Congo Square, Lookingglass and The Who have a chat.

Shows are living breathing organisms. I like imagining what they’d say to each other.

The terrific Willie "Prince Roc" Round

Pretend you’re at a party, expect instead of people, you’re socializing with shows. Hamilton’s over in the corner having a drink with 1776, Time of Your Life is rubbing elbows with Clyde’s and a bunch of Oklahomas are having a heated chat around the backyard solo stove. Me? I’m in a huddle with Congo Square’s What To Send Up When It Goes Down, Lookingglass’ Her Honor Jane Byrne and The Who’s 2022 Who Hits Back tour.

Like people, shows have lives. They are born (and reborn), they grow up (some aging more gracefully than others) and they exist in community with each other. When I meet them, I like to make sure I’ve introduced them to each other, and then lay back and see how the conversation unfolds.

I recently went to Lookingglass Theatre to see Congo Square’s What To Send Up When It Goes Down. I’m not the first to describe Aleshea Harris’s play as brilliant, challenging, engaging and humbling, and as directed by Daniel Bryant and my friend Ericka Ratcliff was deeply stirring.

What To Send Up boldly and appropriately declared to its audience, and itself, that it was created with Black people in mind. It made it clear that while my straight white American male self was absolutely welcome, the show had some uncompromising demands – to listen actively; when spoken to, to speak; and throughout, to be humble, respectful, and willing to consider that however highly I may regard my progressive mindset and actions, as a non-Black and privileged American I am incapable of understanding the fear, sadness and rage of Black people living around and dying at the hands of police.

Period, Amen, and I’m good with that. Empathy, one of my strong suits, is of limited value when the experiences depicted before me are by definition out of my reach and comprehension. Sure, courtesy of my last name and some Catholic school bullies, I’ve experienced some violent and scary anti-Semitism. But there was always escape, and while I can certainly resent authority and be angry at institutions, I’ve also been able to turn to them for assistance. I’ve never had to genuinely fear them, at least where my personal safety is concerned. My biggest anxiety when I see a cop approach is a speeding ticket.

What To Send Up makes damn sure I acknowledge that privilege to myself, the cast and the audience. It implores me to bear witness to the fear, loss and rage that has been passed down and accumulated in the Black bodies with whom I shared the Lookingglass Theatre space and share the world.

I don’t just admire, I’m in awe of the extraordinary way What To Send Up refused to make me feel good about myself simply for having bought a ticket and shown up. It’s a rare and extraordinary accomplishment to create a ritual experience that makes me feel better (as in exposed, enriched and enlightened) by inviting me to safely feel worse. Participating in the rituals of What To Send Up When It Goes Down was both arduously and exquisitely beautiful, something that both dismantled and rewarded me, a show for which I am grateful and one which I will processing for a long time.

About a year earlier, in the same theater space, I saw Her Honor Jane Byrne, a brilliant piece by my dear pal J. Nicole Brooks, a uniquely voiced writer whose plays are often fantasias that use real world events, both personal and historical, as launching pads for surreally transcendent piece of theater.

Her Honor Jane Byrne, for example, recalls the time when Chicago’s first (and up until Lori Lightfoot only) female mayor moved into Chicago’s Cabrini Green projects, amid controversy and speculation that has not entirely ended even today. A lot happens in Her Honor Jane Byrne, more than I can convey here, but one moment in particular thunderbolted into my memory while I watched What To Send Up.

I’d never seen Willie “Prince Roc” Round perform before Her Honor and thanks to the pandemic hadn’t seen him since, so I was thrilled to see him in the cast of What To Send Up. His commanding presence in Her Honor as a character simply and universally named Kid had already worked its way into my core when, with only a few gut-wrenching seconds of dread preceding it, Kid is shockingly gunned down.

A year later, in the same space, here he is again, playing another young black man being murdered on stage, but this time I am watching his character die not instantaneously but gradually, over many minutes. Instead of a body falling to the ground at the deafening pop of a stage prop gun, now we experience a death surreally unfolding as, throughout the evening, it is woven through the fabric of stories of other Black lives demeaned and ended, his end-of-existence thoughts raining on the audience as his life bleeds away. The time and space given this specific individual death embodies countless lost lives and an entire People’s worth of hurt, loss and confusion, ultimately becoming the gravity drawing all the characters, and I imagine the actors enlivening them, together in a moment of howling rage.

Obliterated by how the extraordinary sequence in What To Send Up related to the devastating moment in Her Honor Jane Byrne and knocked out by how Willie played these moments, I was thrilled to introduce them to each other. How excited they would be to meet!

The reality was that they needed no introduction. They have known each other for a very, very long time.

A quick post-script, if you’ll allow.

Seeing What To Send Up was the first of two shows I saw that night. For months, I’d had a ticket to The Who’s Hits Back tour. Married with two stepkids, for me nights out are relatively rare, and so when I realized that my only chance to see What To Send Up would be the same night I was likely to see The Who for the last time, I decided to see the play first and then head over to the United Center and catch whatever songs the band had yet to play.

It felt like the right way to prioritize the performances. Few things scream out white privilege like “I’ve got a ticket to see The Who perform live with a symphony orchestra.” So, small as the gesture is in the grand scheme of things, it felt meaningful to me.

A few years ago, The Who recorded a new track called “Be Lucky,” a title lead singer Roger Daltrey uses as a bit of a mantra. After The Who closed the show with a rousing “Baba O’Riley” and the band linked arms to say goodnight to a rapturous crowd, Daltrey exhorted the crowd “be lucky!”

If you’re at a Who show, lucky is something you likely already are and can afford to feel, in ways that many of the characters in What To Send Up and Her Honor Jane Byrne.

In my mind, I’ve introduced The Who’s concert to these two breathtaking pieces of Chicago theater. They had not previously met. Wisely, The Who are listening quietly.

The Art of Leadership

TL/DR: Get politicians to talk about the arts, and for better and worse, they'll tell you more about themselves than they might realize. Two cases in point (and studies in contrast): the President of the United States and the newly inaugurated Mayor of Chicago.

Welcome to City Hall, Lori Lightfoot.

