Thank you, Michael Tilson Thomas

It with profound sorrow that I join the world in mourning the loss of a once-in-generation musician, Michael Tilson Thomas.

I have many memories, (and some shall always remain privately ‘mine’), but what I can say is that MTT gave me was so much more than “a shot” when he selected me—a total nobody— to sing *his* Maria. He also gave me the gift of contributing to the legacy of West Side Story and to crossover music history, happily preserved for all time on our glorious recording.

But above all, MTT unsentimentally taught me how to believe in myself, and the lesson that sometimes? that is a slow process. The story that captures this:

One day, during our week leading up to ‘West Side Story’ rehearsal he brought me in to his office. I truly believed I was being fired. The imposter syndrome was real. But that is not what happened. “You’re singing sharp when you get nervous,” he said. “I know. That does happen when I get nervous I’ll fix it,” I replied, horrified. “Singing sharp often happens when people try too hard,” MTT continued, “They overshoot the note trying to be more than they are. I don’t need you to be more than you are. You are ‘Ein großer Künstler’ Alexandra. A great artist. Be exactly what you are, fully, don’t shrink, don’t puff, and you’ll be perfection.”

I was staggered. I almost cried. 

     “So I’m not fired?”
     “Absolutely not.”
     “But… I don’t know if I can trust myself like that.”
     “Then trust ME. I’m Michael Tilson Thomas and I know what I’m doing! I chose you. And I don’t regret it. Trust ME until you trust yourself. Sometimes belief can be collaborative. Nothing wrong with that.”

May we all learn from this.

May his memory be a blessing. 

I know it shall always be for me. 

None shall part us now. 

 

 

 

 

Brigadoon: Day 1

 

No words. Because *every last word I could ever have*, is in those pages. 

Day 1. Let’s go. Och aye. 

 

John Steinbeck wrote a letter to his publisher when he submitted East of Eden. The letter was then used as the book's dedication. It captures what I feel: 

 

"Dear Pat,

You came upon me carving some kind of little figure out of wood and you said, “Why don’t you make something for me?”
I asked you what you wanted, and you said, “A box.”
“What for?”
“To put things in.”
“What kind of things?”
“Whatever you have,” you said.
Well, here’s your box. Nearly everything I have is in it, and it is not full. Pain and excitement are in it, and feeling good or bad and evil thoughts and good thoughts- the pleasure of design and some despair and the indescribable joy of creation.
And on top of these are all the gratitude and love I have for you.
And still the box is not full.

John"

 

The Winter I Finally Stopped Bracing or, 'Growth Is Ugly and Does Not Photograph Well'

What I’ve come to understand (slowly, reluctantly, and with the emotional elegance of a rabid possum trapped inside a Panera) is that I fundamentally misunderstood what growth was supposed to look like. I used to believe that growth was a forward motion only. That to become more, you had to do more, achieve more, prove more. More productivity. More striving. More exhaustion disguised as ambition. I thought the evidence of a meaningful life would look like velocity.

 

But this winter taught me something quieter and, I think, more true.

That growth sometimes looks like retreat.
Like stillness.

 

Sometimes it means turning inward and tending to the abandoned rooms inside yourself—the parts that were neglected because survival demanded it. And I should note: this is not glamorous work. It does not photograph well. There are no inspirational montages. No one is posting “deep nervous system repair” content from beneath three blankets while eating stale crackers over the sink and trying not to cry during yet another prescription drug commercial.

But somewhere in the turning of this brutal winter, I realized something had changed.

The cold had finally left my body.

And I don’t mean the weather,  (although I'd like to petition that surviving a New York winter does make you feel eligible for frontier citizenship.) I mean the internal winter I had been carrying for far too long—the emotional frostbite that protected me from pain, yes, but also kept me from joy. The kind of psychic bracing that keeps a person functioning, productive, competent… and quietly absent from their own life.

Then, sometime in March, I noticed something almost imperceptible: I had stopped bracing.

I stopped apologizing for existing.
Stopped treating rest like moral failure.
Stopped experiencing my own life as something to endure.

And once that happened, something else suddenly became possible:

Expansion.

 

 

Of course, because life is not subtle, this period of stillness is now giving way to a season of extraordinary motion.  Spring into summer is arriving like a parade I did not RSVP to but am somehow expected to lead. Projects. Collaborations. Creative opportunities that feel not just exciting, but aligned. As though they were waiting for me to become the person capable of receiving them or, the version of myself capable of receiving them without immediately self-destructing.

