Our oldest son has spent the last two months serving on the crew of his high school’s spring musical that culminated this past weekend. This group of teenagers and adult volunteers put on a production of Hello Dolly that punched way above its weight. The set, choreography, orchestra, singing, acting, and all the things was so impressive and the show was a delight in spite of some dated gender politics.
It is special to see over a hundred students harness a myriad of talents into such a cohesive end result. Even better was witnessing the real community that grew over the production’s formation. I could see it in the hugs and tears on closing night and I heard it for weeks in the stories that Jim would tell me when I picked him up from school. These kids are alright and that is good news for the world.
John Mulaney had a bit about seeing a gazebo that was erected during the middle of the Civil War and compared it to the absurdity of doing stand-up comedy during the fraught and, in retrospect, quaint days of the first administration of the White House’s current occupant. The same logic could apply to putting on a song-and-dance musical in the midst of our current upheaval of violent ICE overreach, the thick corruption surrounding the Epstein Files, bombing of ships near Venezuela, and now another way in the Middle East. Is it absurd to put on a musical in this kind of world? Maybe. Is it essential? Absolutely.
Now is the time more than any other to join together to build something that gives life to those who witness it. It is the time to form bonds of community that remind us we are not alone. It is a time for defiant joy, laughter, and cheering each other on for something that is good. The world is a bit of a hellscape, but high school musicals and other endeavors of its kind are all part of how we survive.
The big song form Hello Dolly—or maybe it isn’t and I just know it from the opening of WALL-E—is “Put On Your Sunday Clothes.” I have always loved how that Pixar film opens with the juxtaposition of this song of wide-eyed possibility with the apocalyptic wasteland in which our trash compacting hero finds himself. It is a brazenly optimistic note in the midst of utter desolation. This is thematically rich since WALL-E’s hope and yarning for connection is what literally saves humanity over the course of the film.
Throughout the movie, “Put On Your Sunday Clothes” becomes not only WALL-E’s personal theme song but a song of resistance. The “broken” robots of the spaceship Axiom whirr and chirp the melody of the song as they help WALL-E and EVE fight through the status quo to return humanity back to their home. “Put On Your Sunday Clothes” becomes a call to arms to rediscover not just the planet Earth but the very real world that is under each person’s nose.
Of course, the animating spark behind this toe-tapper from Hello Dolly is a desire to discover love. Sure, Cornelius and Barnaby want to find adventure and live the high life in the Big Apple but at the end of the day they just want to kiss a girl. Love is also the song of resistance in this world that often tries to divide and conquer. Not just the romantic love that Cornelius and Barnaby (“Listen Barrrrrnabeeeeeeeee!”) seek out on the streets of New York. Love of family, neighbor, creation, art, love of God, and more are woven into the same tapestry. It pushes us outside of ourselves and changes our lives.
We need to fall in love with goodness, kindness, justice, beauty, laughter, and so much more. To paraphrase another one of my favorite movies, The Last Jedi, that is how we win: not be destroying what we hate, but by saving, celebrating, and pursuing what we love.