What a thrill
To see a bona fide
Broadway legend
Do their thing
With such joy
And passion
And commitment
To the words
And story-telling
And, of course, musicality.
To be able to watch it from home
And feel safe
And still be a part of it
I’ll drink to that. 🍸

The field covered in grey foggy mist 
And bounding through it
My black dog
Chasing a bright orange ball. 

Today I did something I haven’t done in the longest time
I checked out an actual physical book
From an actual in-person physical library
I walked into a row of books
Without knowing what I wanted
And let a book catch my eye
A bright yellow cover
Sometimes it is helpful to judge a book by - 

Index, A History of the: A Bookish Adventure
from Medieval Manuscripts to the Digital Age 
Peak delicious nerdery
How we organize and arrange
And find things
From searching scrolls
To the ease of Ctrl + F

But a physical book
The weight of it
The smell of it 
The joy of turning pages of it 
And finding it by chance. 

I feel disappointment so keenly
And like I’ve been robbed of the past several years
First it was cancer and then recovery
And just I was really starting to feel myself
Feel "normal" and able to do the thing
The pandemic hit
And it was all taken away again
And I don't feel safe to be in the room any more
Because the world is on fire
And the people in charge keep handing out matches and lighters and kerosene cocktails

And then I came back to do theatre in the woods
And oh my god it felt so good to have a script in my hands
To be sharing the love of musical theatre with a new generation of kids
And then I had to work with someone whose skills did not match what was on their resume
They could not do the thing
And it was disappointing and frustrating because it curtailed the process
And it made it harder for the kids
And it wasn't until he quit, mid-rehearsal, in front of a room full of campers and staff
That it was made better

But in between we sat on the stage at the veggie patch
And did accent work
We drilled melodies and harmonies and rhythms and words
We talked about the meaning and hidden meanings of the words
We talked about intention and making ourselves heard
We learnt choreography and blocking

And on the hottest day of the summer (so far) the show happened
And it was a relief and it was exciting and it was swelteringly hot
And I got to wave my arms in front of a band
Which was scary and challenging and unbelievably fun
And at the end the theatre crew descended onto the stage and started drilling and ripping and carrying bits of the set away to make space for the next show and
I felt intensely sad because I didn't want it to be over
But I helped pack the van with the music stands and chairs and the drum kit
And went up the hill to unpack the van with the music stands and chairs and the drum kit
And by the time I got back to the dining hall
The cast party was over and the kids had been taken to their bunks
And I didn't get to say good night or well done or I'm so proud of the work you've done and
I felt a rush of grief because it all had been taken away again
And all I could do was sob

And then two nights later
Reminiscing about eight years before
When organic-vegetarian-regularly-exercising-meditating-rarely-drinking-29 year old-me was told
You have leukemia.
You will be dead in a month if you don’t have treatment.
And then all that happened

And today, eight years later, I feel relief
I feel scared it will come back and it everything will be taken away again
I feel thankful I was where I was when it happened
The best place for the worst thing to happen
I feel joy that I can sing
I feel joy that I can play flute
And that I’m learning to play the piano
I feel joy that I can read music
I feel joy that I can read at all
That I can form words
That I can be back in the woods
Even when it is hard
Even when it is disappointing

​​I am here. 

​Remember when you fell in love in the woods
Before covid, before cancer, before London
A life time ago
And now you’re back
And you walk through camp at 12.30 in the morning
With a very tired puppy in tow
And despite the hour
Lights are on in some of the shops
Potters are potting
Print makers are pressing ink
A musician is playing a clarinet
And you wish you never had to leave
You want to be making art in the woods forever
Even when it’s hard
Even when you’re an all-you-can-eat meal for mosquitos
Even when it’s hot
Even when everyone is struggling because we’re all coming out of and still living through a global pandemic where half the population continues to insist it’s not real
Even though you have to apply sunscreen four times a day
Even though you perpetually feel sticky and like your hands are never clean
The trees with their leaves help soothe your soul
The moss continues to grow in tiny increments despite the drought
And you fall in love again
With music, with art, with telling stories
​With the bond of creativity

​Oh my god I have missed performing
The exhaustion of rehearsals
The learning of the notes
The drilling

Sitzprobe with the orchestra
Is there anything better than live music?
And singing in a room with 100 people?
What it took to get here this time
Two years of not being allowed to do this
Then rehearsals, all socially distanced and mandatory mask wearing and making sure every one is vaccinated
And a PCR test
And a rapid test
And emails back and forth and QR codes

And here we are at Carnegie Hall
And all the bells on earth shall ring!
And all the souls on earth shall sing!
Alleluia!

To sing Bernstein
The Chichester Psalms with its complex rhythms and time signatures and clashing harmonies and sumptuous beauty
And Bernstein's daughters are in the room!
Legacy, remembering
Passing the torch
Yisahak!