 

This is new.

 

Before, work often felt like something I had to chase, or worse, survive.

 

Now, for the first time in a very long time, it feels like something I might actually be able to meet.

 

 

 

Becoming Warm Again

There is cold, and then there is New-York-waiting-for-the-above-ground-N-train-in-deepest-February cold.

 

Ah yes! Welcome back you vicious breeze! You have discovered the one gap in my coat! I hear your raspy whisper threaten: “You will never be warm again...” Y'all? I weathered the Polar Vortex of 2018 in Chicago (where it was -53ºF and colder in Chicago than on the surface of Mars), and I've been to Siberia, and this New York winter kicked my ass. So I would like to formally submit a complaint: 'hear ye hear ye, no human being is meant to stand on an open-air platform while the wind weaponizes itself against your femurs.' 

 

I don’t care how cold it is in the Arctic Circle, Vladivostok or Fargo—are those people waiting for the bus? 

 

Because that’s what this winter felt like.

Not just meteorologically. Spiritually. 

Good ol' 2026. Making itself known. It's not enough that the world is at war, everything is unaffordable and the spine of America has been crushed beneath an orphaned mack truck no one can afford to drive because gas is $5 a gallon. 
No. We also had to have when-will-it-end winter whilst stuck on the 6 train. 

 

This was a winter of sub-zero temperatures, multiple snowstorms, and me, once again trying-and-failing to quit show business like a woman calmly exiting a casino before she sets her own wallet on fire. I called it a “dramatical sabbatical,” which sounds elegant and intentional, like I was sipping oolong and reading Strinberg, but in reality? I was horizontal a lot. I finally did (and remain "doing"), the trauma work. And not the chic, go-to-the-woods-for-a-retreat kind. I mean the kind where you sit inside things you have spent decades outrunning. The kind where your body (which has been quietly holding receipts since childhood) decides it’s time to present the bill. Dad, his parents, disordered eating, ulcerative colitis. All all all. All of it, apparently, has been living in my proverbial basement like emotionally charged raccoons, waiting for me to finally turn on the light. There was a lot of sitting and remembering. A lot of realizing that I had built an entire life around highly functioning.

 

And also—and I want to be clear about this—there were still, like, errands. Getting your shit together does not cancel your CVS obligations. You can be mid-epiphany about your childhood and still have to pick up a prescription and stand behind a man arguing about coupons. 

 

But something began to shift. Very slowly, like thawing. At first, it was physical. I realized one morning that I was not clenching my jaw. Then I noticed I could sit still without immediately reaching for an activity to "accomplish." Then—and this felt revolutionary—I took a full breath without it catching halfway through like a Windows 95 error. 

 

All to say: 

Warmth, I am learning, is not just temperature. 

It might just be your nervous system lowering its weapons, and the body deciding, at last, that it is not under siege.

I did not know, until this winter, how deeply unrested I have been for most of my life. How much of my productivity was powered not by inspiration, but by fear. Fear of stopping. Fear of feeling. Fear of what might catch up to me if I ever stood still long enough to let it.

And now, having stood still—truly still—I can say this:

Nothing caught up to me.

I caught up to myself.

Because when you emerge—and you do emerge—you are not the same person who went in.

You are warmer.

You are rested.

And perhaps most importantly, you are no longer estranged from yourself.

 

This is a kind of abundance that has nothing to do with money or accolades or even opportunity. 

It is the abundance of being present in your own life.

Of feeling your breath fully.
Of trusting your body again.
Of knowing that whatever comes next, you will meet it as yourself — not as a performance of yourself.

 

So here I am.

Standing on the edge of a season that feels, for the first time in a long time, not like something to survive—but something to live. 

If winter was the pulling back of the bow, then this moment is the breath just before release.

 

Not frantic.
Not forced.

Ready.

 

© hula seventy

"Our Town, Our Table" - A Workshop

Never have I ever worked on a piece like this. In development for nearly 18 months, I am the "last-man-standing" from the earliest days of sitting around a table with a very silly idea, and this week, 11 actors we've collected along the way have poured their hearts, battle scars, war stories, tales of love and humor and loss, in to this beautiful new American play, Our Town, Our Table by Kirsten Gunther, conceived with Jack Cummings of the Transport Group. 

 

It has been one of the greatest collaborative experiences of my life. The stories, the humanity, the problem solving, the laughter, the tears. An inexplicable bond formed across time and shared in a sparse space equipped with nothing but our words, memories, imaginations, and 11 humble props. 

