Three Generations of TDF Members, a Half Century of Theatre Memories
After being introduced to TDF by her mother, Michele Oram is now carrying on the tradition with her daughter Micaela
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Michele Oram did not fall in love with theatre right away. “I was six, and the first show my parents ever took me to was 1776 on Broadway, which was boring,” she says with a laugh. “I just kept staring up at the chandelier thinking it was going to fall on my head! That was my first impression.”
Thankfully, because of her mother’s TDF Membership, they could afford to try again, and Michele soon became a fan. In fact, she saw some of the most iconic musicals of the 1970s courtesy of TDF.
Today, Michele, a veteran marketing and communications professional, is carrying on the theatregoing tradition her mother started by taking her own daughter, Micaela, a recent college grad, to shows through TDF. For our Meet the Member series, we chatted with Michele and Micaela about some of the shows they’ve shared, how theatregoing has impacted their lives and why TDF inspires them to take chances.
Raven Snook: Michele, did you go to a lot of theatre growing up?
Michele Oram: Yes! I was raised in the Bronx, and my mom was a school secretary. We went to theatre through TDF and it became an integral part of my life. We saw the original Pippin, we saw the original A Chorus Line. As an adult, I joined TDF on my own and started taking my daughter Micaela to lots of shows. At her bat mitzvah, one of the questions to win a prize was: “How many shows has Micaela been to?” The answer was 18, which was a lot for a 13-year-old. Now it’s over 50. I would say 75% were through TDF.
Raven Snook: Sounds like you’ve made some amazing theatre memories as a family. Can you share some recent shows you’ve seen together that stand out?
Michele: Seeing Suffs was an amazing, monumental experience for both of us. What was always important to me was not just taking Micaela to theatre but bringing her to shows that would change her life.
Micaela: I’ve seen so many musicals that now I’m like, I need a play mixed in there. With the state of the world right now, sometimes musicals are a bit too away from where my brain is.
Michele: I’ve always liked plays. I like drama, I like acting, but we do see musicals a lot.
Raven: Michele, I know your mom, Florence Migdol, introduced you to TDF. Is she still a member?
Michele: She was for a long time until she moved to Florida. I became a TDF Member after I graduated college. And I bought Micaela a TDF Membership for her birthday this year. She’ll renew it, hopefully… unlike Spotify.
Raven: Obviously, TDF Membership is important to your family. Do you ever try to convince your friends to join?
Michele and Micaela: (together) We both do!
Michele: A lot of my friends are members, I push it.
Micaela: Sometimes my mom will be talking to random people and bring up TDF.
Michele: I do?
Micaela: Yeah! And because people 30 and under can join TDF, I’ve been telling my friends about it, too. Some of them are skeptical, but I explain that you get to go to a million Broadway shows, and not only Broadway shows, just really cool artistic experiences. So we both have been pushing it.
Michele: And I just want to say, we have rarely gotten anything but orchestra seats in the last two years. It’s insane.
Micaela: I was never really a theatre kid. I liked going to the theatre and watching the Tonys, but I was never listening to the soundtracks or trying to find the pirated videos online. But the experience of being able to see that many shows on Broadway through TDF has shaped me into the person that I am, well-rounded with lots of different interests.
Raven: Are there specific shows you saw through TDF that made a big impression?
Micaela: I have a list! One of my favorite shows that we’ve seen with TDF is Hadestown. It was beautiful. I left it feeling like my life was changed.
Michele: And there was the Harvey Fierstein one.
Micaela: Torch Song.
Michele: You were kind of young to see that.
Raven: I took my daughter to that when she was young, too. I always say, I use theatre to give my kid an adult education.
Micaela: We saw Sylvia.
Michele: With Matthew Broderick and Annaleigh Ashford. We just loved that. We never would have seen that except for TDF. It wouldn’t have been on our radar.
Micaela: We saw Gigi and I met Vanessa Hudgens.
Michele: I got you and your dad Something Rotten.
Micaela: Something Rotten is my favorite show of all time! We bought the soundtrack. Our neighbor, who is a theatre kid and loves Broadway, got locked out of his house one time and I put the CD on and we danced around to Something Rotten until his mom came home. We were in like seventh grade.
Michele: We loved Hell’s Kitchen! I sent so many people to Hell’s Kitchen via TDF.
Micaela: We saw Punch. I was a politics major in college, so the whole concept of the show was very intriguing to me. I told my friend who wants to go into criminal justice reform to see it. Liberation was also really cool because it tied a lot into my history minor. I feel like I’ve seen a lot of shows that are not very mainstream that all kind of tied into something I was learning in school, whether it was high school or college. We saw POTUS…
Michele: Our friend’s cousin wrote it! We went twice. I had to take my husband.
Micaela: We saw N/A Off Broadway at Lincoln Center. As a college sophomore politics major, I was eating it up. I was like, this is great.
Michele: What’s the name of the one that we need to take your dad to?
Micaela: The Play That Goes Wrong.
Michele: Two years in a row we took friends of hers to the theatre through TDF for her birthday party, and that show was one of them.
Raven: You mentioned that sometimes TDF puts a show on your radar. How do you decide what to take chances on?
Michele: We filter by Broadway and Off Broadway. I mean, I saw Hedwig and the Angry Inch in the ’90s downtown on TDF. Hello? Off Broadway is spectacular. We’ll go to Park Avenue Armory sometimes. But this is what I think is really important: I use TDF to filter theatre for me. I trust the shows that TDF sells are going to be spectacular—sure, sometimes it’s hit or miss—but I use you as my source. We take chances. I don’t read reviews before I buy a show ticket, I’ll read them afterwards. So it depends on what’s there. Sometimes we just want to go to a show.
Micaela: She’s on there like daily, honestly.
Michele: Often more than once a day!
Micaela: We saw Come From Away. I didn’t know until we saw that show that they were passenger planes that hit the World Trade Center. I didn’t know that they shut down the airspace. I was not even a living being when 9/11 happened.
Michele: She looked at me and I felt so sad. She really got a lot of education from theatre.
Micaela: I loved Come From Away.
Michele: And I couldn’t wait to get out of there, because I lived it.
Raven: Let’s end on a fun one you both enjoyed.
Michele: Oh, I loved Donna Summer growing up, but Micaela didn’t know who that was, so I made her go to the Donna Summer musical with me. I did not sit down—I danced on my feet the whole show. It was hilarious.
Micaela: She was like, “Woo-woo!” at the end. And I was like, we’re in a theatre! What is happening?
Michele: Everyone was up on their feet!
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
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