One of the best parts of being a dad.
Published April 01, 2026
As a child, growing up in New York with parents who love theater, I got to go to a lot of shows as a kid. I remember seeing 42nd Street, Les Miserables, Little Shop of Horrors, and A Chorus Line, to name a few. Not having the abundance of live theater options is one of things I have missed since leaving New York almost 30 years ago.
A few years ago one of the Hamilton touring companies came to Baltimore and my elder daughter wanted to see it, so I took her. I then found out (I might have known but not really) that there was actually a subscription to the touring shows at the Baltimore Hippodrome and we have had 2 tickets ever since. This has given me the chance to share some of that love of theater with all 3 of my kids.
For the past few days I have been in New York with my wife and daughters enjoying a mini-vacation for spring break. One of the things that we said we wanted to do on the trip was see at least one show. We ended up seeing three.
This trip was my youngest's first chance to see live theater on Broadway (yes, I know that the Broadway Touring companies are in many ways equivalent and the Hippodrome qualifies as a rather large Broadway theater based on the number of seats, but it's not the same.) She had seen Frozen, Annie, and Back To The Future (along with a couple of others) when their touring companies hit Baltimore but this was the first time that she was able to look at a list of shows and pick one she wanted to see.
She ended up seeing 3 shows this trip. And she loved them. Even though, I'm pretty sure, she missed a lot of what was going on in two of them (there was a lot of innuendo that just went over her head) and I know she didn't understand a few key plot points in the third (when I explained them to her, she connected the dots.)
Since "Death Becomes Her" is coming to Baltimore next season, and we have tickets, the older daughter has volunteered to accompany me and see it again.
One of the best parts of being a dad is being able to pass on things that I love to my kids. I've been able to pass on my love of cooking and food to them. I've been able to pass on my love of baseball (Let's go Yankees!) to them. And I have been able to pass on my love of theater to them as well.