I’ve had a few opportunities to talk with our new Mayor, and I'm impressed by her intelligence, wit, empathy and spine.

All these qualities and then some were on display throughout a tough campaign. All have been evident since. And they all shine brightly when our new Mayor talks about the arts.

Several times I’ve heard Mayor Lightfoot recount her how the arts make all of our lives (and have certainly made hers) exponentially more beautiful, by showing us the world in ways we would likely never have otherwise experienced. And she readily acknowledges that the way a city embraces the arts is a measure of its soul.

I deeply appreciate that, and it had a lot to do with why I voted for her.

Yes, I know. Lori Lightfoot's feelings about the arts are not what won her the election. Admirable as a candidate's position on arts policy may be, it's never going to be the defining issue that gets them elected to any office, much less Mayor of Chicago.

But if you want keen and unexpected insights into how candidates view the job they seek, the world they inhabit, the government they intend to lead and the people they aspire to serve, then you would be well-advised to listen to them talk about the arts.

Take President Trump.

Money is my least favorite way to talk about the arts, but it’s the President’s favorite way to talk about everything. So you'd think the Dealmaker-in-Chief would find these facts compelling:

• The arts account for 4.2% of America’s GDP.

• They generate $763 billion in economic activity.

• They account for nearly 5 million jobs.

• Those nearly 5 million jobs generate $370 billion in pay.

• Arts advocates are requesting $167.5 million of taxpayer dollars for the National Endowment for the Arts (which is about half of Bryce Harper’s contract and just over a third of Mike Trout’s). The arts generate approximately $9 billion in federal tax revenue that go straight back to the government (and that doesn’t include the billions more tax dollars generated for state and local governments). $167.5 million out, $9 billion in. That’s an almost 54-1 return on investment.

• The arts export $20 billion more than they import. The President’s misunderstandings of trade deficits aside, you’d think he’d be all over an industry that pulls that off year after year.

And yet.

For the third year in a row, a President who prides himself on his business acumen and brags incessantly about his ability to know a great deal when he sees one has called not for the zeroing out of the budgets for National Endowment for the Arts (and the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Corporation for Public Broadcast, Museum and Library Services and all arts and culture related programs and agencies), but for their complete elimination.

Forget for a moment that these agencies benefit our country socially, culturally, educationally and medically. They are also clear economic winners, with a profound return on investment. And the President of the United States, whether out of ignorance or malice, wants them gone. It’s for moments like these that Hans Christian Anderson wrote “The Emperor’s New Clothes.”

Now, contrast this with Lori Lightfoot.

At the Mayoral Arts Forum hosted by Arts Alliance Illinois, our new Mayor certainly had key facts at her disposal (for example, that the arts have a $2.25 billion-dollar annual impact just on Chicago’s Loop). She also embraced broad social perspectives about the arts, and opined that Chicago’s greatness will be measured in part by how welcoming and livable it is for artists. And, buttoning her remarks with both savvy and sensittivity, she quoted Steppenwolf Theatre’s former artistic director, the late great Martha Lavey:

“We are fortunate to live in a city that recognizes that artists, and the institutions that support their work, are essential to the quality of life in the city, and to its future. Chicago is a city that recognizes the great human need for beauty, for story, for the respite that the arts provide to engage our imagination. The arts permit us to shift our frame of reference, to see the world through the eyes of another, to see and hear the world anew.”

That same Martha Lavey quote headlines Lightfoot’s “Advancing Arts & Culture” policy statement, something none other Mayoral candidate created, in which the soon-to-be-Mayor declared her intention to:

• Prioritize funding for the Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events for increased equitable grantmaking and microfinancing to individual artists, arts organizations and arts corridors.

• Audit and streamline city licensing and permitting regulations, including the Public Performance and Amusement license.

• Develop an Artist-in-Residence program to build job opportunities for artists and mentorship opportunities for young people.

• Bring together ideas and resources from the city, philanthropy, culture and the arts to develop policies and strategies to keep artists living and working in Chicago.

• Build investment in Chicago’s public art program by overhauling the Percent for Art ordinance.

• Enhance the voices of socially-active artists to encourage civic engagement and support developing creative conversations and solutions to our city’s biggest challenges.

Mayor-Elect Lightfoot speaks as someone who sees the arts as a unique way to embrace the most essential part of our humanity.

She acts as someone who sees them as a force through which we can shape and improve the way we talk with and learn from each other.

And she appears to think in a way that suggest that “Yes And” actually means something to her.

Time will tell.

But for now, I'm gratified that the arts played a pivotal role in revealing not just what Lori Lightfoot wants to do for our city, but how and why she plans to do it.

And I'm optimistic that our new Mayor will approach arts policy, and indeed all policy, with the kind of creative, improvisational and ensemble mindsets characteristic of the arts in Chicago.

The Year of Chicago Theatre starts January 1. Buckle up, world.

The best stories, told by the best storytellers to the best storylisteners in America. Welcome to 2019, The Year of Chicago Theater.

When I started writing this, I was 38,000 feet above the Labrador Sea, 3 ½ hours from coming home after another wonderful, thought-provoking, challenging and gratifying week in London. Now I'm home, and it's high time to share some of the exciting stuff I saw and did there.

I had a lot on my plate that week, including meetings with the National Theatre, Digital Theatre, Channel 4 and two at the BBC, not to mention six shows, including the NTLive transmission of "Antony & Cleopatra."

The centerpiece of the trip, however, was an event produced by CHOOSE CHICAGO to promote the city’s “2019: The Year of Chicago Theatre” campaign. In the illustrious company of LEAGUE OF CHICAGO THEATER’S EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR DEB CLAPP, DEPT. OF CULTURAL AFFAIRS AND SPECIAL EVENTS COMMISSIONER MARK KELLY, and BROADWAY IN CHICAGO PRESIDENT LOU RAIZIN, we were given a wonderful platform to speak to an assemblage of London’s arts, cultural and tourism journalists about all the things that make Chicago theater unique and special, and why it’s worthy of being a singular reason to plan a trip to Chicago. Or America, for that matter.

To help add some razzle dazzle to the event, HMS produced a high-energy sizzle reel featuring Chicago’s diverse and thrilling theater scene (with some important nods to dance and opera as well). My HMS colleague KRISTIN KLINGER and I produced the piece, which she edited together in typically fabulous fashion (you can watch it by clicking HERE).

