I'm Free

Today during Footloose practice our choreographer Dawn taught the cast the dance for the song "I'm Free." It's a hard rock number that closes Act 1 with Ren convincing Bomont's teenagers to throw a party and fight to repeal the town's law against dancing. Our cast was getting the steps, but after our second run-through of the full song, our director Chuck wanted to see more acting in it. He didn't want to see a bunch of lifeless kids going through dance moves and singing empty words, which is pretty much what we were giving him. To help the cast find motivation for the song, Chuck asked us what we would think if he took away some of our freedoms. "Brittany, I'm taking away your driver's license," he said. "Ian, no staying up later than 10:00. Jimmy, no more music. What does that make you want to do? Rebel."

So I started thinking about that. He's right, I thought. I would want to rebel if those things were taken from me. But why? Then it dawned on me, if someone did take away my guitar, my saxophone, my iPod, my whole music collection, they still would not take the music out of me. And that's what the song is about. It's a declaration, a challenge to address the conflict between oppression and the innate desire for freedom. In the context of the play, it is where Ren and the kids finally say, "I'm sick of these rules! I'm not ashamed of having fun! I'm done obeying Reverend Shaw's laws--I'm free!" That is what Chuck wanted to see on our faces in this song. We ran the song one more time after his speech, and he told us we had much more emotion in it than our previous runs.

I left practice feeling confident about the song, but I started thinking about how it applies to real life. ...But then I sat here staring at my computer for an hour and this blog never got finished. I don't remember where I wanted to go with this paragraph, and I probably should have wrapped the blog up right there, but oh well. I'm tired of starting at this blog as just a draft. I guess I forget that these blogs don't have to be perfect, it's not like I have a job on the line if I write a mediocre update.