I have been having a conversation with a very talented and once quite successful friend about his inclination to return to the musical theatre stage after an almost ten year hiatus in the 9-5 corporate world.  This inclination apparently resulted from a particularly potent burst of (of all things) shower-singing.  He claims (and I don’t believe him, but the story is better this way) that once he made the decision to give up the stage he essentially quit singing, cold-turkey, even in the shower (mm-hm).  But recently, his stage-diva heart broke through his well-crafted armor, and he broke down and sang his lungs out, and apparently something essential shifted inside and he suddenly and deeply and painfully missed it.

Since then, he has been timidly inquiring about the present state of the Chicago theatre scene.  His equity card is long defunct and he is carrying a ten year gap in his performance resume.  He asked if I thought he was nuts for considering a return to the stage at the old age of 35.

“Of course you’re nuts.  Don’t do it,” I told him.  ”Unless, of course, you can’t live without it.”

A day or so later, I found myself thinking about my own pronouncement.  Being the artistic director of a theatre company with very limited resources more often than not places the artist in the backseat to the detail manager.  Amongst cash-flow questions and budget resources, season planning, strategy retreats, rights acquisitions, casting, production staffing and networking, I find myself with very little time to remember why the hell I chose to do this . . . why I can’t live without it.

I can point to an onstage moment almost twenty years ago when my geeky teenage life was broken open by the first of a series of I-Can’t-Live-Without-This moments.  The moment occurred while singing the final bars of the “Moonfall (Reprise)” in the latter half of the Mystery of Edwin Drood.  Standing in the arms of a pretty teenage soprano, we blasted our untrained lungs into the darkness beyond edge of the stage.  And it was in that instant that I sensed for the first time, that perfect, widescreen silence between our final notes and the eruption of the applause.  And it was that tiny moment of pure, church-like silence that stopped me in my adolescent tracks.  To me, that silence was proof that something real and good had been exchanged between myself and the audience, and in that brief moment of silence, we had been somehow unified; sharing an experience that was full and warm and giving and true.  I felt generous and at home in that silence.  I felt I had given a small, deep gift, and that gift had been accepted with grace and humility, without the clutter of politics.  It was a powerful, deeply human moment of connection, and it spoke to something missing in my everyday encounters with everyday people.

Twenty years and two degrees later, that silence still profoundly motivates me.  And the perfect expression of that unifying silence alludes me, thank God, so I keep looking for it in the stories I choose to tell.  I tell stories in the theatre because the theatre allows a sonorous silence of unity to explode in a room full of disparate, noisy creatures.

It is difficult to talk about something that is without sound or color, something so rich and so personal.  But there it is.  It is why I cannot live without it.

So what I want to know is: Why can’t you live without it? I want to hear your story.