 

To speak of the content of this project would be to pepper it with spoilers, but suffice it to say it it "about" Thornton Wilder's Our Town, but about so much more. What we sacrifice for a life in the theatre. Who we met along the way. What is replaceable. What is ephemeral. What is eternal. And how to savor and cherish "every every minute" on stage and on earth. 

 

Here's to the world seeing it manifest.  

 

"All I Need is the Girl" from Broadway Backwards: 20th Anniverssary

From "All I Need is the Girl" with Robyn Hurder

‘ALL I NEED IS THE GIRL’ – 2026

There aren’t words to express what it meant to be invited back to share the stage with my forever girlfriend Robyn Hurder (arguably one of our *greatest* triple threats) and recreate this iconic scene and choreography from GYPSY (originally directed / put on us in 2019 by pal Tony Yazbeck  iconic Tulsa himself!)

Ohhhhh how the world has changed since then. How both of our lives, bodies, hearts and careers have evolved and shifted in those 7 years. And yet, like the magic that is emotional and muscle memory: there it all was, like not a moment had passed for this version of Tulsa and Louise. A very special take on the agony of unrequited love…

Thank you Broadway Cares for the honor and the gift. ✨

📸 📸: Michael Hull and Rebecca J Michelson
_________________

BROADWAY BACKWARDS
Written, Directed and Choreographed by Robert Bartley
Music Supervisors: @tedarthur, @marymitchellc
Music Director: @stevenmcuevas
Choreographer and Associate Director: @adamant9
Co-choreographers: @tinylamotte, @colby_q
Production Stage Manager: @esarab
Props Designers: Jenna Snyder, @alexanderwylie87
Lighting Designers: @jeffcroiter, @colleenashleyd
Sound Designers: Marie Renee Foucher, Josh Maszle
Costume Designers: @kittycassetti, @jgersz, Alex Rocky, @tiecarlton
Hair Designers & Supervisors: @meganburkeartistry, @wigkedtiff
Makeup Designers & Supervisors: @joshuabarrymua, @meganburkeartistry
Casting Consultant: @castingbyarc

"One Day More" from Broadway Backwards 20th Anniversary

From "One Day More" 

The 20th Anniversary production of Broadway Cares, BROADWAY BACKWARDS was everything one could dream of. An honor to revisit “Jean” opposite Bradley Dean with old friends and new.

“The time is now. The day is here.” 

Photos here by the brilliant @michaelhullphoto and @rebeccajmichelson— whose hugs were one of the best part of the evening.
 

(Re) Rehearsing for Broadway Backwards: 20th Anniverssary

There are certain nights in the theatre that feel less like performances and more like communal acts of remembrance. Broadway Backwards has always been one of those nights. For twenty years, this extraordinary event benefiting Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS has gathered artists together not only to celebrate the LGBTQ+ community through the re-imagining of beloved musical theatre canon, but to remind us why theatre matters in the first place: because storytelling can raise money, yes—but more importantly, it can raise one another.

 

So to be invited back for the 20th anniversary celebration at the Gershwin Theatre was already beyond anything I could have dreamed. To be asked to revisit not one, but both of my previous numbers — “All I Need Is the Girl” with the incandescent Robyn Hurder and “One Day More” alongside this glorious company of artists—felt almost impossible to process emotionally. There are moments in a creative life where you feel yourself quietly admitted into the room you spent your entire childhood hoping existed. 

 

This was one of those moments. 

 

And what moved me most deeply was not merely the nostalgia of recreating these performances, but the realization that while the work remains frozen in time, we do not.

 

When Robyn and I first performed “All I Need Is the Girl” in 2019, I had just met Alec—my now-husband—and I could not possibly have imagined the life that was waiting for me. I had not yet endured four life-saving surgeries. I had not yet learned what it meant to rebuild a body, a career, and a sense of self simultaneously. Robyn, too, has transformed beautifully: artistically, personally, professionally. Watching her ascend has been one of the great joys of my life.

 

And when I stood in “One Day More” in 2022, the entire world still felt bruised and disoriented from the ravages of COVID. I was still struggling physically and emotionally in the aftermath of illness and survival itself. We were all, in some way, trying to remember how to gather again.

 

That is the strange and holy magic of theatre. We return to the same material, but never as the same people. Every revisit becomes a kind of archaeological dig into who we once were and who we have become. A lyric lands differently. A harmony carries new grief or gratitude inside it. The body remembers what the heart has lived through.