And Take 6 are extraordinary with a lightness of touch and a joy from over thirty years together
And Mikaela Bennet is stunning with that crystal soprano ringing across the hall
And when the Northwell Health Nurse Choir come onto the stage in their bright blue scrubs
My heart is in my throat
You will be found
Remembering all the nurses who looked after me seven years ago
Brought me lunch on a decorated tray with candy because they knew
I was sad I was missing out on Halloween
Thinking about what these smiling lovely people have been through in the past two years

Hark the herald angels SING!
Bless Harold
And feel so thankful that you are here.
Amen.

To be back in a real live
Honest to god theatre
With ushers
And cramped seating
And toilet lines (not bad before the show)
Show proof of vaccination and ID
Check bags
Walk through a metal detector
Finally show your ticket
Photo of the playbill and the curtain
#InTheRoomWhereItHappens

Somewhere behind the curtain
Someone has called places
(Unheard on this side)
And the lights dim
And the curtain rises
And there's a stage and a man
And the depth of it
The physical realness of it
The lights
The hazer
The place where 1 + 1 = 3
And I love thinking about all the hands that made this moment happen
You look at the set and the lights and the costumes
And you hear the words breathed into life by the actors
The way they move across the stage
Will I ever tire of watching excellent actors do what they do best?
The comedy and the drama of it
The elemental nature of it
Watching someone breathe
Watching someone eat
Watching people spar and play
The moments of surprise
The knowing winks
You know that I know that we know that this is play

To see a Black man on a Broadway stage
Say the words
"Stop killing us. Clean your house."
In a play directed by a Black woman
Written by a Black woman
In a theatre named for a Black male playwright
That hasn't seen a production written or directed by a single person of color since it was named for him 
You know that I know that we know that this is not just a play

A phone rings
And the person actually says out loud
"I'm sorry"
Who even has their phone on ringer any more?
The actors don't miss a beat

More than once I realize I'm holding my breath
A glorious set reveal
I love it when a set surprises us
It's so satisfying, so thrilling
So theatrical

To be back
To watch stories 
To tell stories 
​To reflect on our past, our present
To imagine where we could be

The last time I was at
The Majestic on Broadway
Was 2008
A lifetime and a half ago
Pre- covid, cancer, Fort Collins, Aaron, London, smart phones, and walking the camino
Still Kris

Our first time in NYC
We floated into the city
Literally and metaphorically
A huge storm had hit and
The water was lapping at the bottom of the taxi from the airport
I felt from the first moment I was home

It was still the time when hotels had maps of the city
On tear-away pads in the lobby
And the receptionist/concierge would circle the hotel
And the landmarks and the theatres
And tell you which subways to take

I think every place we stayed in over two years
Was shut down
For violating codes of various sorts
Relics like the paper maps
Replaced by smart phones and
Boutique hotels and air bnb’s with wifi

Back then
Phantom felt like a relic
Tired, in need of refreshing
I, rather sacrilegiously, thought it needed new orchestrations
Something to bring it past 1988
I didn’t mean slashing it to 12 players

Later, still The Before Times
I preferred Phantom in London
Where it felt grander
More opulent
​
Tonight I’m back at the Majestic
With my friend Paula
(post cancer, pre- covid times)
The theatre has been dark for over 500 days
The longest Broadway has been dark in history

I’ve already worked Springsteen
Right across the street
The first night I handed out playbills in the lobby
I hadn’t been in a room with so many people in over a year
It was overwhelming
The sound of that many people
The look of joy on the faces of the audiences
As they stepped inside a theatre for the first time
Vaxxed and unmasked (the rules were different then)
All that has happened in between

To be back in the theatre
As an audience member
Surrounded by people
(Masked and vaxxed - the rules have changed again)
The roar of appreciation when Sammi Cannold
Stepped out onto the stage
The delight of a surprise Josh Groban
Singing “Could We Start Again, Please”
Could we?

I’ve spent the past year and a half
(And longer)
Championing theatre on screen
Here we were
A live in-person audience
To watch theatre on a screen
A new documentary
The Show Must Go On
Joined by people watching from home
On six different continents

The film itself was moving, beautiful, inspiring
The crazy bravery of all those people traveling to South Korea at the beginning of the pandemic
For Theatre. For Art. For Profit. For Story-Telling
Because what else is there to do?
(I want a documentary about all the artists who streamed theatre during the pandemic
Broadway and the West End may have been dark
But theatre didn’t stop
It just shifted form)

Seeing the process
Actors getting sweaty, doing their drills
The hundreds of hands behind the scenes
Sewing costumes
Rigging sets
Spraying and wiping every surface and even the air with disinfectant
I'm not a Cats fan, but even goddamn “Memory” had me crying
The Korean culture of acting for the whole and not the individual
A strange concept in the land of the free and the home of the brave
That it was all British and American musicals that stayed open (at least as depicted in the film)
The love of The Theatre.

A phone rings! We're truly back!
I get chills watching the audience on screen watching the actors on stage singing and dancing to the people in the seats
The roar of the crowd
The final credits. The curtain closing.

