Taylor Swift Lets Play At Belvoir Use ‘Shake It Off’; Stays Silent On Whether Reclaim Australia Can Use It Too

It’s either a fun little feel-good news story, or the actual plot to every drama movie ever featuring a rag-tag bunch of actors trying to put on the Show Of A Lifetime against all odds and the Hollywood star who gave them the one chance they needed.

Seventeen, an upcoming play at Sydney’s Belvoir Street Theatre that’s deeefinitely going to sell out now, stars six veteran Australian actors — all of whom are 70-plus — who play a bunch of 17-year-olds at a birthday party, resulting in wacky fish-out-of-water scenarios like this:

The play’s closing number is a dance to Taylor Swift’s ‘Shake It Off’, because that’s what the kids love listening to these days — only the cast and crew found out earlier today that approval to use the song had been denied by the Australasian Performing Right Association.

With only hours until opening night they launched a snap social media campaign, the atrociously named #greygrey4taytay, begging Swift directly to let them use the song, and against all the odds this happened:

@taylorswift13 OMG THANK YOU! #greygrey4taytay

— Belvoir (@BelvoirSt) August 4, 2015

As with all things Taylor Swift-related, the nation of Australia has ground to a halt for a bit while the news works its way through the system. Clearly we have learned nothing from #Tay4Hottest100; I’m still in mourning over the demise of Gwen Stefani and Gavin Rossdale’s marriage, but if this T-Swift thing brings you joy I wish you all the best.

While Swift has given Seventeen permission to use her music, she’s yet to join Jimmy Barnes, John Farnham, John Williamson and Midnight Oil in demanding that fringe Islamophobia group Reclaim Australia don’t use it. WHAT ARE YOU HIDING, SWIFT. THE PEOPLE WANT ANSWERS (I am joking, Taylor Swift does not think halal food is turning people Muslim and is probably very nice, please do not be outraged at me).