#theatre kid (derogatory)

[househrt]

compilation of my fav Wilson lines in 4x11

[cut-throat-bitch]

Day one of Les mis rehearsals and I am normal

[exalt1ora]

my theatre group is doing ride the cyclone later this year and i will make it my personal mission to get RTC tumblr to fall in love with our production

[the-sparkling-diamond-satine]

Jamie "it's a challenge to resist [the] temptation [of cheating on my partner]" Wellerstein,

Fuck you

[carryingthebanner]

One thing about me: I’m going to find a way to incorporate theatre into everything I do

[bitehand-a]

██     @prosperae （  💌  ）  ﹕    ❝  you  catch  more  flies  with  honey  than  with  vinegar.  ❞

ㅤ  he's  hoping  that  his  eye  roll  wasn't  too  obvious,   or  dramatic.   actually,   he  doesn't  care  about  the  latter   ...   he's  a  theatre  kid  after  all.    ❝  you  sound  like  my  mom  when  you  say  that,  ❞    a  scoff,   crossing  his  arms  over  his  chest,   eyeing  up  rachel,    ❝  not  the  cute  look  you  were  going  for,   i'm  afraid.   MY  MOM  IS  A  TERRIBLE  PERSON.  ❞    HE'S  NOW  SO  HORRIBLY  OFF  TOPIC!!   he  is  mentally  reeling  himself  back  in  on  the  topic  at  hand.   his  attitude.   which  he  didn't  see  an  issue  with,   but  others  seemed  to.    ❝  you  also  catch  a  lot  of  fake  people  when  you  act  like  honey,   sooo  ...  ❞    a  pause  as  he  thinks  to  himself,    ❝  YEAH,   I'D  RATHER  BE  BITTER.  ❞   

[carrotpiss]

Seeing someone speak positively about Pink Suits feels so surreal

[rhyves]

' ni tan obvio, vi a algunes queriendo pegarse un número con la de highschool musical. la cosa es que entre los dos géneros, los theatre kids y los vampiros emos, prefiero ser un orgulloso miembro del segundo ' sus hombros se encogen entonces, porque en realidad no le da mucha importancia. ocurre que escuchó la canción antes, inevitablemente quedándose pegada en su memoria. ' ah, ¿estamos en las mismas? pasa que la gente linda no juega beisbol' afirma, y sus ojos se dirigen al cigarro que tiene consigo, comenzando a percibir esa necesidad por nicotina. ' te respondo si me das uno de esos' es lo que negocia, batiendo las pestañas como si quisiese transmitir sus ansias. entre tanto, lo embarga la sensación de que ya conoce aquella cara.

‘  obvio, tenía que ser esa canción ’ aunque supermassive black hole le parece la elección más típica, también la considera la más adecuada. ante la propuesta acaba por chasquear la lengua en desaprobación. ‘ elegiste mal a tu objetivo ’ el béisbol no se encuentra entre su campo de habilidad  — ningún deporte, si hubiera de especificar. una calada del cigarrillo pone pausa al habla, pero se encoge de hombros. ‘ ¿sueles escuchar muse o es sólo por la temática del evento? ’

[ironwingedhawk]

You can see the transition from Eurovision theatre kid shit (affectionate) to American Hollywood glamour production (derogatory)

[marybeatriceofmodena]

What did Andrew Lloyd Webber do to make Patti Lupone upset? Sorry, saw your tags and i was curious

Oh.

Oh honey.

You sweet child.

Anyway, get ready for one of the most infamous showdowns in all musical theatre history, with the guy who writes the straightest musicals on Broadway (derogatory) and the one and only, the matriarch, the queen, two three-time Tony award winner Patti LuPone.

So, Andrew Lloyd Webber was basically kind of a boy genius in his prime - he met his future collaborator Tim Rice when they were 17 and 20 respectively, he wrote his first big hit, Jesus Christ Superstar, at 22, with Tim Rice writing the lyrics. And it was kind of a big deal at the time because the topic was controversial (you know, the Passion with rock music), but also because Broadway wasn't that far off from its golden age and let's just say the music and style were very different from, say, My Fair Lady. Or The Sound of Music. Or Funny Girl. It was basically the Rent/Hamilton of its time. (Yeah, Stephen Sondheim was around at that time, he worked on West Side Story which was revolutionary in of itself, but he's kind of an oddball in this case. You'll understand why later.)

Their real follow up (I'm not counting Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat for a variety of reasons) was a little musical called Evita, which you might know mainly because of a song called Don't Cry For Me Argentina. Or at least, your mom has probably heard it once at the very least. It's that song that's oversung from a musical while being out of context along with I Dreamed a Dream for Les Misérables. Or Memory from Cats.

Evita tells the story of Eva Peron, the wife of an Argentinian dictator, who basically screws her way to the top and ends up becoming the mistress of Juan Peron and the most beloved woman in her country through guile and deceit. Yes, I know the historical accuracy is very much debated but I know jackshit about Argentina's history except the bare basics so don't come at me. It was first produced in the West End in London, with Elaine Paige in the role, but because of Equity issues, she couldn't reprise her role for the Broadway production. So a Julliard graduate who was mostly starring in David Mamet plays got the part instead, and that was Patti LuPone.

