The Stockard House: Fun Times

Megan and I spent the day in NYC last week with a local theater group. Our friend Mike and his family run a youth centered community theater here in Central PA. They are doing on of the only productions in the country of the School Edition of Rent. So Mike decided to take his theater group to NYC and give them a tour of the parts of NYC where Rent was written and inspired from.

We met up with one of Jonathan Larson's nest friend. She gave us a tour. I'll put some notes by the pictures. It was a BLAST.

After the tour we had lunch, and then went uptown and just hung around for a while until it was time to see "In the Heights." This recently won the Tony award for Best Musical. The great thing about it is that it's mostly Hip Hop! So so so so so so so AWESOME!!!!!!! There was such a Latin influence in the music too, so I loved that so much. I highly recommend everyone to go see it!

This is Megan with Marcy Harriell. Marcy plays one of the leads in "In the Heights." Her characters name is Vanessa and she's the love interest of the star. We happened to be walking right by the Stage door when she walked out. People swarmed her for her autograph. When she came to us, I just asked her if she would take a picture with my wife. She was so nice and says yes of course. Mike was standing there and told her he loved her in the show, and that he also saw her when she played Mini in Rent on Broadway. She was thankful, and saw that he was there with a group of kids. She asked him about the group. Mike told her he was putting on a school edition of Rent, and that all of the kids that are on the bus are the cast. She thought that was just the coolest thing and asked if we would let her go on the bus and say hi to the kids and give them some words of inspiration. Are you kidding me?!?!?!

So she walks onto the bus, we get the kids attention. When they look and see who it is, they all lose their minds. It was a great moment. They were all so inspired by her. Great job Marcy!!!

Here's the marquee to the theater

Tough to see in this picture, but there are huge Christmas ornaments in the fountain behind us.

There's Mike counting money at the bar in the Life Cafe.

This is the Rent Wall inside the Life Cafe. Those black books you see are called "Rent Head Register." Fans of the show Rent are often called Rent Heads. So anytime someone would come to eat the life cafe specifically because of the show Rent, they would sign these books. There are THOUSANDS of notes and signature from people all over the world written all throughout the book. I took some time to read and was just in awe at some of the words people wrote. There were people who were thanking Jonathan Larson for saving their life. It was great. We all signed the book. It felt good to be part of something like this.

Funny sign outside the Life Cafe

Outside view of the Life Cafe.

I'm a big fan. All of the kids in the theater group walked right past this. They probably don't even know who Joey Ramone is. Do any of you?!?!?!

Fun art.

This is the woman who was Jonathan Larson's best friend. She's showing us the payphone that was inspiration for the show Rent. People used to call Jonathan on this phone. It was right across the street from his apartment. The buzzer to his apartment didn't work, and cell phones didn't exist. So to let him know that you had arrived at his home, you called him on this payphone and he would throw down the keys. For those of you who are familiar with the show Rent, you will see the correlation.