If you’ve been able to find toilet paper in the stores, set some aside, because you’re going to be gently dabbing your eyes all night. Oh, or just buy tissues. Either way, you’ll be tearing up when you peruse the thread started by Broadway star Laura Benanti Friday, after she asked students to show her the musical numbers they can’t put up on stage, now that concerns about the coronavirus have lead to school cancelations.
“Dark times for all,” the Tony-winning actress and Late Show’s Melania Trump tweeted. “Trying to find some bright spots. If you were meant to perform in your High School musical and it was cancelled please post yourself singing and tag me. I want to be your audience!! Sending all my love and black market toilet paper.”
“Most of my stuff is being canceled because I’m in the business of being around a lot of people, as most of us are,” Benanti further explained in a video she posted to Instagram and Twitter. “And this may sound silly but I know that a lot of high schools were going to have their musicals, and those musicals got canceled. That is a bummer, because I know for so many of us – I know for me – my high school musical was a life-saver. So, if you would like to sing a song that you are not going to get to sing now, and tag me, I want to see you. I want to hear it.”
And boy, did these kids deliver. From Matilda to Rock of Ages, from Once On This Island to Seussical, this thread has everything, and on the upside, you have a whole weekend to be the audience these kids need. Besides, what were you going to do with your entire Saturday anyway?