Patti... did not have a good time during Evita, because the part is basically the kind of score where you can tell the composer is used to writing male parts, but most female singers have a two-octave range (yes, you got Julie Andrews who used to have a three-octave range, and many others, but they're exceptions), so she struggled a lot. That being said, if you listen to live recordings of her, you wouldn't be able to tell, and it got a lot easier later on. But she had this to say:

"Evita was the worst experience of my life. I was screaming my way through a part that could only have been written by a man who hates women. And I had no support from the producers, who wanted a star performance onstage but treated me as an unknown backstage. It was like Beirut, and I fought like a banshee."

This is from Patti's autobiography, which she wrote in 2007 - 8 years after shit with ALW went down. With all that said, she won a Tony Award for Evita, and she pretty much became a musical theatre household name from then on. She played Fantine in Les Misérables, Nancy in Oliver!, Reno Sweeney in Anything Goes. Meanwhile, ALW's next big hits were Cats (I'm not even kidding, Cats was a hit), and, you guessed it, The Phantom of the Opera, which he wrote in part to showcase his then wife Sarah Brightman's triple threat talents.

So, you need to understand before I continue that ALW, from my perspective, has always had a bit of an inferiority complex. He's basically associated to writing these commercially successful musicals that show a big spectacle but aren't ultimately substantial. I'm not sure I entirely agree with that, but I do think that if he didn't have Hal Prince, Maria Bjornson, Charles Hart and Gillian Lynne backing him up for Phantom, it would have probably been a Rocky Horror Picture Show knockoff people would have forgotten about pretty quickly. This is what I mean:

Yep, that was Phantom before any of the people I mentioned above (and Michael Crawford) were really involved.

Remember how I said Stephen Sondheim was an oddball? The thing with him is that his musicals weren't always commercially successful, but in general, in part thanks to being Leonard Bernstein's protégé, he was generally pretty well-respected and it was considered that his work was bringing musicals to a whole other level. Without Sondheim, you wouldn't have Jonathan Larson, and you wouldn't have Lin-Manuel Miranda. I am convinced ALW is resentful of that, and when you stop and think about it for more than 10 seconds, it's so obvious he REALLY wants to be Sondheim or at least command the same level of respect, but that's a story for another day.

So, after Phantom, ALW had other musicals that followed that either got a meh reception or outright flopped. Then there was Sunset Boulevard, which is based on the movie of the same name with Gloria Swanson. Despite all of her griefs for Evita, Patti LuPone agreed to partake in the musical as Norma Desmond, for its production in London, with the promise that she would transfer to Broadway once that production would open. And overall, after a string of flops, Sunset was actually doing pretty well.

HOWEVER. One day, while reading the gossip column of a newspaper, Patti found out that contrary to what she was promised, Glenn Close, who was meanwhile starring as Norma in the Los Angeles production, was to play Norma on Broadway. That was a complete surprise for her since no one on the production team had bothered to tell her it was happening - and keep in mind that for the news to come up the way it did in a gossip column, it probably would have necessitated a delay of a few weeks between the producers and the newspaper, which would have given them plenty of time to break the news to Patti. And Patti kind of needed the leg up because she was pretty bitter that a) Madonna was cast in the Evita adaptation instead of her; b) they actually lowered the key to fit Madonna's voice range, and she still had to expand her own to be able to sing the (lowered) score. And trust me, Patti is mad about it to this day.

So of course, she trashed her dressing room, the cast and crew weren't even mad about it because they were as shocked and angered as she was by the news. Patti sued Andrew Lloyd Webber for breach of contract, namely for 1 MILLION DOLLARS (yup, those are the real numbers), won, used the money she got from the lawsuit to get a swimming pool, which she called (and I SHIT YOU NOT) the Andrew Lloyd Webber Memorial Pool. Since then, Webber is dead to her, to the point rumor has it she had part of a building blocked during an event so she could get out of it without coming across Webber, because she hates him so flipping much she doesn't even want to be in the same building as the guy.

(There's also drama that happened with Faye Dunaway who was supposed to replace Glenn Close after she went from Los Angeles to Broadway, except they abruptly closed the show down after Close left, but that's a story for another day)

So with all the bad press, and with ALW forced to pay 1 million dollars for Patti's lawsuit, that led Sunset's productions to close earlier than expected. ALW has stayed around since, with... mitigated output, so to say. The lowest point for a lot of people is Love Never Dies, the sequel to Phantom, which some people love, and that's fine, but it didn't do well with either critics nor fans of the original show, which ALW is EXTREMELY BUTTHURT ABOUT. And like, there are so many stories I could tell about LND alone, but I will share my own crack theory about it, since it does relate to the ask.

Anyway, buckle up.

