© Celine Sparks, 2023
We went to this thing last night. They call it Makin’ Music, but I can think of a whole lot of other names for it:
Makin’ Term Papers Substandard
Makin’ Parents Drive a Long Way to Try to Find Their Kid on a Stage a
Quarter-Mile Away In the Middle of 140 People Who Are All Dressed Alike
Makin’ Most of the Fast Food Places in Town Shut Down Early
It happens in Henderson, Tennessee on the campus of Freed-Hardeman University, and it’s a huge musical production involving what looked like all of the student body, and maybe a few of their deceased relatives. (All but one act this year involved ghosts, zombies, or someone who died 10,000 years ago.)
One of the traditions, of necessity, is getting into costume, and then running to grab a bite to eat before the actual show and while your parents’ wallets are still in town. This makes the McDonald’s lobby (why do they call it that?) look like some kind of strange gathering place for hungry hillbillies, cavemen, and convicts — Wait! That kind of happens on a normal day..
I think all the schools have something pretty similar. Harding calls theirs Spring Sing, Lipscomb Singarama, and there’s gotta be a university out there that calls it Complete Insanity on a Stage for Seven and a Half Minutes.
That’s how long each school club has to introduce, execute, and finale a plot with song and dance and what looks like a mild case of total hysteria — the jumping kind you get from taking a hammer to your thumbnail or thinking you can edge out another club in the category of energy.
I love it with a capital LOVE! It’s so much fun to see the characters and storyline each club will come up with. I’ve been watching or involved for almost 40 years (which is incredible because it means I started before I got in the womb), so I’ve seen quite a range of cast members from ears of corn to rocket scientists, and everything in between including the famed lunchroom ladies and the “I Love Washing Clothes'' number sung in the style of Joan Jett and the Blackhearts. And who can forget the fireflies who were so high-tech in the day that their tails lit up because they had a flashlight in their pants?
Yeah, if it’s lived and breathed or been set on the dresser, it’s been portrayed on that stage. So it gets kind of challenging to think up a new idea. No real criticism here, but the old idea pretty much gets hashed out again with a new color of taffeta. One group of people (or animals or squash crop) doesn’t like the other group. That takes the first three minutes. (I always loved singing about people I don’t like.) Suddenly, plot twist! An event happens in brilliant color and rhyming lyrics in which both groups need to work together to get through. This fills the next three minutes. And then the last minute and a half is spent singing and dancing about being good friends in the end.
It is exactly halfway through the show that I came up with an amazing idea that hasn’t been done yet. What about having a show with the characters being little bladders and short intermissions? The conflict is tremendous. And relatable. And for the props, you could have seven mint green stalls that haven’t been added on to since 1942.
The little bladders would be running in a panic to combat the hovering short intermissions. A few of them dart off to the Sports Center which is locked, and then shimmy over to Benson Hall which — oh yeah, I forgot to mention the bladders are the girl half of the show, so the bladders sing a tragic stanza about not being able to open the boys’ dorm. The choreography is getting pretty creative with tiny steps and leg crosses all the way to the science building. The rest of the tiny bladders converge into the biggest scene in Makin’ Music history with a colossal cast from all the clubs and 50 states gathered near the mint stalls, while the short intermissions force them all to file (once emptied) in grand style down the aisles where the short intermissions have now disappeared.
I haven’t quite figured out the part about them getting to be friends in the end. Maybe just a high-stepping to-be-continued next year to the tune of Dolly Parton’s “You’ll come again … And here I go!”
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