Farewell, Désirée

There are some roles you play, and there are some roles that play you back.

 

Désirée Armfeldt, I have discovered, belongs firmly in the second category. The woman who met me exactly as I was becoming ready to inhabit my own life more fully...

 

And now, apparently, I am supposed to say goodbye to her.

For now. (For now, universe. I am making eye contact with you...)

But the glorious lesson of The Theatre is the lesson of ephemeral beauty, the ever-fleeting impermanence of It All, and in that truth lies a divine gift: that to love anything means we will lose it. And that the axiom "this too shall pass" is just as true of joyful moments as it is of adverse ones. May we relish the good times while they are here, for soon they will ebb once more. 

 

Such is life. 

 

So for now, the kimono goes back. The wig goes back. The glorious Lady-Gaga's-PLEAT-GUY-pleated-this-handmade-Fortuni-gown gowns go back. The makeup comes off. The dressing room empties. And once again I am confronted by the specific, beautiful, brutality of theatre: that we build an entire world together, furnish it with our bodies, our hearts, our neuroses, our snacks, and an alarming quantity of pins, and then one night we simply stop.

Poof.

Gone.

 

Cheers.

 

Which feels particularly strange because the last five months have been among the most expansive of my life.

There was Brigadoon—a piece I had spent years loving, interrogating, rewriting, fighting for, and finally watching become real in front of actual human beings. 

There was Chicago. 

There was Désirée. 

There was turning forty-three.

There were new friendships.

And old friendships returning in surprising new shapes.

There was writing.

There was acting.

There was (fraught but ultimately satisfying) singing.

There were meetings with exciting people. 

There were rooms full of artists imagining impossible things! And then, through some combination of craft, caffeine, delusion, and a text thread or three, making them possible.

 

And somewhere inside all of that, something in me began to soften. From my mindset to my nervous system to perhaps even to my literal fascia? I'm softer. Or life doesn't feel so hard. Or some semblance of both.  

______

Ah, softening. 

For most of the first half of my life, I believed strength meant bracing:

Prepare for the blow.

Anticipate the loss.

Read the room.

Make yourself useful.

Make yourself excellent.

Make yourself indispensable.

Make yourself whatever shape might prevent catastrophe.

And then life, with its usual lack of subtlety, eventually taught me that no amount of bracing can stop life from being life.

People leave.

Bodies change.

Careers zigzag.

Health fails.

Plans explode.

Love arrives anyway.

New identities present themselves with or without your consent.  

 

So perhaps this "middle-aged growing up journey" I'm on, is not at all about learning how to brace more effectively.

It is, I suspect, discovering that I no longer have to. (Isn't THAT rich?)

 

That is one of the gifts Désirée gave me. 

She is, after all, a woman who has spent much of her life moving.

City to city.

Stage to stage.

Affair to affair.

Performance to performance.

Always admired.

Always desired.

Always slightly elsewhere.

 

And then, suddenly, she wants something different.

Not applause.

Not admiration.

Not another dazzling entrance.

Home.

And I know that I understand that differently now than I would have ten years ago.

Home, I now realize, is not really a place at all. 

Home may be allowing yourself to be loved without immediately wondering how you can repay it.

Home may be trusting that the people who love you are not secretly conducting quarterly performance reviews.

Home may be waking up inside a body that has survived extraordinary things and finally regarding it not as a problem to solve, but as the astonishing vehicle that carried you here.

 

I have spent a great deal of my life trying to "earn" safety. I am beginning, tentatively, to believe I might simply... have some?

 

And of course, this has changed the way I think about my work, too.

For years I felt an invisible pressure to choose. To "brand." To "pick a market." Woe betide the mid 2000s and all their "so many years of muddle." 

Are you an actor? A singer?

Or are you an educator?  

Or wait: are you a writer?

Are you truly serious about performing?

Or serious about making your own work?

 

Pick a lane, Silber, the world is waiting. (Preferably before everyone notices you are driving several vehicles at once...)

 

But lately I have started wondering:

Why? WTF? Who made that rule?

 

I have always been suspicious of false binaries, and yet somehow I had constructed an enormous one inside my own career.

Actor OR writer.

Interpreter OR maker.

But what if the answer is simply:

Yes.

