I had the coolest experience last night. I’ve been wanting to write it up for a few weeks, but I was a little afraid that the planets would fail to align and it wouldn’t work out. But, after a considerable effort from my love, everything went (almost) like clockwork.
I’m a HUGE fan of musical theatre. As a kid, I’d lock myself in my room with my mom’s Sound of Music soundtrack and not come out for days. To this day, I know every word to every song.
In the spring of my senior year of high school, we took a class trip to New York, where we saw Annie at the Schubert Theatre. Professional live theatre. It was unlike anything any of us had ever experienced. At the end of the performance, all of us hayseeds from Chattanooga gave a standing ovation. Okay, we were the only ones in the theatre who did, but who cares?
During my college years, my mom took me to see the touring company production of A Chorus Line, and we went again when the local theatre company did it. It was slightly less polished, but I loved it nontheless.
Many years after that Senior Trip, I returned to the Schubert to see Spamalot, the musical version of Monty Python and the Holy Grail. After about three hours, I left the theatre with my cheeks in pain from smiling so much. My love took me to American Idiot when the touring company came to Ft. Lauderdale and it was brilliant.
I saw Spamalot again when the touring company came to town, and my love took me to the local production a couple of years ago. It was fabulous, and I’d defy anyone to tell the difference between the three performances. I also saw a local production of Les Mis, and, after having rather low expectations, I was completely blown away by the caliber of the performance.
Of course I’ve enjoyed the movie versions of Rent, Mama Mia, The Sound of Music (the movie, not that lame live tv version), Hairspray, and countless others. All of that to reiterate, I LOVE MUSICAL THEATRE. Yes, I’m the dork who has to sit through the entire Tony Awards broadcast, daydreaming of when I can get back to NYC to see a show.
Then…
I saw a little news report. Broadway HD is an online streaming service founded by a couple of Broadway producers whose mission is to make Broadway theatre available to anyone, anywhere. And they decided to make history on June 30, 2016, by offering She Loves Me as the first ever Broadway show to be livestreamed. For the price of $9.99, a live Broadway show being performed at Studio 54 could come to my living room.
When I saw this, I was determined to make it happen. And it was more complicated than you’d think. For this technological feat, we needed to use the Chromecast goomer my son sent us for Christmas. We hadn’t actually opened it because we have a Firestick. But of course, it wouldn’t work with Amazon.
No problem, our phones are Android. So we hooked up the Chromecast and set about trying to connect it. The problem was, our phones are too old. We talked about getting new phones–we need them anyway. But we never got around to it. And I had sort of let go of the idea. Mr. R. will tell you, I’m really not a nagger.
Yesterday, however, the day of the performance, my sweet came to me with an idea. How about we go buy a cheap Android tablet and see if we can make it work? And that’s what we did.
Now, don’t get me wrong, there were still technological kinks to work out, but eventually, we were able to hook up the tablet to the Chromecast, buy the performance, and sling that badboy from the tablet to our television screen, just in time to watch Tony-nominated She Loves Me performed live in real time. My face hurt by the end of the night. It was awesome!
Save
Adventures in Date Night 
You must be logged in to post a comment.