Deb suggested I join her on stage to use the various perspectives I have as artist, producer and advocate, and articulate what I thought was most special about Chicago theater, right after she mentioned the number of internationally acclaimed artists who still consider their Chicago ensemble companies to be their creative homes. Because my remarks garnered some unexpected applause from the crowd, I thought I’d share them with you:

“As an individual artist, as the co-owner of HMS Media, a 20-time Emmy-winning media production company for the arts; as an artistic associate of the Tony Award-winning Lookingglass Theatre Company; and as a board member and arts advocate with Arts Alliance Illinois, I get to observe Chicago theater (and national and international theater as well) from a variety of perspectives. And I can tell you the reason these theater artists come home to their Chicago companies to work with their friends and peers… and the reasons audiences love the theater that is created as a result… and the reason that if you came to see shows in our town you’d feel so welcome and so at home, is because:

Simply put, Chicago artists and audiences create stories that, however dramatic the storytelling or heightened the style, feel real.They feel real to tell and they feel real to take in. That happens because we are bound and inspired by the ethics of ensemble and improvisation, philosophies that keep us rooted to each other and to our audiences.

If you came to our town and saw some shows, you’d feel it too. You’d quickly and clearly understand why, whether the theater you’re in seats 70 or 700, 20 or 2000, you can afford to have the highest expectations of the coming experience.

Chicago loves its teams and its bands. Chicago theater, in the way we create and maintain ensemble companies, reflects that. We like to make work in collectives, both formal and informal. There’s not a lot of room “every person for themselves” where we work. What we do is in the service of creating something together that we could never envision much less create alone.

And we do this for audiences that don’t suffer fools gladly and are not easily impressed, which is wonderful for us. Because, when we work honestly, these audiences stick with us, season after season. They demand that we take risks and break conventions.

And that’s what Chicago theater people love to do. We sometimes fail, we often succeed, and we don’t get too up or down when we do either. We just… work.

Ensemble and improv ethics mean that we’ll never become a collection of theme park rides based on pop culture. Not that those can’t be fun and great – they can be a blast. But our environment is different. It invites and allows us to dive deeper, and so deeper we dive. We aim for that which feels real and true. In that way we are part of the city’s lifestyle and lifeblood. And that’s why making and seeing theater in Chicago is so exciting, fulfilling, challenging, transformational and tasty.”

Later, after Deb offered sneak peaks at the upcoming Chicago theater season, I added:

“Call it coincidence or a nexus of creative energies, but as the Year of Chicago Theater approaches, HMS has been approached by leading distributors in the worlds of broadcast, digital and HD Cinecast to create a wide array of original captures and content, all centered on the unique ensemble style, process and results through which so much Chicago theater is created and through which so many individual artists thrive.

This is an era where we all can see the damage done when the stage, be it theatrical, corporate or political, is ceded to bad storytellers telling bad stories badly. So the recognition that these distributors, underwriters and sponsors demonstrate the appetite, the thrill and the need for the antidote to bad storytelling in all of its forms that Chicago theater. It is an acknowledgement that Chicago Theater will thrill audiences not just in our city but across the country and the world.

That’s why I live, work and collaborate in Chicago, as a media producer, as a theater artist, as an advocate human being hungry to participate in transcendent work. To see and hear the best stories, to work with the best storytellers, and take in those stories in the company of the best story listeners in America.”

The Year of Chicago Theatre begins January 1.

Buckle up, world.

We’re All In This Together

There's no way out but through, and no better way through than a theater.

A couple of years ago, coming home from visiting my mom when she was having a few health issues (from which she recovered, thankfully), I went straight from the airport to Steppenwolf to see Visiting Edna, a play about… a guy in his early 50’s going to visit his mother who was having some health issues.

That might seem to some to a little counterintuitive. At a moment like that, wouldn't a little escapism be in order? But as Steppenwolf artistic director Anna Shapiro said to me when I saw her in the lobby and told her where I'd just been and what I was doing, “This is the perfect show for you to see tonight."

She was right, of course. Seeing that story unfold live on stage in front of me in the company of a few hundred other people with parents and kids (and the accompanying joys and stresses) reminded me that I couldn’t possibly be the only one going through something like this. These are universal experiences -- why else would people write, present and attend plays about them?

And as our world and lives keep changing, our need for stories both timeless and timely is ongoing and growing. When so many in power are either telling bad stories badly or neglecting to tell stories at all, that need is increasingly urgent.

Two cases in point.

A few weeks back, just after the massacre at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh, I went to Victory Gardens to see Indecent, which deals with anti-Semitism, the holocaust and the way fearful and authoritarian regimes use all the means at their disposal to crush anything they perceive to be different, disruptive or disorderly. Talk about timeless and timely.

With so many friends involved in creating, performing and producing Indecent, I’d have gone no matter what. But to see this show, at this time, was, yes, shattering, but also deeply encouraging and empowering. Indecent wasn’t written this year, nor was it about the attack on Tree of Life. But it feels like it could have been.

As I watched the story unfold in ways that resonate with our past and present all too recognizably, Indecent took my breath away. And then, like most good stories, it gave it back. And so I breathed it in, deeply, first in communion with the audience and then in the lobby during conversations, tears and hugs with the cast. In what other setting do you get to do that?

The next night I went to Rivendell’s world premiere staging of Scientific Method. It’s a compelling and wonderfully acted story about people researching cures for cancer, and how sexism, racism and privilege rear their ugly heads even (perhaps especially) among those with seemingly lofty goals within seemingly lofty institutions.

I’m certain I'd have found myself both entertained and riled up no matter when I’d seen it, but on the heels of the Kavanaugh hearings, and immersed as we are in the promise and rage of the much-needed #MeToo movement, to watch a privileged white man lord his feelings of entitlement over others less white, less male and, to his way of thinking, less deserving, all while in the intimate setting of a great Chicago storefront theater like Rivendell… well, my blood ran even hotter, my heart pounded that much more powerfully and my mind raced that much faster. Here was the perfect way to engage, while also feeling connected to others, immersed in the issues and comforted by community.