So. There have been jokes going around for years that the Phantom in LND is basically ALW's self-insert, where he displays to the world that he's totally not over Sarah Brightman leaving him (in part because making Phantom kinda ruined their marriage lmao), despite, you know, having married since. (Aaaaaakward.) So LND basically becomes this really uncomfortable therapy session where a man writes a self-insert musical about how his ex-wife made a big mistake of leaving a sensitive artistic soul such as himself. The characters from Phantom who appear in LND are all more or less unrecognizable as a result, and one who gets it worse (in my humble opinion) is Meg Giry, who was basically Christine's sweet and loyal ballerina friend who basically went into the Phantom's lair on her own to save her friend despite the danger. In LND, she's basically a bitter hag (because ALW hates women, guess Patti was right about that), who really likes the swim and even has a stripping vaudeville number about it, written in universe by the Phantom, no less.

For comparison, here's Don Juan Triumphant (the Phantom's opera in the original):

And here's Bathing Beauty (the vaudeville number):

Yeah, so... do you see why people hate LND already?

And that's not the only thing with Meg! She's also pining for the Phantom to pay attention to her and threatens to drown the Phantom and Christine's secret love child when he makes it clear that he's gonna love Christine for EVA AND EVA.

So, with everything we learned today about ALW, would someone like him view someone like Patti LuPone as some sort of crazy, bitter diva who's obsessed with him for whatever reason? Absolutely. Would he be petty enough to insert Patti LuPone into his self-insert musical, which gave us the version of Meg Giry we got in LND? Of course. Why does Meg love to swim so much and why does she drag Gustave out ostensibly for a swim? Is it a dig at Patti's Andrew Lloyd Webber Memorial Pool? Maybe.

I kind of hope we find out one day if that theory is true. And maybe start a kickstarter so Patti can add this painting from the 2004 movie in her collection.

Fun fact: during the process of casting for the 2004 movie adaptation of POTO, ALW allegedly suggested Patti LuPone to play Carlotta... only for Joel Schumacher to have to awkwardly remind him that they were not on speaking terms. The idea was therefore promptly dropped.

[exalt1ora]

listening to feast or famine getting ready for show, trying so hard not to sing out loud rn

[wolfinshipclothing]

MarcAnne growing without Sasha: Childhood Friends to awkwards girlfriends to dorks in love (they finish eachother sentences!). The sweetest, dorkiest couple the world have ever seen. Attachment issues on both sides AND co-dependency included. Anne became more confident but is still a people-pleaser. Marcy's still a wallflower but with a more "i want things my way but i'm not gonna say anything and then i'm gonna go angry for seemingly no reason" attitude, plus abandonment issues regarding Anne. LOTS of bottled feelings on both sides.

SashAnne growing without Marcy: Power couple. Friends to enemies to friends to lovers to enemies to lovers to friends to enemies, etc etc... Basically the "Married/Divorced/Dating at the same time" couple. Anne eventually got fed up with Sasha's attitude and grew a spine, and Sasha eased up a bit but never stopped being manipulative (AKA Sashanne season 2). People are not sure if they love or hate the other (maybe both), but they're sure they can't live without eachother. If someone says "put a muzzle on your bitch!" both would turn around and yell "DON'T CALL HER THAT!".

SashArcy growing without Anne: Power couple (derogatory). They can be the best thing to happen to you or they can make you dissappear without a trace. Sasha got the worst out of Marcy's manipulative side, but also made her have more confidence, even if its of the Egocentric kind. Seeing how they are more equals now, Sasha began to rely on Marcy for long term planning, while she remains "The Pretty Face that could convince you to jump down a cliff". People are not sure who's the one calling the shots (they take turns, probably), but both Marcy and Sasha would burn the whole World for the other. No remorse. Also, they're theatre kids at heart: they know ALL the songs of all the best Broadway Musicals (and a whole lot of the WORST musicals)

[humming-fly]

Theatre Kid (Derogatory)

[sm-baby]

Ngl one of my favorite things in your carnival au (besides the angst) is how they are all "Fuck humans" in the derogatory way (except pomni @ Caine) but whenever you doodle gangle and Caine Gangle is immediately on her knees

the only thing stronger than the hatred for humanity is THEATRE KIDS

I love theater kids guys

[rwby-encrusted-blog]

Cinder is a theatre kid (Derogatory) while Jaune is a theatre Kid (Positive)

[platoapproved]

How do you think Armand genuinely felt about his coven?

GOSH! An interesting question. In the finale he tells Daniel that he had complicated feelings and I don't necessarily think that was a lie...

But especially in terms of the performance, he seems so fucking sick of them.

This is the face of a man who has been trapped in close quarters with the same 12 theatre kids and their bullshit interpersonal drama for centuries, while also working a management position and thus having to mediate all their squabbles, assign tasks, and who knows how many other exhausting things.

I think he allows Louis to kill the coven mostly out of the same passivity that had him going along with the trial - it was already in motion, and some part of his brain had decided it was already inevitable. The one moment he ACTUALLY went against the coven was pulling Louis from the wall - in my opinion because Louis starving made him think too much about how he got wrapped up in the coven in the first place.

I don't think he mourned them even a bit. Because of the nature of his position - installed right away as the coven master in a precarious position of authority over those who might try to take power from him and do violence to him - it was never really community for him. They weren't his friends. There might have been some small similarity to a family (derogatory).

Basically my read is - he was accustomed to them. He didn't respect them, he didn't enjoy them, and he certainly didn't miss them when they were gone.