Posted on February 8, 2010 at 5:41 pm

You’re agonizing over how to spend Valentine’s Day. You don’t want to spend a lot of money, everything seems clichéd or phony, but you do like the idea of celebrating the day with the person you love; or maybe you’re alone and you hate all these punks who go around “celebrating” their stupid relationships. Either way, have I got the perfect event for you.

The University of Notre Dame is presenting Parade this weekend at Washington Hall, and either you can go and appreciate the beautiful love story at the center of the show, or you can go and enjoy the lynching. See? Perfect Valentine’s Day treat. And if you go on February 14th, the fun keeps coming.

Directly after the 3:00 pm performance of “Parade” on Sunday, February 14, I’ll be taking the stage of Washington Hall with my friend, Keith Byron Kirk (oh, he’s going to love that picture), to talk about race in the context of the show and of musical theater in general. And Keith knows something about it, since he played Jim Conley in the National Tour of “Parade” ten years ago! Click here for more info on that event. (Incidentally, the Notre Dame production will be using the original touring version of the show, not the new Donmar version, which isn’t yet available for licensing.)

But your Valentine’s Day isn’t over yet! No, it isn’t over! Because that night, at 8:00 pm, I’ll be doing a solo concert at the Shite Annenberg Auditorium at the University of Notre Dame. And I’ll be sure to sing songs both romantic and depressing, often at the same time. Also: tickets are FIVE DOLLARS. WHAT? How am I supposed to make a living like that? You could buy a plane ticket to South Bend, Indiana and see the show and the concert and spend a night in a swank hotel and it would still cost you less than one ticket to Billy Elliott. (I know, I know, what swank hotel in South Bend, Indiana? All right, fine.)

You want to come to the concert, check out the info right here. And I’ll see you in Indiana on Valentine’s Day!

Pucker up!
Jason Robert Brown