Dara Friedman is unobtrusively videotaping people singing show tunes in public in New York City for a project commissioned by the Public Art Fund:
The policeman on the staircase barely looks up; the two little girls beside him continue giggling about whatever it was they had been giggling about.
“For a second,” Ms. McLean said afterward, “you’re like, ‘Am I doing this in my head or am I doing this?’”
She walks down the stairs and hits a crescendo: “‘Romance is mush/Stifling those who strive/ I’ll live a lush life in some small diiiiive. …’”
Two businessmen glance at each other cynically and keep walking. An unkempt woman stops to offer compliments. Two tourists look around, see no reaction and walk on. And those are the ones who are paying attention.
For a few minutes it’s as if everyone in Grand Central is actually in a musical, where somebody singing about unrequited love makes more sense than somebody not singing about it.