I am a woman standing backstage in a corset five minutes before places thinking about sentence structure. 

I am ALL.

"Applause for the clowns. They're finally here..." 

And perhaps my life is spacious enough to hold all of it.

 

Perhaps that is true for you, too. I don't know you, dear reader, but I suspect that we all contain multitudes.  

 

So aside from being overwhelming in its feeling of "midlife tardiness," this realization feels enormous not because it means I must now do everything at once (which is exactly the sort of conclusion my nervous system used to draw automatically, but, frankly we are no longer letting her run the meeting...) it means I don't have to amputate pieces of myself in order to appear coherent. My coherence may be entirely about embracing the combination. The All. The All of AL! 

 

And while I may moan and weep about how long it took me to heal and get a grip and make these discoveries, one of the strange gifts of midlife is realizing how much time has passed us by while simultaneously discovering how much life might still be waiting. Ahead. Still. 

There is grief in that. Of course. 

But there is also tremendous freedom.

I am no longer "waiting to become the person who gets to relax and just live my life."

 

She is already here. 

 ______

So farewell for now, Désirée.

 

Thank you for finding me at exactly this moment.

Thank you for asking harder questions than I expected.

Thank you for reminding me that growing older is not the diminishment I once feared, but perhaps an invitation to become more.

 

More honest.

More ridiculous.

More true.  

More absolutely alive.

 

There is still so much I want.

 

And for the first time in a long time, wanting does not feel like evidence of lack.

It feels like evidence that I am here.

 

Still becoming.

 

Still beginning.

Still.

©Joe Mazza / Brave Lux (of course) 

 

43

I used to write a little birthday post every year. I would list all the interesting things about the number/age I was turning and reflect. I glance over them now and feel charmed by how innocent they are. They were before the years felt "piled up." 

- I distinctly recall turning 24 and having the realization that childhood was truly over and I had "missed it."

- I remember waking up in San Francisco on the morning of my 30th birthday just after West Side Story had closed (the cast sang to me at midnight!) and feeling like life was truly all ahead of me... not fully realizing that less than two years later I would have a diagnosis and so much fear and pain. 

- I remember 36—the first birthday with Alec in my life—and not knowing where to put all of my peace and joy and happiness. 

- And 40. Days before I turned 40 I quit a high profile job and thought my career might be over, but the relief I felt at walking away from something so toxic was a level of certainty I couldn't ignore, and realized I had fought too hard to be alive to live feeling that horrendous about my work...

 

So. Hello 43. 

 

For decades my life has been organized around earning: health, approval, love, safety, another day. This year is the first in which I seem to have experienced what psychologists sometimes call "earned security"—not perfection, but a nervous system that is slowly learning, "Wait wait wait what: I don't have to manufacture every ounce of love that comes toward me?"

___
 

Last week, Chicago was flirting with one hundred degrees. The sort of heat that makes the buildings shimmer and convinces everyone they have suddenly become experts on hydration. 

 

Alec looked at me and said, "Beach?"
For me that answer is always "Obviously."

 

If you've never been to a Chicago beach in the summer, it feels vaguely illegal. You're standing in one of the largest cities in America, surrounded by skyscrapers, and somehow there's an inland sea stretching toward the horizon with no opposite shore in sight. Lake Michigan has always refused to behave like a lake. It insists on being mistaken for an ocean.
It is also? My water.
I grew up diving into it from the Michigan side, and every time I return, my body recognizes it before my brain does.
Without ceremony, I walked straight into the bone-shivering water with abandon.

 

Or perhaps...with ceremony? Because as the cold overtook me, something unexpected happened. My entire body began to tingle with the intensity of an arm waking after it's fallen asleep. Every nerve ending seemed to announce itself at once. As though someone had quietly switched my awareness back on.

 

I couldn't help thinking about the mikveh—the ritual bath that marks transition, renewal, emergence into a different chapter of life. I've always loved that Judaism understands water as more than water. Sometimes immersion is less about washing something away, than becoming someone new.

 
Standing waist-deep in Lake Michigan, I found myself waking up.
To health.
To gratitude.
To the astonishing, ordinary miracle of having a body that can carry me into freezing cold lake water without fear.

