This weekend, my friend Mary’s production of Footloose finally debuted, after nine long hard months of labor. After nine long months of tears, sleepless nights and lots and lots of sweat, Footloose, Mary’s bouncing baby of a play, finally took to the stage.

The play that wasn’t supposed to be

If any play was never supposed to happen, it was this one.

Her parents thought she’d lost her mind. Her peers just assumed she’d fail. There were entire clubs devoted to hating this play. (Where there are drama students, there is drama.)

The world told her that the economy was a goner, that she couldn’t raise the kind of money she needed even if she had 3 years to plan it and not nine months. She needed nearly $12, 000 and they had no corporate sponsors, no traditional ways of raising money. It was impossible, she was told. Absolutely impossible.

Her cast didn’t always cooperate and one cast member actually had to be asked to leave. There were so many problems, that I can’t even count that high. I sat through countless phone calls where we sat and planned worst case scenarios and what she could do to handle them. There was so much drama surrounding this play, that I came pretty close to going in there with a bullhorn and bitching them out.

Every sign indicated that she would never succeed and that this play would self implode before it ever made it to the stage. It came within days of being canceled due to lack of funds for payments.

Yet despite all of this, Mary did it anyways. And for that, I am intensely proud of her.

The play that kicked ass

I saw the final show on Saturday night and was completely blown away. It was amazing. It was so well put together, you’d hardly believe it was directed by a barely 21 year old. Mary treated her play as a professional production, and damn, did it ever pay off. It was brilliant. It was funny, it was cheesy, it was sad, and it was everything that a musical production of Footloose should be. It was fun and everyone in the audience was hooting and hollering and having a brilliant time.

Mary’s only goal with this play was to get at least one standing ovation.

She got three.

One for every show.

The people who had spent the last nine months hating the play came up to Mary after and shook her hand, and came back to see it again the next night. Her professors told her that she should be intensely proud of herself because it was one of the best student productions they’d ever seen.

People loved it. Our publicity campaign worked, and Mary was featured in almost every print publication in the city, as well as at least one feature on the local television channel.

We talked about her dream and people responded. On this blog alone, we raised over $400 US, at a time when they were desperate for money. To everyone who contributed through this blog, thank you so much – you are the reason as to why this play went on and we thanked each and every one of you in the program. Your encouragement and kind words helped Mary to continue at a time when we really thought that it was over. As in like, “crying phone call to me telling me that they didn’t have enough money and that they were completely screwed” kind of over.

So thank you. You are all angels. You made a dream come true.

Why you can’t blame the economy

Everyone told Mary and I that in this economy, we would never be able to get the money we needed to get this play up and running.

You wanna know how wrong those people were?

Mary’s production was the first play put on by Brock Musical Theatre to make money.

On Friday night alone, 300 extra people showed up last second and she made almost $4000 extra dollars. And that was just Friday night. As of yet, I don’t know the numbers for the Saturday shows.

You want me to tell you that again? Three hundred extra people. Not fifty. Not twenty five. Three hundred. That’s how wrong all of the naysayers were.

What does all of this mean to you?

It means that you should never, ever listen to the people who tell you that you can’t do it. They are full of crap. It’s so much easier to just declare something impossible rather than try.

Try. And if you think you’ve failed, try again. But always keep on trying and never, ever give up, because the world is on your side. If you have a dream and you believe in it, then don’t let anyone ever tell you that you can’t have it. They’re wrong. They are so completely wrong.

If a 21 year old student without a dime to her name can put on a play that not only makes it by, but succeeds beyond anyone’s wildest dreams, then I’m fairly certain that you can too.

Just try.