Flower Drum Song

We weren't in the same junior high, but...

Gosh, Flower Drum Song, maybe? Well, let's put it this way.

South Pacific worked for this story.

So we're going to do that.

I'm trying to get my eight hours as much as I can.

If we go from what you're doing today, which is The Phantom and Masquerade, if we go back to the beginning of your career in 2002 in the Broadway revival of Flower Drum Song, which would be your Broadway debut, can you tell us about how you ended up in that production? Because I think that's a pretty interesting story, is it not? Oh,

I was a senior in college at Carnegie Mellon University.

And another Carnegie Mellon alum, Billy Porter, was asked to come and guest direct that production.

He was sort of an honorary Asian in a lot of ways because of his role in Miss Saigon.

And so because he had that long relationship with them, he called up some of his friends and said, hey, I have three Asian students that I'm directing right now at Carnegie Mellon University.

They're going to graduate This coming spring, they have no agents, but I know that most of you are working on this upcoming revival of Flower Drum Song, which will feature an all Asian cast, which had a wonderful run at the Mark Taper Forum with a brand new book by David Henry Huang, with a wonderful sort of concept and direction and choreography by Bobby Longbottom.

He said, I'm going to vouch for these kids.

Later, we'll have That's a New Sound in the UK spot, which is from 1953 and was performed on Salmon Friends in 1958.

Then we'll have a song from the Roger and Hammerstein musical Flower Drum Song, which is also 1958.

Wow.

With the exception of the final song that Cheryl Ladd will do, which is from 1971 or 1973, the same year that Teresa Brewer did this number.

But it's an interesting attempt at justifying it.

I'll take it.

The song is I Enjoy Being a Girl, which, as I mentioned, is from Flower Drum Song.

According to the Wikipedia entry on Flower Drum Song, none of the other songs from that musical are at all memorable or interesting.