I love that feeling.

Exhilarated once more by our amazing regional theater artists, I walked out into the crisp Chicago night provoked, challenged and inspired. And, most of all and once again, I felt less alone.

Not bad for a couple of evening’s entertainment, right?

So much better than running away from the world it is to run right into it, head first into ideas, situations, dreams, nightmares and hopes that excite us, frustrate it, thrill us, and, whether we want to celebrate the world or change it, make us glad to be alive.

If there’s no way out but through – and, as all the great stories tell us, there really isn’t – then there’s no better place to go through, or to, than a theater.

Just WRITE it.

Facing down writer's block and getting back to work.

Writer’s Block sucks, and it comes in many shapes and forms.

For me, there are two. There’s the version where, telling myself I can’t write, I don’t. And there’s the one where I write but don’t show anyone.

When this happens, what I think I’m doing is wrestling with questions like, “Who’s going to read this? Who’s ever going to perform it? What difference will it make? Who cares?”

That’s a hard spot for anyone trying to be creative, not just because it stops us from making work, but also because it's based on a false premise. It isn’t about whether or not others will care, nor is it about what they will think. It's about the primal fear of being exposed, and living with the embarrassment.

When I can parse the difference, I go from loathing myself to forgiving myself, which makes it possible for me to get back to work. That's when I write, feel and behave more interestingly, creatively and thoughtfully.

Getting there is hard, but recently I've been thinking that mayb the best way is get myself in front of as much genuinely and generously confessional work as possible, work that is more about “look at us” than it is “look at me."

So curating a “Look At Us” festival is tricky. But a few weeks ago, over the course of five amazing days, I saw three deeply personal, confessional adventures in “Look At Us” that rocked my world.

It began on a Tuesday at the La Jolla Playhouse with Hundred Days, a show I would have missed were it not for Jessie Mueller's exhortations to get myself to California and see this show as soon as I could (how she knew I needed to see this show, I’ll never know, but I think that’s part of what makes Jessie Jessie).

Hundred Days is a hybrid of a great alt-indie-rock show and The Moth, in which Abigail and Sean Bengson, through extraordinary stories and songs and backed by a dazzling band, tell the story of the three weeks it took them to meet, fall in love and get married. At first familiar and seemingly linear, it turns surprisingly intimate and then powerfully epic. Hundred Days, with both power and fragility, positively rocks.

Five days later, I was back home in Chicago at The Goodman, where I saw We’re Only Alive For a Short Amount of Time. Playwright, performer and songwriter David Cale, under the thoughtful direction of Bob Falls, puts his life on display in a way that is at first comforting; it suggests that this is going to be a relatively standard if also very artful confessional of what it means to become an artist, to come out, to discover one's purpose and passion.

But then it explodes with real-life horror that leaves its audiences' jaws firmly dropped. That Cale's story is true makes it all the more shocking, but he shares in with tender care, and as I recognized that he and Bob created something that could reasonably have been punishing to watch and instead fashioned a gentle and even loving experience, I was swept into sharing Cale's journey of acceptance and forgiveness.

In between those shows, I attended a book release event for Jill Soloway’s new memoir She Wants It, an evening that included vitally memorable teamwork and accompaniment from Jill’s sister Faith, their mom Elaine (who had thoughtfully managed to get me a last minute ticket), and their two guests, the intersex activist, writer and performer Pidgeon Pagonis and the sensational standup Hannah Gadsby (who’s Netflix special Nanette is itself an unforgettable example of a life put willingly and artfully on display). The event’s combination of stand-up, improv, debate, reading and personal confessional was hilarious, poignant, furious and inspiring.

Jill prefaced reading a passage from the book by confessing that no matter how many great things have been happening to them over these last several years (creating, writing and producing Transparent, receiving invitations to The White House, writing the book and so on), they still have to hear and confront that voice that rears its head when it's time sit down to write, that voice that screams the same familiar refrain, “Who cares? Who will read this? Who do you think you are?”

Jill's not the first person to share that anxiety. But because I needed to hear it at the exact moment, I felt profound gratitude that they did. If Jill Freaking Soloway can publicly wrestle fears of exposure in this moment of celebration and vulnerability, then maybe I can get off my ass and get to work.

Because the truth is that all of us have an epic story. All of us have a story asking to be told in some way. Maybe it’s something that belongs on a stage or a screen, or maybe it's something that want or need to share with our partner, a friend, or the family dog. It doesn’t matter. We all have a story, and life gets better when we find someone to tell it to, even if it’s just ourselves.

A few years ago I was strolling through the modern wing of the Art Institute with my dear pal Kristen Brogden, and I joked, “Welcome to the ‘I Coulda Done That’ section of the museum.” (How many times have we heard that about any kind of modern art – “A plain white canvass with a red dot? I coulda done that.”)

“Yeah, you coulda,” Kristen replied. “But you didn’t.”

Time to get back to work.

Canned

Roseanne Will Be Fine. What About Everyone Else?

ABC cancelled Roseanne for its star/creator’s racist taunts, for which she’s yet to genuinely apologize but "deeply regrets," for, among other reasons, the damage she's done to the careers of her co-workers. All well and good, Ms. Barr, but the damage is done, and no amount of Ambien (which she says influenced her middle-of-the-night tweetstorm) can account for your appallingly casual display of racism and ignorance.

There are others who are trying to equate Barr’s tweet with a certain vulgarity thrown at Ivanka Trump by comedian Samantha Bee, suggesting that if Barr should lose her show over saying something racist that disparages entire people, Bee should lose hers for dropping a c-bomb on one particular very rich and public figure. Not a chance. If Bee screwed up, it was not because she made a scathing indictment of the President's daughter, it was because for a moment she crossed a line she almost always walks brilliantly, when she let anger and outrage overtake the content and comedy. Almost anyone can drop a c-bomb; few can conceive and deliver satire like Bee, Stephen Colbert and John Oliver. So, no, not Bee's finest moment and, yes, one worth apologizing for (which she has, unlike Barr, who simply expresses "regrets").