And excuse me please but let's pause here to appreciate one of the quieter miracles in this story:
I got into a bathing suit, mmkay? 
I walked into the water without negotiating with my reflection.
For decades, body dysmorphia/ disrodered eating/ general self-loathing literally stole moments like these from me. Even when I longed to swim in my favorite thing on earth: The Water, some cruel internal accountant insisted I hadn't yet earned the right. My body was something to apologize for before it could become a vessel to enjoy human experience.

This time, I didn't bargain.
I just got in.

The greatest victories increasingly resemble freedoms.
Not achievements.
Freedoms.
 

A few days later, I celebrated my birthday.
Forty-freaking-three.

And I can say, without hesitation, that it was the most beautiful birthday of my adult life.
Not because of presents.
Not because of messages of celebratory messages.
Not because that evening I had the extraordinary privilege of sitting onstage as Désirée Armfeldt and singing "Send in the Clowns"—(though, TBH: beginning a new year of life with one of Stephen Sondheim's most searing songs felt like a piece of theatrical symmetry too intense to have been planned?)

It was beautiful because, for perhaps the first time in my life, I allowed myself to receive it.

Receiving turns out to be much harder than giving. I used to pride myself on giving more than I received— if ever allowing myself to receive at all! As if that were some sort of superior virtue. Ah, youth. How wrong I was. 
But understandable, of course. Giving feels active. Noble. Productive. Receiving requires something far more frightening.
It requires believing that you don't owe anyone an explanation for why you're worthy of being loved.
And after all, for most of my life, I didn't believe that. My grandfather taught me—without ever saying the words outright—that love was a wage.  Approval was conditional. Safety was earned and re-earned— every day. Even accomplishment wasn't enough, because yesterday's accomplishment expired overnight. Whatever affection had been earned on Tuesday needed to be re-earned on Wednesday. Then Thursday. Then Friday. The treadmill never stopped.

I internalized the lesson so completely that I confused striving with living.

If I just worked harder…
If I were just more successful…
More talented.
More useful.
More exceptional.

Then perhaps I could finally exhale.

Of course, the finish line kept moving.
 

Illness complicated all of this in ways I'm only now beginning to understand.
When survival itself becomes your full-time occupation, you learn to live in a perpetual state of bracing. You become extraordinarily good at enduring.
But enduring and living are not the same thing.

This year, something shifted.
Perhaps it was writing Brigadoon.
Perhaps it was playing Désirée, who seemed determined to interrogate every illusion I still carried about worthiness.
Perhaps it was the privilege of being surrounded by extraordinary collaborators and friends who loved me without asking me to audition for the role.
Perhaps it was simply enough years between myself and the girl who learned to hustle for approval.
Whatever the reason, I noticed something extraordinary on my birthday.
When people loved me...
I let them.
I didn't rush to deflect the compliment.
I didn't immediately calculate how to repay every kindness.
I didn't secretly wonder whether I'd disappointed them somehow.
I simply received it. 

With the enormous gratitude a true gift deserves.

That's the lesson: truly receiving love is its own act of generosity.

If love is a gift, who am I to deflect it so callously? To decide whether or not it is deserved? Someone has thought of me, gone out, selected it, purchased it with hard earned wages and wrapped it up for your delight. 

Receive all of that. Without fuss or deflection. 

It is gracious to do so.  

People want to celebrate one another.
They want to uplift.
They want to cook dinner, write cards, send messages, hug you far longer than etiquette requires. They aren't keeping score. 

Healthy love isn't transactional. 

It isn't waiting for reimbursement.
It longs to be accepted.

I went to sleep that night feeling something I don't remember ever feeling before.

Full.
As though every kind word, every embrace, every laugh, every song, every impossible twist of fortune this extraordinary year had offered had finally been allowed to land.
 

For the first time, I wasn't carrying the bucket beneath a waterfall, frantically trying to prove I deserved the water.
I simply stood in it.
 

The beautiful thing about fullness, I've discovered this year, is that it doesn't end with you.
It overflows.

And flows ever-outward.  
The more completely we allow ourselves to receive love, the more freely we can offer it away again tomorrow.
 

The birthday gift of 43 is learning that there comes a moment in every life when we can finally stop asking, 

"Have I earned this yet?"

