There are many famous musicals, but ask any random person to list the top ten most famous, and chances are good, Grease is going to be on there somewhere.
It is, after all, the most famous and most successful movie-musical made in recent history, even though it is (shockingly) nearing fifty years old.
I'll admit, though, that as an educator, I have had my problems with it. The show was originally written to be a social critique - a commentary on the nostalgia and overly-romanticized notion of the "Goold Old Days" of the 1950's, and that commentary was made by centering a fun, pop-heavy musical score and playful lyrics into the mouths of characters that are, by any reasonable measure, what we would consider the "bad kids."
They smoke, they drink, the swear, they skip class, they rob cars, they engage in promiscuous behavior - in other words, the writers contend: the 1950s weren't that different than any other decade, and teenagers have always been teenagers, because human nature is always going to have patterns of behavior.
However, the movie adaptation made some changes to the book of the stage musical, and in so doing, managed to pull some of the scathing social commentary out of the show's original "bite," and instead it managed to romanticize these characters that were NOT originally meant to be romanticized.
So, in exploring the show, we set out not to apologize for the choices of the characters, but to face them honestly and examine them. We know nothing of these teenagers' home lives - the dialogue offers us only the barest of hints into a few of them. Yes, these behaviors they engage in are ill-advised, dangerous, and harmful, there's no denying - so what drives them to that?
What are they trying to become? To escape? To forget? Who are they trying to impress? What are they trying to prove?
We can't be sure - but we can use their behaviors and the consequences that they face as a means to try to educate the current generation of teenagers. We've joked that the complete title of this production is Grease: High School Isn't Forever, and it truly is not.
Often, what we think will be a "forever" in high school is the barest blip of the tapestry of a person's life. Often, the people that we expect to be in our lives forever, we may never see more than a handful of times after graduation. And we ourselves are rarely the same person that we were in high school - this play, seen through the eyes of Eugene, points out that we are all the hero of our own story, but we can (and often are) also the villain in someone else's story.
There's so much in life that we cannot predict, especially when we're young. The choices that we make now make such a big impact on our current reality, and our future reality, AND we have the capacity to change that reality every day that we face it, even if that change doesn't come as quickly as we might like.
High school is not forever; it's merely a rite of passage, a journey of discovery and growth. At Hollywood High Theatre, we're so thankful to have been a part of the journey of so many remarkable young people.
