By Chris Arneson, Guilty One

 

We’ve all got our junk.

 

But while some have unhealthy obsessions with sports teams, shopping, felines and footwear, my guilty pleasure isn’t too conventional.

 

Hi, my name is Chris…and I love musical theatre.

 

Yeah, I said it. I’m a full-grown straight guy from Wyoming and nothing makes me happier than blasting a cast recording from a Broadway rock musical and simultaneously singing along in my car—something I do rather often. (My inner windshield has horrible spit-splatters to prove it.)

 

But, you see, my favorite tunes aren’t really your grandparents’ idea of “show tunes,” nor are they anything close to the likes of High School Musical, which I cannot tolerate. I tend to stick with an edgier vibe.

 

Ever since I obtained my driver’s license, my vehicle has been my own personal venue. As I grip my steering wheel that doubles as a drum set, my head pounds, and I can release into my own world—eyes open, of course. I’m operating an automobile.

 

This release is key to my sanity. It’s almost as if I live a double life: student-journalist by day, unstoppable leading man by…well, my own time. And the biggest contributor to my one-man show is a musical called SPRING AWAKENING.

 

This show, based off a banned play from the late 1800s, explores the lives of a bunch of German teenagers experiencing all-too-familiar angst and discovering themselves and their sexuality…accompanied by a mixture of hardcore ballads and striking lyricism written by a guy you probably haven’t heard from since the late 1990s, Duncan Sheik. (Look up “Barely Breathing.” It’s his iconic radio tune.)

 

I discovered my future obsession in January 2007 through a free iTunes Discovery Download, which I downloaded simply because it was called “The B**** of Living,” and I was intrigued. I actually thought Spring Awakening was a band.

 

In the months that followed, I obtained the entire CD and became hooked. The more I listened to each song, the more I related to every lyric…and I didn’t even know the show’s synopsis yet.

 

You know how addictions go. Something in those tunes gave me a high, and I was constantly searching the Internet for a fix…whether it was finally discovering the storyline through its Wikipedia page, or searching nightly for hours for clips of anything related to Spring Awakening.

 

The songs were on a constant loop in my car, and I never grew tired of them.

 

I became a guru. I even obtained leather high-top sneakers exactly like the ones worn on stage by the lead character, Melchior, that were oddly enough from a line by rapper Snoop Dogg called “Doggy Biscuitz.”

 

Finally, after more than a year of feeding my obsession through late-night lurking and sporadic show-related purchases, I made it to New York City to see Spring Awakening, still with some of the original cast, live at the Eugene O’Neill Theatre in the summer of 2008.

 

My family even stayed in the hotel next door. I literally could have slept on the roof of the theatre if our windows opened more.

 

But I didn’t just see the show. I experienced twice in one week…front row center and what’s called “stage seating,” where audience members actually sit on each side of the stage alongside cast members and fellow fans in wooden chairs from the show, and the rest of the audience gets basically to watch you watch the show…not bad for $50.

 

These two nights in June were one of the pinnacles of my teenage years. As an actor, I had never been so completely mesmerized and blown away by a performance before, watching a cast of people my age leap around a stage in turn-of-the-century German attire shouting, “Totally f*****!” among neon lights and brick walls. I can still visualize sitting on stage while the spotlight simultaneously hit me and the character Moritz as he rocked out with a microphone stand—an act my driver’s seat knew all too well.

 

It was funny to think, just months before I’d seen that same guy getting killed by an arrow on “Lost” as Karl, and now we were feet away from each other.

 

That’s why nothing can top the theatre. I even got to meet the cast and get my Playbill autographed at the stage door after the show, where I was referred to as “the savior with the silver Sharpie,” because I planned ahead and knew the Playbill was mostly black.

 

But even after experiencing Spring Awakening live, my obsession didn’t dwindle. The songs were still my daily vehicular release, and I bore a striking resemblance to Moritz on Halloween.

 

However, in January, just day before I write this, Spring Awakening closed after nearly 900 performances. Embarrassingly enough, it was really tough for me to get through. This show that had helped me through so many tough times and gave me a much-needed release wouldn’t be awaiting my return to Manhattan.

 

I found snippets of the closing night curtain call and speeches as well as pictures of set pieces piled onto the sidewalks of 49^th Street. My wooden stage seat was piled amid others in a truck bed, awaiting shipment away from the Eugene O’Neill.

 

No one really understood my loss, either. Sure, I have some friends who know the show, but they were connected to it as I was. They hadn’t experienced the raw intensity of “The Song of Purple Summer” live, nor had they rocked out to the songs as much.

  

Spring Awakening was a huge part of me for two years, and without it I’m missing an integral piece of myself that wearing a wristband with the show’s logo just can’t replace.

 

And until the national tour makes its way to Denver in December, at least I’ll have my cast recording to rock out to in traffic.

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