In the midst of life
We are…

We signed the divorce papers
And then out of the blue I was invited to two lovely events
And then a friend bared his soul on the stage and
Shared his pain and his demons and his struggles 
And why he is who he is 
And what made him who he is and
It made for extraordinary theatre
And the audience sat in his hard won radiance 

The light and the dark
Forever intertwined
Holding hands into eternity 
You can't have one
Without the other.

​Imagine getting to work two Broadway shows in one day
Imagine getting to see audience members experience their first Broadway show
Sometimes even their first live show
The thrill they get when they walk into the room
The excitement
The pure joy
The way it uplifts and
Inspires.

How I love watching the audience
Seeing their joy
Their excitement
Re-living a show I’ve seen dozens of times
For the first time through their eyes
The laughs, the gasps, the moments of stillness
The raucous applause
It’s the same thing eight times a week
And every night it’s a different show
The privilege
Of being in the room
Where it happens

​How do you get to Carnegie Hall?
Join a chorus and practice practice practice
And with a dainty string of lights
Upon your head
Become a fairy who declares
We must dance and
We must sing...

Oh yes, we must!

What a joy to be on stage again
What a joy to sing in the choir 
(After all, happiness truly is...) 
What a joy to play dress-ups 
What a joy to be a fairy 

We should all become fairies
And trip the light fantastic
And fall in love with music
And dance upon the wicked stage
And sing with all our collective might 
And delight
In our existence.

The singing fairies
Shall wear
Wreaths of light
In their hair!

It was a long day
By the time we got to the performing
I was bone tired exhausted
But hearing Daniel Rein's music ring out in the synagogue
To a full congregation
And seeing two women weeping
In the final moments of the Sacred Service
The way the audience was so still
You could feel it was something special
All those tricky rhythms and tempo changes and dynamic surges every other measure
Just the epic demanding sing of it
Totally worth it
Seeing Jez and Margo sitting in the same row as David and Katherine
Front and center
Found family with chosen family
Knowing Aaron was there too
Oh how good it was.

What a thrill
To stand in such a beautiful space
To be in awe of the architecture
The mosaics and the stained glass
To breathe in the history
And to have the privilege
To sing gorgeous music there. 

The athleticism
The exuberance
The sexiness
The skin tight costumes
On taut athletic sensuous bodies
The sparkles
The music
The choreography
So very Fosse
But remixed, turned on its head
Made relevant for 2023
The joyful fun quirky sexy angular fluid unexpected satisfying thrill of it
The unapologetic pride of it
The way the dancers look like they’re having the time of their lives
The way they dance full-out for a full two and a half hours
With a myriad of costume changes
While singing their hearts out
Grips your heart your throat your soul
How do you do that 8 times a week?!
They must take hour long ice baths
The physio bill must be astronomical
You think about the collective number of years
These athlete performer superstars
Have spent in class
Twenty performers all in their twenties, maybe thirties if they’re lucky
Probably dancing since before they could walk
In class since three or five or seven
Say twenty years on average
Four hundred collective years of skill
On rapturous virtuosic display
What a thrill to see it.

I haven’t been inside a Broadway theatre
Since they lifted the vaccine mandate almost a year ago
It felt strange being in a crowded room
Full of unmasked people
(I wore my mask)

But the play
Oh the play
So beautifully realized
So devastating in its poetry
So heart wrenching in its reality

The story of families
The stories of family
A red photo album
Containing the images and
Names of people
Remembered and forgotten

Vienna in 1900
The constant interweaving of
Christianity and Judaism
Art and music and literature and science
A star of David on the Christmas tree
Hiding the matzoh

Vienna in 1924
The simple choreography of a shawl
Depicting the passage of time
Already a war has deprived a generation of their youth
Already a war has made the youth restless for joy

Vienna in 1938
Brutality
You cannot watch
You cannot look away

Vienna in 1955
Remembering
Reckoning
The haunting ghosts
The luck of where you ended up
What you escape
What you survive
How to go on after all of that

The strangeness of hearing St Patrick’s Day bagpipes from 8th Avenue
The collective silence of a thousand people holding their breath
The quiet sobs as the lights go to black

The privilege of story telling
The privilege of making art
The necessity of story telling
The necessity of art.

You’ve seen RENT dozens of times
Can’t even count the number of times you’ve listened the cast recording on repeat
It’s been a while between visits
You go to see a high school production
To support one of your camp kidlets
And walking down the hallway to the auditorium
You’re moved by the messages scrawled in black sharpie
On the white plastic drapes adorning the walls
No day but today!
Today 4 You
ACT UP!
And the production itself is astonishing
A bare bones set
With a giant rectangular platform in the middle of the stage that with some ensemble muscle
Becomes a revolve
The vocals blow you away
You almost forget these are high schoolers
And then you catch a glint of silvery braces
And even though you can still recite every lyric from memory
They make you see the show in a whole new way
With their original line deliveries
And subtle contemporary hints
Like La Vie Boheme with Cups choreography
The girl playing Maureen (who already has a Broadway credit to her name)
Delivers the most epic Over the Moon you’ve ever seen
The energy of it
The vocal gymnastics of it
The comedic timing of it
The way the audience got to participate
Like we were in the lot
MOOOO!
And although you love their energy
And the spirit they bring to the show
It’s funny to side with Benny now
“A state of the art, digital, virtual interactive studio
I'll forego your rent
And on paper guarantee
That you can stay here for free”
Excuse me
Did Benny just offer these bohemian artists a rent free loft apartment in the Village with studio space for making art and high tech equipment?!
Sorry Maureen. The protest is off.
At the end of the show, the audience leapt to its feet
In the lobby, the buzzy energy of kids on a post-performance high
Proud parents and older siblings carrying bouquets of flowers
You hug your camper and tell her proud you are
What a joy it is to see her shine
And you head home
With a lightness in your step.