 

 

For aspiring performers, I think this may be one of the greatest lessons this art form offers us: your work will evolve because you evolve. Life will mark you. Love will mark you. Loss will mark you. Survival will mark you. And if you are fortunate, you will someday return to a familiar stage carrying a deeper humanity than the person who first stepped onto it.

 

What an honor to revisit the past in service of the future. What an honor to stand among this community. And what a privilege to still be growing inside the work.

 

Where is "The Handbook for the Recently Adult?"

I have long believed that adulthood is poorly organized.

Not in the broad philosophical sense—we’ve always known life is chaos—but in a customer service sense. There is no on-boarding. You simply wake up one morning responsible for a health insurance deductible and three kinds of laundry detergent, and are expected to proceed with confidence.

This seems unfair, given that when one dies—at least according to Beetlejuice— a courteous supernatural bureaucracy provides "The Handbook for the Recently Deceased." You are welcomed to your new existential status with documentation. Instructions. Diagrams. A table of contents. And a (admittedly: dubious) customer service system. 

Meanwhile, when you turn 25, society hands you a car-rental eligibility, at 26 you have your parents' health insurance revoked, and society just sort of quietly expects you to *k n o w* how taxes work.

I guess I had always believed adulthood had a little more ceremony. Something to signify that childhood was absolutely over, and at the bare minimum you'd get a poorly filmed instructional video about the ins and outs of Adult Life. 

Or better yet! Like in Beetlejuice, at some point, a courier appears. They approach you, require a signature, and without emotion hand over a leather-bound Adulting Manual. Inside are instructions for taxes, bank accounts, conflict resolution, grief processing, how to iron a shirt without Googling it, and how to not panic when the pharmacy receipt is longer than a novella.

Instead, adulthood appears to be a slow leak of realizations, all which feel like everyone else you've ever met has figured out first. 

So you're left to fend for yourself, pretending we're grown without a manual. 

No manual. Just episodes?!
This is an outrage. 
Where is "The Handbook for the Recently Adult?"

To heck with the stoic courier! Perhaps its arrival is even more discreet—slipped under your door at midnight on your birthday in a tasteful, intimidating binder.

Chapter 1: Your Parents Are Now Mortal.
Chapter 7:  Friendships Become Appointments.  
Chapter 14:  How to advocate for yourself
Chapter 17:  Taxes: You Will Never Fully Understand. (Includes a reassuring flowchart ending in the words “probably correct.”)
Chapter 20: How Your Childhood Shaped You
Chapter 24: Rest is Not Laziness
Chapter 29: Boundaries!
Chapter 32:  Bodies Keep The Score and Charge Interest. (You cannot out-schedule biology.)

Chapter 38:  How to buy a mattress without having a crisis

Chapter 40:  Cooking For One (With and without existential despair)

Chapter 47:  How to talk to doctors without saying “sorry” for symptoms.

Chapter 55:  Sorry, but Reddit is not Your Primary Care Physician. 
Appendix B: The Apology You Owe Yourself.

 

My suspicion has always been that everyone else did, in fact, receive this manual. They simply are sworn to a kind of Knights-Templar-like secret society pact, or perhaps just forgot to mention it. Because I watch people refinance mortgages calmly, select appropriate throw pillows, maintain long-term relationships with dentists—and I think: *Ah, yes. They must be familiar with what I assume is page 347. The chapter on ‘knowing what you’re doing.’

But adulthood, I’m discovering at the ripe old middle age of 42, is not the possession of knowledge. It is the gradual acceptance of permanent partial understanding. Because you see: NOBODY received the manual. We are all just gently pretending, passing notes in the margins of a book that has never been printed.

And occasionally, if we are lucky, I suppose we get to write our own chapter.  

I contain multitudes. And antibiotics.

Mirror selfie at the Four Seasons

Last week, I was a VIP guest at the St. Andrews Society of Los Angeles for Robert Burns Night at the Four Seasons of Beverly Freakin' Hills. I was rubbing elbows and seated beside luminous Scottish humans (Brian Cox, ffs), dressed in black tie, celebrating art, culture, the Scots language, poetry in general, Robert Burns Poet Laureate of Scotland and of course HAGGIS.—in Beverly Hills amongst very fancy socialites, like a person who definitely owns matching luggage.