 

And simply answer, with gratitude:

 

"Isn't it rich?"

receiving: with my whole, damn grateful heart

"Hello, Désirée..."

     "Hm... I wonder if someone has made a clerical error."

 

This is how I feel about playing Désirée Armfeldt in Stephen Sondheim's A Little Night Music. Somebody is allowing me to do this in front of paying, living, customers, and I remain unconvinced that all relevant parties have been meaningfully consulted. I can only assume everyone involved is operating from incomplete information because letting me do this feels like the sort of decision that would normally require several permits and a psych evaluation. 

 

To stand in the middle of a theater, in one of my favorite theatre communities in America—Chicago—and sing one of the most iconic songs ever written for the musical theatre canon while removing articles of clothing in. the. round? 

 

Lord Almighty. 

 

Every day I arrive at work expecting to see an letter on official letterhead that begins, "After further review..." The entire thing feels like the sort of idea that should have been stopped by at least three responsible adults before reaching production.

 

And yet here we are.

 

 

Ah, time. You sneaky little bitch. One day you're Anne Egerman. Then you blink. You answer a few emails. You survive a global pandemic. You have a coupla life-saving surgeries. You discover that your knees now occasionally send weather reports. And suddenly you're standing on the cusp of forty-three, learning Désirée Armfeldt. 

 

The sunrise-sunset of it all has me staggered.

There is some grief in this reality.

Where did it go?

Where did she go?

 

The young woman who believed forty was impossibly distant. The girl who thought grown women possessed some secret map she had never been gifted. The actress perpetually trying to squeeze herself into categories that never quiiiiiite fit. For honestly, just like I did with "being young," I also always had to make ingenues work. Whatever ingenues I did play, I portrayed by smuggling my own strangeness inside them, bending the material around my oddly-shaped corners.

 

The women, though?

Ooooo the women are different.

Complicated. Funny. Wounded. Wise. Messy. Sexy. Flawed. The women know things. The 'women of the theatre' have lived badly and brilliantly—they carry history in their bodies and alter the temperature of a room. Suddenly I feel...equipped. Unapologetic. Ready. 

 

I've been waiting my whole life to portray the women that are now arriving.

Admittedly, perhaps slightly ahead of schedule? (Glynnis Johns was fifty when she originated Désirée) but maybe that doesn't mean I'm early. 

Maybe it means this is merely my first turn.

Maybe it means there will be more.

Maybe it means I can stop treating every new opportunity as if it is the last lifeboat leaving the dock.

Maybe it means I can simply be here.

 

*

 

Speaking of the nudity and sensuality of Désirée and and and—I've recently been recalling a realization I had several years ago while in the trenches of "eating disorder school" (which is to say: the first time Mount Sinai saved my life in the form of a rather strict in-patient treatment). For most of my teens and twenties, whenever an invitation involved swimming, I declined. Anything involving a bathing suit. The logic seemed airtight at the time: I genuinely believed I was protecting innocent bystanders from the burden of witnessing my body. And because this was the 1990s and early 2000s (a cultural era that looked women directly in the eye and cheerfully informed us that the less space we occupied, the better) we were all marinating in some fairly toxic nonsense.

 

The tragedy is that water is my favorite thing in the world. And I abandoned that water over and over again because I had become convinced that cellulite was a moral failure.

 

Recovery slowly arrived—and too-soon after, illness arrived. And I began to feel the betrayal. I had sold myself out thousands of times and missed irreplaceable experiences of swimming in the sea, of lakes on my skin, of canon balls and waterfalls and fjords—all because I was busy auditioning for a standard that did not exist. Convinced that if I just worked a little harder, sacrificed a little more, and occupied slightly less physical space, someone, somewhere, would finally hand me a certificate declaring me: Acceptable. And I did all of this with the intensity of a woman trying to secure the last helicopter out of Saigon.

 

What nonsense. 

 

When my body got mortally sick I realized I wasn't negotiating with perfection anymore, but with survival. Survival means the hierarchy of needs reveals itself with breathtaking efficiency. (I say this with truly PhD levels of expertise: survival is exactly like colonoscopy prep: there are no shades of grey, nuance or dilly-dallying. There is only what must go and what cannot stay.)

 

When you've spent years wondering whether you'll ever be healthy again, whether you'll ever feel strong again, whether you'll ever get another chance at an ordinary day, you start looking at your body differently.

