A Million Little Pieces Of My Mind

Sister Mary George stood before the St Joseph Academy choir and said, We're going to do something very ambitious for our year-end performance. It's a Broadway musical called Rodgers and Hammerstein's Carousel. To be honest, not all the nuns think we can take this on. And, most years, I would agree, which is why I've never done it before, either. But, this year…this year, I think you guys can actually pull it off. What do you think?

I hadn't yet heard of Carousel. But I knew Rodgers and Hammerstein, who'd written the two musicals I had heard of, and loved: South Pacific and Oklahoma. So I was in!

Someone raised their hand. It might have been me. I think we can do it! Agreement was swift. But this was definitely going to become a major undertaking.

Carousel is a musical by Richard Rodgers (music) and Oscar Hammerstein II (book and lyrics), adapted from Ferenc Molnár's 1909 play Liliom. The story is set on the Maine coastline and revolves around carousel barker Billy Bigelow and millworker Julie Jordan. Their romance costs them both their jobs, leading Billy to participate in a robbery to provide for Julie and their unborn child. When the robbery goes tragically wrong, Billy is given a supernatural chance to make things right.

Sister Mary George assigned roles. She was going to have me play a barker at the fair. But in rehearsal, she found I couldn't project my voice. I can sing loud; but was considered a soft-spoken person. She instructed me on how to support my diaphragm so as to be heard in the back of a theatre; but it actually took years of practice to be able to do that. And so I was in the choir, but not the cast, of Carousel.

The show was to be performed at the St Augustine Amphitheatre, which had been built just a couple years before and was, during the summer, the home of Florida's Official State Play, Cross & Sword. We were going to (somehow) get an actual merry-go-round on the stage!

In true Hollywood fashion, Sister Mary George kept the town's interest in the upcoming performance revved up with newspaper articles.

My mom saved the program.

The performances (we gave two shows) went well. Sadly, being a nighttime performance, there aren't many photos as cameras of the period didn't do well at night.

Thanks to Sister Mary George's bravery, and yes our innate talent, we got to experience something few our age have had the opportunity of: performing in a near-professional-quality Broadway musical.