I like to think Bee's as upset with herself for undermining her own valid point as she is anything else. Beyond that, her offense was throwing a nasty and vindictive insult at ine particular public figure; Barr’s, in demonstrating historical ignorance and jaw-dropping racism, was far worse and the far bigger offense. Bee displayed a momentary indiscretion, Barr a lifelong prejudice.

What truly frustrates me about the Bee story is that the furor over it has overshadowed a much bigger, relevant and important story.

Cancellation was a bold and appropriate move for ABC, but let’s not lose sight of who’s really getting hurt here. Like a lot of wealthy Americans who have discovered that money can’t buy you love but it can buy you an awful lot of choices and privileges, Roseanne Barr is going to do just fine, despite her heinous display of racism (and some might argue because of it).

But as Shonda Rhimes tweeted, "The terrible part is all of the talented innocent people who worked on that show now suffer because of this."

Yes, exactly. While it’s plausible to suggest that there are already book deals, speaking engagements, stand-up tours and Fox and Sinclair hosting opportunities on Barr’s desk, it’s a certainty that most of the talented innocent people to whom Rhimes refers who were depending on this show for their livelihood are now left wondering how they're now going to pay the bills.

Let’s not assume that any of the cast, except probably Barr herself, are in a position to never have to work for the rest of their lives. There are precious few actors who can afford not work for the rest of this year. But it certainly doesn't stop there. There’s the camera crew, and all the lighting and audio technicians. The set and costume designers. The editors and production assistants. The hair, make-up and wardrobe teams. The caterers, the studio staff, the interns. And on. And on. And on. People who have every right to believe that Rosanne Barr gives not one good damn about them.

Wasn’t Roseanne was supposed be about the forgotten men and women?

There are those who believe that people who chose to work on a show starring Roseanne Barr are getting what they deserve. That’s a nasty and dismissive swipe worthy of Barr herself, not to mention a certain Commander-In-Chief, people who know a thing or two about making horrendous personal and business decisions and leaving bodies in their wake. Such an assertion stems from the assumption that all of our concerns are cultural. Some are economic. Sometimes we just need the gig. And sometimes we think we're getting into one kind of situation and it turns into another. In any case, a lot of regular folks just got an undeserved kick in the teeth, courtesy of a clueless, bigoted, wealthy person. No discussion of ABC’s decision to cancel Roseanne, correct as it was, is complete without taking them into account.

Which is why there is a bigger point to be made here, and a larger conversation to be had. The Roseanne debacle is a perfect metaphor for so much of what ails our country right now. There is so much pain, inflicted on so many people, by a relative few with so much power and privilege. People whose sense of entitlement and lack of empathy lead them to behave with careless and callous disregard for the consequences of their actions. People for whom privilege is an opportunity to be indulgent instead of responsible, insulting instead of empathic, vindictive instead of compassionate. These are the people who talk about "winning," instead of being and the doing some genuine good. These are the people who crush the folks that Roseanne purported to represent, the folks whose stories deserve to be told and need to be heard.

Who's treating them like "deplorables" now?

If only ABC could pull a House of Cards and write Barr's character off the show, and then put more thoughtful stories in the hands of the actors who would have remained, chief among them the incomparable Laurie Metcalf. Why not a new show with her at the center of it? Seriously, instead of Roseanne, why not Jackie?

How fascinating it would be to watch one of the world's greatest actors embody the stories that Roseanne was never fully equipped to tell in the first place, and how great it would be as a result all of those now-unemployed people got their jobs back.

Now that’s a story I’d like to see.

Reading Rick & Roger, Remembering Sean & Guy and Losing Rachel

A book arrives at just the right moment to help process life, love and loss

Perhaps because I’ve lost so many friends in the theater and dance worlds over these last few years, it took me longer than I would have expected to sit down to read Finding Roger, my friend Rick Elice’s heartfelt, heartbreaking and yet still profoundly ecstatic remembrances of his husband, soul mate and guiding light, the transcendent actor, author, director and deeply human being, Roger Rees.

It’s been almost three years since Roger passed, and just over ten since I met Rick. I’ve loved each of the precious few moments I’ve spent with both. There haven’t been nearly enough, but they’ve all been memorable and inspiring, always life-affirming, and sometimes life-changing.

The room and whatever we were doing in it was simply more interesting and beautiful around Roger. The same is true of Rick, and perhaps even more so, given the way we've watched him come to terms with losing the love of his life, and figure out how to move, in the words of Guy Adkins, another artist and friend lost far too early, “onward, forward and up.” Rick has done so by embracing the kind of messy beauty that characterizes our bravest and most distinguished deep dives into the human heart and soul.

Actually, it’s inaccurate to say I’ve “watched” Rick. I’ve read him. Finding Roger is Rick’s luminous collection of notes, blogs and remembrances of their relationships. It's one of the truly great love stories in the history of love stories.

Finding Roger was published many months ago. I’ve been meaning to read it since the day it came out. On the one hand I feel like a bad friend for taking until nearly June to open its cover. On the other, I feel like I’m reading it at exactly the right time.

The three of them – Rick, Roger and Rickenroger, for their union was a spiritual being of its own – were informed by a kind of courage that, until recently, I wasn’t sure I was capable of. I’m still not sure, but I’m more inclined than ever to find out, which has to be step in the right direction.

The collective Rees/Elice histories are also distinguished by an astonishing breadth of work that is, in a word, humbling. These are, after all, the guys that brought us (among other things) Nicholas Nickleby, Jersey Boys and Peter & The Starcatcher, along with scores of other productions at the Royal Shakespeare Company, the Williamstown Theatre Festival, the La Jolla Playhouse and of course Broadway and The West End.

Finding Roger displays such depth of character in these two men and those that surround them. Rick’s ability to recount their story is, much like Rick himself, remarkable. He seems both casually brave in the way that he follows creative and personal dreams, and bravely casual in the way that he works with others (most notably Roger) to make his home and work lives so rich. I find that kind of unassuming determination especially impressive.

Finding Roger is both profoundly moving and completely unsentimental. It doesn’t pander. It doesn't beg you to feel sorry for its author. It doesn’t diminish its subject by begging for its readers' tears. It simply opens a window on a rich life richly shared, after which the tears flow generously and naturally. It doesn’t “do” anything to get its reader to feel something. It just is, and the reader just does.