At forty-two, do I love every inch of it? Absoluuutely not.

I remain a human woman.

But I am... alive. Astonishingly grateful to be alive.

And after 42 years on the fence, I've also arrived at the radical conclusion that at least some of me is extremely hot.

 

This, strangely enough, feels very Désirée. 

 

Désirée is a woman who has finally become more interested in truth than performance. Which may be why she feels less like a role I am playing, and more like a role I've been walking toward for decades. I have no idea the exact moment it occurred, but somewhere along the way, I stopped striving for perfection and perhaps more importantly, I stopped performing perfection. I stopped apologizing for being human before anyone had even accused me of it.

When I went to my callback, our director asked me: 

"Aside from the obvious glamorous reasons, why do you want to play this role right now?"

 I paused and really thought about it before answering: 

"Because... once, what feels like both yesterday and very long ago, I took final bows on very fancy stages. And then I got very, very sick. And lost so much. And gained so much. And now I just... want to be happy."

That's the real answer anyway. Perfection doesn't survive four surgeries and come back with scars. Or stand in the center of a theatre in Chicago, remove her makeup, her clothing, sing Sondheim's greatest hymn, and laugh at the absurdity of (please pardon the mixed Sondheim metaphor) being alive.

Breathing, living, human beings do.

 

And perhaps 

Cellulite.

Traumatic pasts.

Scars—literal and metaphorical.

The whole glorious mess.

is more than enough. 

 

And even though I spend almost every rehearsal waiting for the administrative team to dramatically burst through the theatre doors and yell, "WAIT! We meant the other Alexandra!"

 

I think I'm learning to applaud the vast, real, mess of it all. And if I don't fully succeed this time? 

"Well. maybe next year." 

  

© Joe Mazza for BraveLux (of course) 

The Bywater Scissors

     At the end of 2024, I was cooked. Fully crispy, charred artist-on-a-spit. Four major surgeries in four years, disillusioned, gaslit by the career I thought I loved, ghosted by people I used to admire, and filled with a creeping sense that I was the punchline to a cosmic joke called Show Business. I couldn’t even walk IN to a theatre, I couldn’t watch TV or movies, listen to music, or look at a stage without feeling totally nauseated.

Like I’d let down the ghost of my teenage self 

     and every hope of my long dead father 

          like I was in my own little Euripides play 

I joke now, but months ago? I was all dactylic hexameter and up-at-night, inter-generational questioning. 

My inner monologue had devolved into: “Why are you doing this to yourself?” 

 

I was staring into the void of my creative life and wondering if there was anything left to revive—ready to quit The Showbiz move to a small town and open a candle store called something tragic like Cutting Room Floor or Final Act (or something) and never speak of “the industry” again.

 

So when 2025 began, I made a very quiet, barely-uttered promise to myself: no more striving. No more hustling. No more saying ‘yes’ to things out of panic. Every project I took on needed to meet one simple criterion: it had to be nourishing. Not career-advancing, not résumé-polishing—but quite literally nourishing. Nothing I took on could be to impress anyone, gain me clout, or “advance my brand” (please stab me)— all it had to do was very simply make me feel vaguely human again. 

 

The rule was simple: if it didn’t nourish, it didn’t happen.

 

There comes a time in every working life when the great “why” that once powered you—the burning sense of purpose that made exhaustion seem noble—simply burns out. One day you wake up, and the thing that once filled you with wonder feels hollow. The rituals of your calling turn mechanical; the air goes out of the room. 

I think that’s the part no one warns you about: how meaning doesn’t vanish all at once, but by degrees. You bargain with it. You tell yourself the spark will return when the next job comes, or the next success, or when the world feels less cruel. When meaning leaves a person, it does not leave politely. It takes with it your sense of direction, your appetite for risk, even the reason to get out of bed in the morning. And when it finally does go quiet, the silence inside you is deafening. You start to wonder if you’ve been a fool to love something that can’t love you back.

But here is what I have learned in the slow rebuild: meaning is not an idea; it’s a practice. It returns not through revelation, but through repetition. Just like the art of theatre acting itself: the identical daily exericse. The play is not different, but the world is, and you are. And thus meaning sneaks back in during the work itself: line by line, scene by scene, hour by hour, shoulder to shoulder with other people who are also trying, also hoping, also just showing up. 

