sense of what I look for in a show. 

For now, I felt the need to break the ice and introduce myself. Like Don Quixote, I have this impossible dream to understand a medium that I have never had personal involvement in (I can at least say I’ve filmed things for my college journalism department). I like to think I’ve gotten somewhere, but I’m sure your breakdown of craft is much more satisfying than me saying “he sure sang well.” It just has to be. Continuing to enrich my personal knowledge will hopefully add a few nouns and adjectives to that statement, and hopefully, they’re good ones at that.