Like most successful work, Rick’s memoir embraces the specifics of a life with such zest and detail that his and Roger’s story feels absolutely universal. Rick’s heart, worn not just on his sleeve but everywhere, is by his own account shattered by losing Roger. Yet it nevertheless remains exhilaratingly functional.

Finding Roger could have just been about sadness and loss. Instead, it’s about love and life.

Had I read it even last year, I could easily have found myself ashamed that I had not lived as fully as Rick and Roger. But having waited for the world to spin just this one more time before reading it, I find myself at a place in my life where I’m inspired and empowered by everything Rick writes about what he and Roger did and what Roger continues to inspire him to do.

Sometimes a song, a movie, a play or a book come along at just the right moment. And sometimes we have an internal instinct about when and how we can best take it in.

I mentioned Guy Adkins earlier. More years ago than I can believe, we lost that great artist and man as well. The woman I was dating at the time hadn’t met Guy or his partner, the wonderful actor and genuine good guy Sean Krill. But the stories I’d shared with her about them had moved her deeply, in many of the same ways that Rick and Roger’s story continues to move me.

She and I weren’t destined to be a couple, but we remained close friends. Early in that friendship, and still not long after Guy passed, I took her to see Sean somehow manage to get his goofy on as Lancelot in Drury Lane’s production of Spamalot (it’s so much harder to be silly on stage when you’re feeling broken than it is to be tragic, and I don't know how he managed to pull that off, but he did).

When I introduced her to Sean after the show, she began uncontrollably sobbing. She apologized, she said, but she couldn’t help it. She’d never met either Sean or Guy before now, but she knew their story, and it affected her powerfully.

“I know,” Sean said to her, with his characteristic gentle and unassuming nature. “It’s really sad.”

“Yes," she replied. "But it’s also really happy.”

She took a breath before explaining.

“You had this.”

I knew what she meant. Even in our most hopeful days, with others and with each other, she and I had never had this.

Sean and Guy did. So did Rick and Roger.

And you have to be happy for people who have been lucky and brave enough to dive deep into this, even when under the best of circumstances one will have their heart broken by surviving the other. Not for nothing did Tennyson say it is better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.

Sean’s story got happier. He found this, again, and continues to be one of my inspirations, for that and many other reasons. And Rick’s story will be imbued with happiness again, too, in whatever form it might take. These are people who invite happiness in, even though the open wounds. That’s the kind of invitation that happiness tends to accept.

I’m in everlasting awe of those who manage – not manage, that’s wrong – choose, really, is the word I’m looking for – choose to stay open to all of life’s rich pageant, even when all they feel they are is an open wound. This is something else to which I aspire.

Lord knows if I’m any good at it. I’m not sure that I have experienced the kind of losses that make my choices significant enough to qualify. But having people like Rick, Sean, and far too many other friends and family members than I would like endure these kinds of losses, and seeing them choose to share their stories and lead these lives assures me feel that, even in moments of profound loss and disorienting depletion, the world still offers invitations, or at least opportunities, to discover, and possibly experience, and maybe even create a little more beauty, even when we might have found ourselves believing that there was none left for us.

I’m especially glad I’m reading Finding Roger now, because something’s just happened that had made this book a perfect and necessary companion. As I was writing this – literally, as I finished writing that sentence about having people like Rick and Sean in my life – I received word that we lost Rachel Rockwell.

Rachel is – I don’t yet know how to use the past tense for her – a dazzlingly talented director and choreographer, a person who has lit up every stage and process of which she’s been a part, and a flat-out lovely, energizing and inspiring human being. She was another friend I didn’t know as well as I’d have liked. But our lives and careers intersected at important times and in game-changing ways, and I'm going to miss her

She’s been ill for a long time, and so her departure isn't entirelty unexpected. But it's still a shock. And I’m having a very hard time comprehending that she’s gone, just as it’s difficult for me to think that way of Roger and Guy. And Molly, and Bernie, and Nana. And Eric, Mariann, Martha, John and so many other friends and colleagues to whom we’ve had to say goodbye these last few years.

My hope – my prayer, actually – is that I will find a way to honor my fleeting time with them by choosing to live as beautifully and bravely as Rick, Sean and all their loved ones continue to do.

To The Stars

Some say that expanding classical music audiences is a fantasy. But fantasy might just be what expands classical music audiences. 

I was only seven when I first saw 2001: A Space Odyssey,which might be an absolutely perfect age to see this most maddeningly mysterious of sci-fi epics. I was too young to get too caught up in trying to figure the damn thing out, and hadn’t yet gotten so old that figuring it out was even a thing. I simply liked how it felt, and looked and, especially, how it sounded.

The marriage of Richard Strauss’ Also Sprach Zarathustra to the scenes depicting the human race’s major evolutionary steps forward couldn’t have been more ominously majestic. Johann Strauss' Blue Danube was the perfectly playful accompaniment to the space station docking scene. And Aram Khachaturian’sGayane Ballet Suite added a sense of forlorn melancholy to the sequences on the Jupiter-bound Discovery.

This was music I understood. It sounded like it could have been made by the same musicians playing on the Beethoven and Mozart records from my dad’s LP collection. It sounded familiar. I got it.

It wasn’t until my dad brought home a 2001-inspired album – not the soundtrack, but a new collection by Leonard Bernstein – that I understood that the freaky sounds accompanying the eerier and most baffling scenes in the movie (like the uncovering of the monolith on the moon or the journey through the Star Gate) weren’t sound effects. They had actually been composed (by some guy I'd never heard of named Gyorgy Ligeti) and performed (by musicians just like on the Strauss and Khachaturian tracks).

How in the world was that possible? I mean, who was this Ligeti guy, and how did he even think of this stuff?

It got weirder from there. The second side of the Bernstein collection contained a suite from an opera about a spaceship colliding with an asteroid, and HOLD THE PHONE, you can write operas about spaceships colliding with asteroids?

My second-grade mind was officially blown.