 

The doing becomes the proof. 

The companionship becomes the faith. 

 

And one day, almost without noticing, you feel the warmth again—the quiet understanding that purpose isn’t something you find, it’s something you make, together.

 

When Dial M for Murder at Drury Lane came along, I said ‘yes’ because my instincts told me it felt good. Not strategic, not glamorous—just good. I came back to Chicago—and found not only work, but warmth. 

First of all, Chicago is that girl. Warm, funny, affordable-ish, and full of theatre people who will drive you to Trader Joe’s when your loaner car craps out. I forgot how much history I had here. Colleagues. Friends. Kin. People who had called an ambulance, seen me single, sad, on morphine, knew every “bad side” and still answered my texts. I never like working far from home, but Chicago now feels like a second one, with (sorry, New York), superior hot dogs. 

And then there was the unexpected joy of finally sharing a contract with my high school friend of twenty-five years, Adam Immerwhar. Adam led with taste, humor, and (a helluva lot of) grace, and together we filled our utterly preposterous “digs” in the windowless attic of this actual theatre with something I think I remembered called joy. There were martinis. There was the wearing of costumes from the seemingly permanent “Christmas Carol” clothing rack, and as a result of all of this: THERE WERE BITS.

And my God, this cast. Unreal. Every single person was both a phenomenal actor and a functioning adult. One of the best companies of my career. 

We built our own little speakeasy backstage—a ramshackle bar affectionately named “The Bywater Scissors.” It became our gathering place, our late-night lounge, our hub of laughter, Erik-Hellman-prepared cocktails, and gentle mischief. 

 

Joy, shared. 
Exhaustion, witnessed. 
Kindness, on the rocks.

 

There was something sacred about it. 

 

This company has been a miracle of balance—funny, kind, honest, supportive; and all emotionally literate, have been around the block in The Showbiz, and all with a nice grasp on reality.  We managed to stumble into the anti–regional theatre cliché: no drama, no ego, no chaos. Just real grown-ups playing pretend together for a living fully committed to the backstage bar. 

 

Now, as the show closes and 2025 saunters to its end, I can say this: I’m not “fixed”—let’s not start that rumor—but I am better. 
 

It turns out, rehab doesn’t always happen in hospitals or cult-y Malibu retreats. Sometimes it happens at The Bywater Scissors, surrounded by people who remind you that there really IS still magic in the thing you loved when you were fifteen. 

Still here. 

Still showing up. 

Still loving a ridiculous, impossible art form that somehow refuses to let me go.

 

So, to the artists (Amanda, Erik, Ian, Jonathan et al) who maybe unknowingly helped me find my way back to wholeness—thank you.

 

And thank you, ‘The Theatre,’ for taking me back even after I ugly-cried and told everyone we were “on a break.”

 

There really are no people like show people.

"Goodnight... goodnight..."

@aka_lizlauren

Farewell, Marian Paroo and The Music Man in Chicago.

The most glorious part: creating a new Marian Paroo in tandem with my "whyfe" Katie Spelman-- my favorite contemporary artistic collaborator. It has been a dream, a career highlight, and the definition of platonic intimacy. Katie, along with our peerless female-led creative team Kim Hudman + Laura Rook, not to mention 37 world-class performers. The professionalism of every contributor has made this one of the great artistic experiences of my career, and I’m so proud of what we all made together.

It must be mentioned that sharing the journey of Marian and Harold opposite KJ Hippensteel's Harold Hill— the best I’ve ever seen in the role for reasons I’ve expressed now countless times. 

 

KJ, our creation is a work of art, and I’m proud that it has deepened and enriched over the weeks in ways actors can only dream of. In addition, we’ve never wavered from our shared commitment to telling it honestly, no matter what; a testament to our shared professionalism and love of the work. Thank you. It’s been an honor to tell this story together.

I’ve made some lifelong friends and theatrical chosen family, I’ve conquered so many of my singing demons and felt in my cells once again what I thought was the lost sensation of truly soaring on stage in a musical again. I flew— and it was even more precious because after the last decade or so, I know what it means to fall.

Almost everything has been a total dream.

