The Future of Our Nation: A few weeks ago I went to the Morrison Center to see the broadway play Kinky Boots. The critically acclaimed musical tells the tale of Charlie Price who takes over his dad’s shoe making business after his unexpected death. Charlie has no passion for shoe making, but reluctantly steps into his father’s shoes. The company, Price and Son, begins to fall under when their number one buyer decides to buy from a shoe factory with more on trend styles. Just when Charlie wants to give up and call it quits he meets Lola, a fabulous drag queen. The unlikely pair decides to go into business together to start making heeled boots for the men who perform as drag queens. The men in the factory are skeptical and critical of Lola at first. They can’t see the bravery she has in being herself. Overall the story was all about acceptance of others, being yourself, and pursuing your passions. The atmosphere of the crowd was amazing. …show more content…
It’s no secret that our generation has made leaps and bounds for the LGBTQ community, with the legalization of gay marriage to the open conversations in the media about being transgender. Being at that play changed my perception of the older population. I realized that maybe they are more accepting than their stereotype reads. Especially the generation in their 60’s- 70’s, because there I witnessed them cheering Lola on. Often I feel the responsibility has been put on the younger generation to make changes to our society to incorporate and accept every type of person.The reason older people are seeing Kinky Boots, or any other form of progressive media, or art is due to the work of our society’s youth. Looking back and moving into the future we can see that in American society social movement or reform is facilitated by the younger
The experience not only gives Josie a new perspective on her career path and the unpleasant, harshness of being in the spotlight she has always craved. It also forces her character to take a step back, re-examine her life and decide not to continue to seek validation in the affections or appeals of others.
She is fairly new to the work world and has lied on her resume’ to get hired, and realizes that the job is harder than she first thought. All hope is not lost because Violet assures her that she can be trained. She ends up succeeding at the company and telling her husband she will not take him back after he comes back begging for her love again.
Walking into the Grieb Theatre with both skepticism and little knowledge of the play that I was about to see, I exited with a little connection to some of the actors and a sense of mild disappointment from the play, although I thought to myself how difficult it must have been for the actors and the director to constantly feel the pressure about bringing up a topic of racism and discrimination to the community audience.
Furthermore, a few of his plays are written about drag queens and others about being gay. Mr. Fierstein grew up in a time when being gay was a very hard lifestyle to be open about. Over the decades the support group lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender community or better known as LGBT, has supported the mass movement worldwide. Mr. Fierstein set out to illustrate to the world that it is ok to be yourself and that the LGBT community will not accept any more bigotry. His plays focus on the hardships faced by the oppressed and the tyrants.
As the story progresses, Josephine discovers a vital truth through tragic circumstances. She comes to realize that the perfect world consists more than gorgeous hairstyles, rich boyfriends and social privileges.
The audience, for the most part, seemed to be made up of college students attending for the same reasons as myself. However, there were some audience members who are part of older age groups in the audience. They were there only seeking a good performance and a great time. These older age group audience members were located mostly in the center section of the theatre seated in the first few rows. The dress was more casual among the students but dressier for the older people. Some people were in jeans and a T-shirt, including myself, while some wore nice clothes. The audience rewarded each soloist with a warm ovation of applause after their turn was finished. This led me to believe the audience enjoyed the performance and was very respectable to the performers.
The story identifies three characters: Sylvia, Sugar and a black woman, Ms. Moore. Initially, Sylvia does not like Miss Moore as she believed she prevented children from having fun but in reality Miss Moore wanted to show them the real side of the life. So she organized a trip to F.A.O. Schwartz. As the story develops, the reader gets a glimpse of Sylvia “street smarts” and her leadership role as they travel to a toy store in a cab.
The main idea of the book was a girl learning to cope with her past and and trying to grow from it. Charlie starts of in a mental institution for self-harm. She is then taken out of the place because of her mother’s lack of money. She goes to Arizona to be helped out by her friend Mikey, which is gone most of the time. Charlie gets a job at a weird coffee place and meets a guy named Riley, where they instantly get a connection. The rest of the book is Charlie trying to learn how to deal with all of her past hardships and find a better way to deal with the memories and pain. The only two coping methods she seemed
These shows can deal with heavy social issues in a light fashion (Jacobs). For example, Hairspray is a musical about racially segregated life in Baltimore during the early 1960s. This was a time when African Americans were given the freedom to vote and legally voice their opinions in society. Hairspray was produced on a Broadway stage in the late 1990s and early 2000s during a time when racism was prevalent through many racist occurrences and social disturbances. The musical ends with the African American teenagers being allowed to perform on the Corny Collin’s show everyday with the white teenagers. The messages sent from this musical can resonate with the people of the 1960s and the people of today because both have and are still having experiences dealing with racism. The “happy ending” that Hairspray presents the audience with, takes the audience away from this crazy, hectic, racist world for about three hours and has to power to change someone’s views for the
The 1990s saw surge of gay characters in both television and movies. From Ellen Degeneres and her character Ellen Morgan coming out under much scrutiny on the TV show ‘Ellen,’ to Julia Roberts and Rupert Everett comedically playing off each other in the motion picture ‘My Best Friend’s Wedding.’ Sure, gays and lesbians have been around forever, especially in Hollywood. But never has there been a time to be more out. With the popularity of shows like Will and Grace, which feature leading gay characters, as well as Dawson’s Creek and it’s supporting character of teenager Jack McPhee, we are slowly seeing gay and lesbian characters creeping into the mainstream media.
It is important to present LGBT in a positive light before parents, classmates, and media influence their perceptions. The movie “It’s Elementary” does a great job showing the positive reaction kids have to presenting LGBT issues in the school system. The documentary showed that all age groups can benefit from these lessons. For example, a heterosexual, 8th grade social studies teacher felt it was very important to teach his students to be respectful and not afraid of their sexuality. This teacher started his lesson by asking students to share stereotypes.
At the death of her mother, a rich old lady takes her to her home and brings her up. The widow of the cobbler gave Karen a pair of red shoes, which she wore for the first time at her mother’s funeral. The old lady who adopted Karen disliked, the red shoes greatly because of Karen’s obsession with them and so she burnt them. Then Karen saw the princess wearing beautiful red shoes. Her love for these shoes got re-ignited.
The fashion movement of the 1960’s was a cultural one, incomparable to any other. Not only did we see a change in the way people dressed, but there was also a change in the way people thought and chose to live. Empowered by its nature of deliberate actions, this cultural rebellion fueled the uprising that burned in the hearts of America’s youth for many years to follow.
On television, I watched characters such as Marco del Rossi and Paige Michalchuk on the Canadian teen-drama Degrassi. These were the first positive experiences I had of what gay culture was like. Of what I saw, I did not feel like I fit into that lifestyle/group. On the other hand, the movie The Matthew Shepard Story shared the violent side of homosexuality’s history in the retelling of Matthew Shepard’s murder.
Then audience members who were perfect strangers who were screaming loudest would turn to each other with knowing glances and smile because they were sharing the same excitement and connecting with one another over their love of this man’s music. There was no pushing or shoving to get closer to the stage – it wasn’t that kind of crowd. Instead, there was mutual respect for one another’s space within the confines of the too-small venue. Nobody wanted to be the person who ruined it for someone else. It was this respect that made the audience members’ connections with one another that much stronger – we were all here to listen to this wonderful man’s music and see his performance – and, of course, we were here to enjoy it.