The curtain re-opens with a baby grand
And the candles from Phantom flickering all around
Kristen Blodgette at the keys
Sierra Boggess with mic in hand
Former Christine Daee
I don't know why I'm frightened
I know my way around here
(chuckle)
Adrienne Warren, Ariana DeBose, Ali Ewoldt, Shereen Pimentel
The chorus made of up cast members from
The Phantom of the Opera world tour
It’s as if we never said goodbye
Could we start again please
A truly beautiful arrangement
I don't want it to end
I want more

Outside, I check my phone
The world is dangerously rapidly warming
Covid is raging
What is the point of all this singing and dancing and pretending to be cats?!
It's all changing
It might not be here tomorrow
What would the ancient Greeks have made of our theatre?
Or our early ancestors beating their animal skin drums and dancing around the campfires telling stories of their ancestors?

The show must go on.

Today is seven years since I was diagnosed with
Acute myeloid leukemia
It feels like much longer

It was a lifetime ago
In New Milford Hospital
When the emergency room doctor looked at me said
You’re going to start to hear the word “cancer”
And I think I laughed at him
And I think I said out loud
“You have the wrong patient
I’m a non-smoking organic eating vegetarian who exercises and meditates
*I* don’t have cancer”

I did have cancer
A blood cancer that more commonly affects men in their sixties
And has a survival rate beyond 5 years of about 25%
I was 29. I was supposed to be working at camp
Vocal directing RENT
No day but today…
Healthy organic me was like
“I don’t want chemo, that’s toxic”
And the oncologist looked me in the eye and said
“You’ll be dead in a month”

So I did the chemo
And the radiation
And they wiped my immune system
And injected my sister’s stem cells into my port
And I spent a year fetal on the couch
And I wasn’t allowed take-out
And I wasn’t allowed to ride the subway
And I wasn’t allowed to go to the theatre
And my fingernails fell off one by one
And I lost all my hair (though I actually quite liked that part)
And my teeth went to shit
And I went into menopause
And I felt fury and rage and despair
And I felt love from all around the world

And somehow, somewhere
Life stopped being appointments
And blood work and blood counts
And wondering when I was going to feel “normal” again
It became about living in New York (and then New Jersey)
I ran a bit
5 marathons and 3 half-marathons (but who's counting?!) 
We visited Maine, California, and North Carolina
Honeymooned in Guana
I worked on Broadway
Wrote and performed a cabaret
Joined a chorus
(happiness is singing in the choir)
Performed at Carnegie Hall, Alice Tully Hall, and Battery Park
Played a citizen in Alita
I even played a fake patient and
Built the Filmed Live Musicals database

Covid was triggering
I felt like I’d already done it
The isolation, careful hand washing, fear of infection
The random unexplainable symptoms
Reading accounts of covid was like reading through my recovery
Exhausting

Seven years on I still deal with side effects
Every headache that lasts a little too long
Every bout of fatigue
Every time something is a little off
The fear that... 
But I’m ok

I get to be with Aaron
We bought a house
We got a puppy -
Voltaire
Even when he’s literally chewing the walls or waking up at 5am and refusing to settle even when he’s fed and watered and pooped in all the senses of the word
He’s truly the best of all possible puppies
And Aaron is the best of all possible humans 
Kind and patient and loving 

I’m singing
I’m dancing
I'm writing
I’m learning to play piano
I'm learning to drive! On the right side of the road! 
I'm exercising 
I'm teaching 
​I'm remembering to breathe
I’m here.

I'm tired
I'm overwhelmed by the fuckery
I'm tired of the othering and excluding and denying
I'm tired of American exceptionalism and America being the best at being the worst
Of broken bureaucracy and horrendous healthcare and guns and a never ending stream of violence
I'm tired of the pandemic
I want to go back to before
I want everything to change yesterday
I never want to deal with NJ Transit again
I want better options
I love our quiet town
I hate that it's bound by freeway and surrounded by ugly industry and full of literal trash that blows into our yard and is an eyesore and a risk for our dog
I'm tired of throw away culture
I'm tired of social media
I hate that the industry I worked so hard for
Dreamt so long about
Is toxic and vile and truly only accessible to the wealthy few
I'm tired of being scared I'm going to relapse
I'm tired of being afraid I'll end up back in hospital and this time alone
I'm tired of selfish fuckery and half the country ignoring, refusing to believe in, or understand science
I'm tired of people who don't wear masks or don't wear them properly
I'm tired of ignorance
I'm tired of bigotry and misogyny and the patriarchy
I'm tired of think pieces and opinion pieces and influencers
I'm tired of Hollywood
I'm tired of mirage and smoke and mirrors and pretense and illusion
I'm tired of celebrity
I'm tired of kindness being the exception
I'm tired of what is right being what is hard
I'm tired of banging my head against the wall because it doesn't have to be this way