<p>My sister and brother are much older than me and so I spent many, many hours of my formative years sitting on a gym floor in the 1960’s watching them rehearse “Sound of Music,” “Babes in Arms,” and other musicals (in those days it was pretty common to task the older siblings with pretty much raising the younger ones, so I was assigned to follow my brother and sister everywhere). My sister became a speech and drama teacher and brother a composer/arranger/music director of some note. I did MT in high school and sang in college choir, but pursued a computer science career.</p>
<p>Despite this MT upbringing, I raised my daughter to be a fastpitch softball player (its a year-round sport in Texas). I did take her to musicals from an early age, although, as other posters have noted, its not always a good idea when they are under 7 for some shows (she still talks about how Les Mis scared the heck out of her at age 7). We didn’t get to NYC but she did see several shows in the West End (Mary Poppins, Lion King, Guys and Dolls). Despite my emphasis on developing her softball skills (she has been playing since she was 5), when she hit middle school, she started signing up for theatre, choir, and dance every year. When we finally made it to NYC and saw “Wicked” as she was entering 7th grade, it was all over. As we left the theatre, she announced she was going to follow a career in theatre (probably like 90 percent of all the middle school girls that see that show). In her case, it seems to be sticking.</p>
<p>Despite continuing pitching lessons, batting lessons, and lots of successes in softball tournament play, she kept working on MT in school. She worked for 6 months to get ready for auditions to our performing arts high school and fought her way through the process to get accepted. Needless to say, they don’t have a softball team (nor any other sports teams).</p>
<p>Last week she played her final softball game, a hard-fought contest in which she pitched brilliantly, working her way out of a tough jam in the final inning with the bases loaded to win the game. When I asked her after the game how she kept her composure, she said, “Oh, I just kept singing ‘Defying Gravity’ to myself.” </p>
<p>Definitely time to hang up the cleats…I honestly believe that being exposed to MT, especially high-quality productions like Broadway, West End and National tours and the many very good local productions around the country can make a huge impact on a child. I know it did for my D.</p>