Broadway, Here I Come

It’s my calling, baby, don’t you cry, don’t you cry. I’m falling down through the sky. Toward the street that I’m from- Oh Broadway here I come…

After almost a year of hoping, months of anxiousness, and wavering excitement combined with nerves, I am finally sitting at the airport awaiting my plane to the Big Apple, where I will be a reporting intern for the famed (well, at least to theatre geeks) Broadway.com. While I know I should begin this post with the wide range of emotions I am feeling and the hopes I have for the summer, I can’t lie: I’m exhausted. My flight, the only one that would allow me to get into the city at a reasonable enough time to unpack, unwind, and adjust as much as possible before tomorrow’ full work day, leaves at 8:30 AM, which put my iPhone alarm at about 5:00 AM this morning. Now, as I sit in the airport food court eyeing the Wendy’s breakfast menu while simultaneously trying to pass the nausea I have inevitably caused by the predictable nerves/ excitement/ anxiousness, it still hasn’t hit me that I’ll be spending the next eleven weeks in the greatest city of the world, surrounded by what I love (that would be Broadway if you still haven’t gotten it), and interning for a company that can put me in the center of it all.

Throughout my summer I will continue to post both written and (you guessed it) video blogs, all documenting what I hope will be an incredible experience (and perhaps foreshadowing to life after graduation? But let’s not get ahead of ourselves). The fact that I will have the opportunity to sit down and interview actors and actresses (thanks to Stage Door Dish) that just six months ago I fangirled* over at the stage door is still so unbelievably surreal, and at the same time I have no idea how I got so lucky. While this technically is my “last real summer,” it’s also the start of the rest of my life, and I don’t intend on wasting it. Of course it won’t be easy- and it definitely won’t be remotely similar to the last three weeks I’ve spent at home lounging on the couch and watching Friends reruns (no complaints here), but it will hopefully be worth it.

Who am I kidding? The chance to live in a city I beg my parents to take me probably on a bimonthly basis is the equivalent to sticking me in Disneyland for the summer. My living arrangement could be a tent outside the Gershwin Theatre and all I’d talk about is how I’d be first in line for Wicked rush tickets. I guess that’s what passion is; it’s getting the opportunity to be where you love and do something you love and be immersed in something you love and focus on the positive no matter what consequences face you. Granted these are semi-delirious thoughts I’m having at the airport while functioning on three hours of sleep, and believe you me the minute something goes wrong in the city Mom and Dad will be on the listening end of that conversation- but I’m thinking long term here. And first-day-of-a-big-trip blog posts are all about the positivity anyway.

Maybe it hasn’t hit me yet because it’ so overwhelming. It’s been almost a year since I decided what I really want to do with my life, found an internship that allowed that, interviewed, corresponded, and landed the job, and ended up here waiting for my flight to NYC to board. But whatever the reason, I’ll sit here, earphones in tow, listening to my Broadway showtunes, so beyond ready to be somewhere where the Tony Awards are the most important awards show of the season, somewhere where people understand the reasoning behind waking up at 8:00 AM and standing in line all day for rush tickets, somewhere where an interview with Aaron Tveit is almost more important than one with Brad Pitt, and somewhere where I feel more my future lies. Somewhere called Broadway.

So Broadway, here I come.

* It’s early. A pass on any spelling is appreciated.

Keep following my blog for any and all details of my NYC experience!

-Wendi

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