Last night I had the incredible experience of becoming reacquainted with my old high school choir teacher, Louise Carmon. She’s unique in my personal history in that she was one of my earliest influences as a young artist. (Other teachers when I was very young were Sister Trudy McSorely, my childhood drama teacher; Bob Soller, an early mentor of drama, singing and stage craft; Betty White, my first voice teacher and JoAnne Cooley, my first dance teacher). All of them, but especially Mrs. Carmon, let me know, sometimes directly and other times subtly, that they believed in me and my talent. This was at a time in my development when I was most vulnerable — a lonely, stubborn adolescent — a gay kid in a farm town — wanting desperately to be part of making theater and not knowing how — and these folks, as best as they could encouraged me to reach for my dreams.
Other teachers came, prestigious ones like Brent Wagner, Ira Siff, David Diamond … amazing artists that helped me along they way and inspired me: George Wolfe, Kathleen Marshall, Jack O’Brien, Nora Ephron, Frank McGuinness, Mike Nichols, Patrick Mason, Jerry Mitchell… and especially now Jonathan Sharp, Virginia Martha Stewart and Marc Cherry… but the early ones, the ones no one’s ever heard of still made the largest impact on who I am and who I became as an artist today…
Now, as an adult, I spend my life doing what I love … I make theater … with HA! I’m making a different kind of theater, internet/TV story-telling, but I’m sure everyone sees how steeped it is in my Broadway roots.
Now, for these next several weeks, I am spending creating a new musical out of whole cloth, SAMMY…
I got to tell my former teacher, Thank you. Thank you for my life. …What a lovely bookend moment. How often does that happen?
And, would you believe … I have a lingering feeling of being lonely or scared somehow, as much as I have gotten what I’ve hoped for from life… there is a sense I have not done enough or accomplished enough and now, I feel myself aging, I’m 41 … with accomplishments: Broadway, West End, TV, even with something like HA!, I see how I might have done better … or might do better next time given the chance … I guess I’ll never be satisfied…