That’s where Imy love for finding the weirdest and wildest music imaginable was born. After hearing that record, I spent many a Saturday afternoon listening to a show on the Cincinnati classical music station called Do You Know This Composer,which was jam packed with bizarre but beautiful sounds made by contemporary composers from Iceland, Denmark and other countries nowhere near any place that Bach, Beethoven or Mozart ever gigged. Seth Boustead’s similarly conceived series Relevant Tones, distributed by Chicago’s WFMT, takes me back to those childhood explorations while feeding my ongoing and insatiable appetite for new music. And it’s why every Friday, when new music gets released, I go to iTunes and buy a contemporary classical album, just to see what’s going on out there in the musical cosmos. (Sure, I could stream it, but it feels a lot better to buy it. The people blowing my mind deserve some compensation, don’t you think?)

Thirty years after venturing into outer space with Mssrs. Strauss, Khachaturian, Ligeti & Strauss, I was dating a woman with a wonderful and precocious seven-year-old boy who, through absolutely no experience of his own, absolutely knew he hated classical music (because that’s what his father, and presumably others around him, did). Classical music was just something to be hated, avoided and deried, seeing as it was – must have been – made for and played by snooty stuck-up know-it-alls who thought they were better than everyone.

In other words, they’d never heard it.

Nor had this young boy, or so he thought, but having recently discovered Star Wars and, like most people, fallen hard for the John Williams soundtrack, he didn’t know (or care) that all those great sounds he heard while the opening title crawled and the Millennium Falcon zoomed were made by a symphony orchestra.

All he knew, and all that mattered, was that it sounded awesome.

I was careful not to play gotcha about this. It was more important that he love these sounds on his own terms that it was for me to be “right” about the eternal beauty and power generated by the sounds of an orchestras. And so Star Wars led to Close Encounters, Raiders of the Lost Ark and Harry Potter, among other movies, until lo and behold, we had ourselves a new classical music fan.

Sci-fi and fantasy films, books and comics are ideal places to explore real world themes and feelings in a safe and surprising context – that’s one of their many powerful allures for writers and readers alike. And they’re also a path to broadening our artistic experiences. Snug in the feeling of enjoying a space opera or fantasy adventure, amazing sounds sneak up on us, intriguing and attracting us on their own terms (and ours), and bypassing conventions, expectations or judgments about what we “should” be listening to or what’s “cool.”

I’ve heard symphony subscribers and self-proclaimed “purists” bemoan the fact that orchestras devote entire evenings to playing contemporary film scores, as if this somehow degrades or diminishes their beloved institutions. For the life of me, I have no idea what upsets them. If they don’t like these works artistically, that’s fine, but surely these aren’t the only evenings of music on an orchestra's season that are not to their liking.

And the point isn’t to like everything, anyway, is it? It’s to be exposed to everything.

If these movie nights are drawing newer, less experienced or younger audiences to concert halls, that’s nothing but a good thing, if for no other reason that it brings the next generations into buildings and experiences which have traditionally made them feel excluded, unwelcome or intimidated. This is an easy, enjoyable and (not for nothin', profitable) way to accomplish that, and an important step to keep these institutions alive as gathering places to share communal creative experiences and stop them from being anything other than high-end social clubs.

That disturbing trend must end, and sci-fi and fantasy aficionados are the perfect people to help end it. They (who am I kidding here, WE)are devoted fans, bordering on being obsessive about what we like and care about. We follow our favorite artists to the end of the earth, talk endlessly about how the new works stack up against the classics, and even crowdsource funding efforts to make sure that new work gets made and published.

Aren't we exactly the kind of people who belong in concert halls?

After the Fall

In Which We Explore The Joys of Falling on One's Face.

That’s the incredibly talented Chicago actor Heidi Kettenring to your left, demonstrating her supreme skill in the art of falling in Indiana Repertory Theater’s current production of Noises Off. (If you’ve never seen Heidi live on stage doing Shakespeare, cabaret, Broadway, drama, comedy, you name it – then get thee to Chicago and do so. We’ve got ourselves a national treasure here.)

I've been thinking a lot about the art of falling Not for nothing did Hubbard Street and The Second City choose that phrase as the title for their genuinely groundbreaking marriage of dance, theater and improv. The phrase also puts me in mind of one of the best lines from “The Lion in Winter," when Geoffery says to his brother Richard, “As if it matters how a man falls," and Richard replies, "When the fall is all there is, it matters."

I've been thinking about this because three big broadcast projects I've been developing, all of which felt promising a few days ago, have fallen apart or been put on hold.

None of this spells the end of the world for me or HMS. Not even close. Several other broadcast, online and cinecast projects are moving ahead just fine. And besides, anyone who develops projects will tell you that they fall apart all the time -- more often than not, in fact. I get that.

Still, after you've had the kind initial exciting brainstorm and seemingly productive meetings and conversations, when the real world comes knocking on your door with a few notes and your great idea is brought to its knees, it leaves a mark.

Being somewhat notorious for dating analogies, I'll describe it like this. When you meet someone who fills you with hope for that perfect romantic outcome (was that ever better committed to film that Joseph Gordon-Levitt's dance of romance in 500 Days of Summer?) that intoxicating infatuation is the most tasty and wonderful feeling in the world. But then for any number of perfectly understandable reasons -- again, more often than not -- one or both parties either lose interest or can’t find a way to keep moving forward. You do the dating dance long enough, and you develop a sense of understanding, acceptance, perspective and maybe even a sense of humor about that, but in that moment when hope is first dashed, none of those soften that crushing jolt to the chest cavity.

So I'm feeling that professional jolt right now. But rather than wallow, I want to take advantage of the moment and process the best way to bounce back. Maybe you're bouncing back from something right now, too?

One of many great things about a life in the arts is that so much of it involves failing.

I say that without sarcasm -- that really is a great thing about it. Failure is, in many ways, the dominant experience in our world. We always aim for the perfect creation, performance or production... and they almost never happen. We know that, and we do it anyway.

This is why it’s essential to surround ourselves with the smartest, most honest and challengingly supportive friends and colleagues possible. It’s the company of people like that which makes the difference between an amazing life and a lonely one. In their company, we can begin to discover how enjoy that frustratingly, tantalizingly tasty space between perfection and the best result we could summon in pursuit of it.