Yet, being honest, there have been parts of this experience that have been both socially and physically agonizing. I won't go in to detail here, first of all because I am a lady (I have never used this space for idle muckraking), and second because none of the thoughts and feelings are fully identified or organized, and I have learned to only offer reflections in a vaguely public space such as this once experiences are truly processed. Suffice it to say: I’m grateful for the lessons and look forward to ever-more calming of my nervous system. 

 

For although I passionately love this role, adore so many in this company, and revere this gorgeous work of art we all created, I am ready to return home. I look forward to returning to an environment where I feel fully understood, where what I offer as a friend, colleague and human being is deeply valued, respected, and above all: the goodness of my intentions are never doubted or maligned. I know I shall never scramble to prove my worth again, for if we find ourselves trying to prove our worth to others who do not see or value it? We have already forgotten our own value.

Marian and this contract have taught me:

- communicate.
- don’t make assumptions.
- trust.
- love abundantly— without apology.
- and tell people what they mean to you—for our trip on earth is brief.

And so:

“Goodnight… goodnight…”

@aka_lizlauren

"There was love, all around..."

©aka liz lauren

“There was love all around, but I never heard it singing…”

One of the things I adore—and have truly learned—in the playing of this classic song (‘Til There Was You’) is the humble admission of something I know all too well (because I personally did it for years):

That, as individuals who desire to love and be loved, sometimes we participate in our own solitude. 

We perpetuate it by keeping the world at a safe distance. We think that a world kept at arms length cannot hurt us. But that isn’t how it works. A heart sealed in an airtight box does change— just not with scars or wounds. It calcifies and hardens.

For Marian— a woman who has an almost rigid rigor for upholding the 'absolute truth' — I think this line in this song is Marian’s greatest moment of vulnerability.

To fully admit (in song)—that despite all her research, her knowledge OF love stories, poetry and BALZAC— she didn’t just miss something, she missed everything. She missed the point of all of it: love “all around” her.

And she missed it not because of town gossip, or grief, or the lack of a suitable partner in the area,— she missed it because her own rigid walls were built up and buttressed so high that she almost tossed love aside even when it was right in front of her.

I relate.

And I celebrate her humility and admission because it is, in every way, my own.

Maybe it’s yours too.

(And I thank —infinitely— the love of my life, my beloved Alec, for patiently standing before me until the walls came down)

May you be brave enough to see the love all around you, whenever you are ready to fully receive it.

Love on.

© Marian at sunset by @brave.lux - What a dream it is.

Production Photos: The Music Man

all ©AKA Liz Lauren

Dressed by Jess!

OMG OMG OMG.
SO.
When I met wardrobe professional, dresser extraordinaire, smart, cool, genius human Jess Kenyon at Chiacgo Shakespeare Theater in 2018 into 2019, I told her she needed her own TV SHOW.

Cue: PANDEMIC.

CUE: JESS MADE A SHOW! "Dressed By Jess" is a conversation with Jess herself discussing the unparalleled power of costumes and clothing: the visual storytelling, the creativity, and the collaboration. These are not just "costumes" these are the characters' clothes.

On her show Jess discusses the relationship between artist and costumer, the ideas each creative brings to the eventual outcome, the backstage stories that make what we see onstage in the audience happen, and much more.

Jess is one of the greatest costume professionals I've ever worked with, and if she weren't married with a couple of cats I'd force her to come all over the world with me.

I was honored to be among her first interviews and it was such a joy to discuss some of the creative realities that don't get discussed very often!

"Al Silber and Jess discuss Fiddler on the Roof and Camelot. Al Tells amazing backstage stories! Costumes mentioned are designed by: Ana Kuzmanic, Fabio Toblini, Kendra Rai, and Catherine Zuber. Photos shown are taken by: Liz Lauren, Scott Suchman, and Stan Barouh."

Preview of 'A Midsummer Night’s Dream' at Chicago Shakespeare

Cast members Melisa Soledad Pereyra, T.R. Knight, Alexandra Silber and Sam Kebede and took time out of rehearsal to share their excitement about the production, and why this production of Shakespeare’s audience favorite “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” will have the whole theater laughing and dancing. Performances begin on December 6 in the Courtyard Theater at CST’s home on Navy Pier.