This was my second Burns Night of the year. And before you think I’m getting too fancy, this is the part where I tell you that I was wearing the same dress that I donned at the New York Burns Night at the University Club. It has pockets. It was also? rented. 

I was in town because the St. Andrews Society is sponsoring the Pasadena Playhouse’s world premiere of the Brigadoon I have rewritten, and I was tasked with giving a 4 minute speech plugging our lovely show for a room full of Scots. Did I know I was giving a speech? No. Did I write the speech during the salad course on the back of my menu? I did. 

I also was tasked with getting Tyne Daly to and from the event. There is very little Tyne loves more than poetry, and we were looking forward to getting gussied up and having a three course meal in a fancy place (even IF the world is burning down! Especially if the world is burning down!)

My gracious and wonderful host—not busy himself that evening— offered to let me borrow his extremely fancy car to drive to Tyne’s, pick her up and escort her to the Four Seasons, and drive home in style. WHAT COULD GO WRONG?

On my way there, I realized I didn’t feel as comfortable driving as I wanted to (living in New York, I only drive occasionally, and when I do I always need a couple of days to acclimate). Do I really want to be driving back at night? Do I really want to be driving TYNE DALY?! No. 

Al + Tyno: thrilling crowds since 2010

New plan: 

1. Drive to Tyne’s. 
2. Park somewhere safe. 
3. Take an $11 taxi to the Four Seasons. 
4. Taxi back to the parking spot. 
5. Drive home. 

After an absolutely splendid evening (my speech went well, thankyouverymuch) I return to the parking spot in West Hollywood. I am in black tie. My phone is at 11%. It is Saturday and pitch black. 

To my horror: I quickly discover that the beautiful borrowed car—a BMW worth the GDP of a modest principality—was GONE. 
Had it been stolen? 
Had it been towed? 
Who was to know. 

I call Alec. He manages to brilliantly figure out the car has indeed been towed, encourages me to get a taxi home with the remaining battery on my phone, and retrieve the car in the morning. 

The next morning I stood not-so-proudly among the detritus of Los Angeles’ most panicked citizens in the fluorescent underbelly of Hollywood Tow Yard, wearing yesterday’s eyeliner and the facial expression of a Victorian orphan. Somewhere nearby a printer screamed continuously, like it too had made terrible choices.

with Brian Cox because of course

I handed a man $280 in cash to retrieve a vehicle whose cup-holders alone were worth more than my first apartment. Juan slid my $1 in change beneath the bulletproof glass—the kind of glass that has absolutely witnessed screams, threats, tears and at least one thrown Monster Energy Drink—and smiled warmly.
 

“Welcome to Los Angeles.”

Thanks, Juan. I hope you never have to grow as a person.
 

 

I returned to my digs and fell asleep instantly, the way you do after your nervous system spends six consecutive hours pretending to be a raccoon in a kitchen (alert, sweaty, and morally compromised) because cortisol is real I guess, and my body had decided we’d run a full Fight-or-Flight marathon about a luxury sedan that, oh, that’s right: did not belong to me.

Two hours later I was at urgent care being diagnosed with a UTI. The doctor said it with the same calm tone one uses to announce light drizzle. I considered asking the Urgent Care Do: can humiliation infect kidneys? If I wrote this into a play the dramaturg would gently suggest we ground the stakes in reality.
 

This is the perfect metaphor for life:


reciting poetry with Tyne Daly → municipal consequences → bladder betrayal.

 

I'm pretty sure I have learned by now that life is mostly just being glamorous for 90 minutes and feral for the remaining 23 hours of the day.

And yet, in that same week, I:

• finished a draft of my brand new play adaptation (news to come) 
• Fully cast the world premiere of Brigadoon (!!)
• work-shopped another project I passionately love
• froze in negative-twenty-degree New York weather so thoroughly my thoughts crystallized

All to say: growth, apparently, does not present as a tidy montage. 
It presents as tonal whiplash. 

Because I am both Four Seasons gal and Sherman Oaks Urgent Care gal. 

I contain multitudes. And antibiotics. 

"For auld lang syne..."

This year, my dear friend Katie Spelman; my artistic soulmate, and my “whyfe”(as we call one another, with deep gratitude to my actual husband for generously lending me to her for this, and many other adventures)  decided to cross an entire ocean to spend New Year’s Eve in Scotland. 

Because of course we did. 

