Summer Musical

08/07/19 • 13 min

3 Listeners

It’s the summer musical in Randolph, Vermont...one day before showtime. It’s been an annual event at Chandler Music Hall for over twenty years, and this year they’re putting on Footloose. And honestly? It feels like the whole town is involved. Like it takes every last person in Randolph to pull this thing off...again. To put on a full musical with up to 120 kids, in three weeks? It’s a miracle.

I spent an afternoon talking with some of the kids backstage, about their lives in musical theater. And even though we were sitting on the floor in a Xerox room, they were willing to sing songs from the show...from their hearts. This is theater magic. Welcome.

Thank you SO MUCH to Kelly Green, associate producer on this show. Also Ramsey Papp for her help and guidance. And thanks also to my wonderful sponsor, Honey Road. The best restaurant in Burlington. Click below to read about the menu...

Toj Marceau as Cranston

Reagan Papp as Willard

Toj Marceau as Cranston

Reagan Papp as Willard

Previous Episode

Leland Will Figure It Out

Leland lives over the hill from me in East Calais. We’ve been friends since he was in first grade, and every year around this time we get together and he tells me what he’s thinking about, worried about, what his plans are. He got his driver’s permit two weeks ago so he drove me over to Number 10 Pond and we sat and talked about the ups and downs of his first year of high school, about girls, about avocado toast...

Credits

Music for this show is by Vermont musician Brian Clark, who is the lead singer and songwriter for the band Anachronist. Which is awesome.

Rumble Strip is sponsored by the best restaurant in Burlington, Vermont. It’s called Honey Road. Click on the image below to read about their menu of Eastern Mediterranean small plates...

Next Episode

A Perfect Drive with Garret Keizer

Garret Keizer and I stood together in a field, in the late summer, in the Northeast Kingdom, and he read poems from his new book, The World Pushes Back.

I first heard of Garret a few years ago when I read his book, Getting Schooled, about his years as a high school teacher up here in the Kingdom. He described this place more honestly and more humanely...than anything I’d ever read about the place before. And his stories about his own experience teaching are almost brutally honest. I’ve never read an account of teaching quite like it.

Garret’s one of the only writers where I find myself copying whole passages down from his work, as if I’ll need them later. They’re not always easy or nice things I copy down. Garret Keizer is one of the most critical and also most contemplative people I’ve ever met. I write these passages down because they remind me of something fundamental about being human that I don’t want to forget.

He’s just come out with his first book of poetry, so we drove around and talked in his car until we found the perfect field to read poetry in. It was some of the best, and most surprising conversation I’ve had in a long time.

Links and Credits

For more of Garret’s work, visit his site here.

One of my favorite articles he’s written for Harper’s is called Requiem for the Private Word....

Garret will be the headlining reader at the opening ceremony of the Burlington Book Festival on September 27th at 7:00. For more information, go here.

Music for this show is by Vermont musician Brian Clark

And thanks also to my wonderful sponsor, Honey Road. The best restaurant in Burlington. Click below to read about the menu...