Where Everywhere’s a Stage
Nashville. A country music wonderland, where everyone wears high falutin’ Western wear and cowboy boots and carries a guitar slung over the shoulder just so.
Okay, that’s not really how it is at all. Tonight, I saw the Mel Brooks musical “Young Frankenstein.” The song “Puttin’ on the Ritz” did not have a country twang.
What IS striking about this place is the, ahem, number of creative places they find to put performance stages. We found a nice one today in a random city park. Of course, the hotel bar has one. In a local coffee shop? A stage AND an upright piano. With lighting. We even walked past a grocery store that sported a stage of decent size. Wherever I look, I see opportunities to jump into the limelight with my very own version of “Don’t Come Home A’Drinkin’ With Lovin’ on Your Mind.”
Dear God, that would be dreadful.
Still, encountering random performance spaces in unexpected places has me a little off kilter. It’s weird. I keep wondering if they exist for patrons of an establishment to get up there and perform? Or if one must reserve a slot? Or does one audition? Or is it the expectation in Nashville that EVERYONE must perform? Sometime. Someplace, I might sit in the wrong seat and be foisted up there against my will, forced to warble a dastardly version of “Stand by Your Man.”
If they gave me the bouffant blonde wig and the Tammy Wynette makeup and a sparkly dress………I think that might be kinda fun.