 

We’re doing Brigadoon in Los Angeles in four months, and nothing says “professional preparation” like international travel fueled by a deeply optimistic relationship with our credit cards. It made perfect sense. Why wouldn’t we research and celebrate in one ambitious, impractical, technically financially responsible-ish gesture?

 

So we bought the tickets. We booked the fancy three-course New Year’s Eve banquet and ceilidh at Òran Mór (a magnificent venue in the heart of Glasgow’s West End.) Once a church, now refashioned into a complex of performance spaces, it still has the church’s bones complete with soaring arches and epic acoustics, only now they’re in service of accessible theatre, whisky flights, ceilidh nights, and general joyful chaos. We treated ourselves to the deluxe experience of dinner, dancing, and live music carrying us all the way to 2 a.m., because nothing says “women-circling-40-with-careers” like signing up for communal cardio until dawn...

But what we got was much, much more.

Before the “bells” (at midnight) we were already drenched in sweat from a few hours of the kind of dancing that asks nothing of you except that you show up with a body, a loose grip on dignity, and a willingness to be spun by strangers. 

Ceilidh dancing is deceptively simple, but it is not a solo act. You must take someone’s hand. You must let yourself be pulled off balance and trust that you’ll be returned upright. 

 

Their devotion to togetherness (in general, but in this particular moment: at the turn of the year) runs counter to  the myth of self-sufficiency so many of us carry around like rocks in our pockets. experts say we are living in a loneliness epidemic, where social isolation isn’t just an emotional ache but a public-health concern. In that way, the ceilidh feels like an argument Scotland has been making for centuries, disguised as a party. And what is that argument you may ask? It is the Scots’ insistence on a life lived in community.

We danced with people whose names we immediately forgot and whose laughter we instantly trusted. We ate, we drank, we danced ourselves to the brink of collapse, and somewhere between the second Gay Gordon and the third refill of Prosecco, we learned each other’s stories. By midnight, no one was a stranger anymore. 

As the final moments of the year approached, I was surprised to see that the bar didn’t crowd, it completely closed. (?!!)
Just for fifteen minutes.
But shut down utterly like a bank on a national holiday. 
For the next part was as sacred as it was mundane: 
The entire room, without fuss or instruction, stood up and formed a massive circle. 
No one lingered at the edges. 
No couples peeled off to create private moments. 
No one was left alone at a table scrolling through their phone. 
Stranger with stranger, waitstaff with guest, we all joined hands; arms over-under in criss-crosses. 

Then the bells tolled, and the room began to sing.

Should auld acquaintance be forgot,


And never brought to mind?


Should auld acquaintance be forgot,


And auld lang syne!
 

It is the world’s song now, of course. But long before it belonged to us ALL? Burns’ words belonged to them. To Scotland. This is theirs. They sang their words. 

For auld lang syne, my dear,
 

For auld lang syne...

People closed their eyes. Some people shed a few tears. Some made exclamations of joy. Of relief. Of excitement. Wishes were made—and none of it theatrically, but with a kind of sober tenderness. We stood shoulder to shoulder  in that circle at Òran Mór, and sang. 

We’ll tak a cup o’ kindness yet,
     

For auld lang syne.

Then confetti as a piper marched across the circle to an eruption of cheers. 
There was no kissing at midnight, no grand speeches, no pledges of life overhaul, no champagne-splashed performative joy. Instead, there was something far more commanding.

There was just presence: bodies close enough to feel warmth, voices raised in unison, limbs entangled in dance with people we had met hours before. By the final chorus, Katie and I were simply two humans—momentarily extra-alive—caught in the tide of other humans doing the same brave thing: showing up for one another at the threshold of time.

This wasn’t just some kind of charming cultural ritual. This was antidote.  
Is it possible that it might be this simple: that which keeps us truly alive, that which actually saves us, is not achievement, wealth, or hyper-independence. It lies within these ordinary moments of mutual existence.

Here, as the year ends, the culture insists: not only are you not alone—you never have been, and shall never be, alone. You will ring life in together, shoulder to shoulder. You will sing the same words at the same time. You will mark the passage of time not as an individual triumph or failure, but as a communal fact.

Good years come. Bad years come. Terrible eras and joyous decades pass through us like weather systems. But according to the Scottish people (and their eternal song) all of it happens in community. There is no other honest way to endure.

Tonight, I felt it.

Dancing arm over arm with a sea of strangers and one soulmate friend. 
In a former church turned music hall. 
In a country that remembers—ritual by ritual—that survival is not a solo sport.

Happy New Year.

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.