"We Need to Save Our Show From People Who Don't Know the Difference Between a Tony Award and Tony Hawk"

It's been more than 4 years since I was last in a musical - Meg, Damn Yankees, senior spring. (I did have a brief walk on role in The Tornado Ballet in The Wiz a few months after, but that really didn't count. I twirled around in a Tornado Dancer outfit. With gray and black fabric tied on my arms. Yeah...)
Highschool musical culture is it's own sort of thing, because unless you go to a FAME! school no one's that into it, or particularly good, and it's just a bunch of kids who are bad at sports bopping around in an auditorium. College musical culture I know nothing about because, well, I'm sorry Musical Players - I'm just gonna go ahead and plead the fifth here.

Now I've been suddenly thrown into this tribe of actors who are, overwhelmingly, musical people. And musical people are definitely a tribe. It's like they have this shared language that let's them communicate and identify with eachother on a separate plane. Everyone is a type, and types are identified by what show's you've done and what parts you've played. I've been trying to pass, but I don't think I'm pulling it of. Firstly, I had to get over my College-trained prejudices against musical people (as opposed to "serious" actors.) That wasn't so hard though. I mean I passed up a Moliere festival to see Dirty Dancing: The Musical. If that's not a sign of serious mental imbalance I don't know what is. Secondly, even the people who don't identify as "dancers" can still dance circles around me. I've been trying to fake it but I'm just not a mover like these people. Most importantly, the language of musical theatre people is discussions of shared experience, because there's a limited canon of musicals that are done over and over, and everyone's pretty much done the same stuff. A handful of highschool tales just doesn't cut it. And "hey, so, anybody else done any good plays about suicide lately? Child molestation? Rape? Murder? No?" doesn't provide a lot of material. When you spend an entire show sitting on a stool, there are fewer wacky hijinx. Musical stories are like war stories, in that everybody sort of gets it. Except a lot less scary than war stories, obviously. Although still painful, sometimes - one of the boys broke his leg rollerskating in "Once A Year Day" while playing Mr.Hassler in The Pajama Game.
Yes, he finished the show, broken leg and all. And he probably still danced better than me even with a broken leg stuck in a rollerskate.