During an interview for HMS’ documentary “Steppenwolf Theatre Company: 25 Years on the Edge,” John Malkovich told me that the nights where everything on stage goes exactly right occur about once every 10 years, and so “one mustn’t get too expectant.” By that math, over the space of a quarter of a century, John Malkovich had enjoyed 2 ½ such nights.

He certainly did not seem to be complaining about this, or asking for sympathy. On the contrary, he seemed to be dining out on perfection’s elusiveness, fully understanding that without failure, there's no way to know what constitutes success.

The first edit of “Second to None,” our documentary about the making of a mainstage revue at The Second City, was, to put it bluntly, flat. Despite it being filled with one smart and funny sequence after another, featuring rehearsals and performances featuring one of the all-time great Second City casts (Tina Fey, Scott Adsit, Rachel Dratch, Kevin Dorff, Jenna Jolovitz and Jim Zulevic, under Mick Napier’s direction), that first cut was dreadfully dull. At first I was baffled. How could that be?

And then the answer became clear. We never showed them having a bad show or a flat rehearsal. We never showed them failing.

So we went back into the edit suite, adding in a sequence in which that incredible cast had quite possibly the worst improv set of their collective careers, as well as the conversation that followed. And then the doc came alive, because now there were genuine stakes. When the viewer understood that failure was a real possibility, even for the best improvisers in the country, witnessing their successes was a far more emotionally engaging experience.

Among the many tenants of improv is that it's best to avoid attachments to particular outcomes. Not that we can’t or shouldn’t get hopeful about an idea or event, but it's better to stay present to what an idea or event actually is, in the moment it actually exists, and then play with it in that moment, as opposed to force a particular outcome or ending. The former sets the players up for success; the latter virtually guarantees failure.

You can find examples of this in your own life everywhere you like. If for example I base my enjoyment of a U2 concert on the band playing “Until the End of the World,” I might not only be in for a fall, but also might miss out on what would otherwise was a great show. Likewise (and only because I haven't beaten the dating metaphor to death just yet), if the person I have a crush on doesn’t return those feelings, and I write off a friendship with her just because she’s not in love with me, then I might well miss out not only on a potentially wonderful friendship, but all the other great things that might have happened (like, who knows, she might be the person who introduces me to the woman of my dreams -- you never know, right?)

Not that either of these outcomes are foregone conclusions, either, but the truth is that there’s real beauty in having absolutely no idea what’s going to happen, and real fun in enjoying the process of moving forward anyway. This is what I think about when I remember my friend Guy Adkins' expression "Onward, Forward, Up." Wherever you are, Guy, you knew what you were talking about.

Back to why I started writing this in the first place.

A little time has passed since the most recent project melted down, and you know what? Life has gone on, and I got an idea for a blog out of the deal. Further, in the midst of writing it, another show -- one which I previously thought had died many months ago -- has unexpectedly shown new signs of life. And based on something I learned as that project started to resurrect, I may just have come up with a way to resuscitate one of those newly presumed dead projects. Truth is, this new idea might be better.

Maybe. We’ll see.

All of this brings us back to that image of Heidi, falling beautifully and hilariously, in a play that celebrates both crash-and-burn failures and this deep-seeded compulsion to bounce back. As she and I discussed recently -- appropriately, just before seeing some friends open a new show -- the former is inevitable, but the latter is up to us.

Personally, I’m in favor of the bounce. Because sometimes what goes down just might come back up.

It Was Thirty Years Ago Today

Some infinite love and gratitude for the first three decades of a dream come true.

HMS Media turns 30 years old today.

30 years!

It’s quite a feeling to be 53 and find one’s self in the same job, much less the same career, much less continuing to co-run a company with a best friend from summer camp.

Someone recently remarked how proud summer-camp-best-friend Matt Hoffman and I must be. The resume does look pretty good: 30 Years. 20 Emmys. Loads of PBS specials. Thousands of shoots with Chicago dance, music and theater companies. Hundreds of projects with Broadway shows and national tours. Scores of major media initiatives with amazing not-for-profits and educational institutions advancing art, science and social service.

It has been and continues to be a hell of a run, and it’s not that we’re not proud of it. We are. But the overwhelming feeling, honestly, is one of humility.

This isn’t false modesty. We’re just kind of… amazed. It’s hard to be anything but wonderstruck that we still get to do what we love with people we love.

“Lucky” doesn’t begin to cover it.

More than twenty years ago, John Kander (the legendary composer of such Broadway shows as “Cabaret” and “Chicago,” as well as official HMS mentor and Nicest Man in The World) told us that for all of the hits, accolades and awards he has received during his career (including a shelf full of Tony Awards), he is convinced that it’s on his next show that people will finally figure out that he doesn’t know what he’s doing.

It took me a while to unpack his words. I’m still unpacking them, actually. It’s not that I don’t get it. For all of the wonderful stuff we’ve experienced over the last three decades, I am still filled with deep anxiety when new projects arise. I am in those moments comforted by two things: the talents of the people around me, and the fact that they all feel this way too.

I first interpreted John’s comment about not knowing what he’s doing as a simple expression of humility. It certainly was that, and if it were only that, it would stand as remarkably generous notion to share with young people just learning how to make and share their work. Over time, however, I’ve come to appreciate that it was also – perhaps even more so – a reminder of the importance of staying present.

“Not knowing what I’m doing” doesn’t mean “I don’t know what I’ve done” or “I won’t be able to do this.” It doesn’t mean “I’m ignorant” and it doesn’t mean “I’m doomed.” It simply means that in this present moment, I don’t know how this is going to turn out.

Of course not. No one, not the most accomplished composer, baseball player, surgeon, Uber driver, janitor, waiter, pilot or politician does. If they think they do… they’re in trouble, and so is every person depending on them.

“Knowing,” it turns out, isn’t unimportant at all times, but it’s overrated. “Being present” is the goal, and all we need to do to get there is take the big chance and make the bold choice.

Simple enough.

Also terrifying.

So how do you make it enjoyable and productive, let alone turn it into a career or a lifestyle? You surround yourself with people you trust. People who are as smart as you are (and, ideally, smarter). People who know how to disagree without being disagreeable. People who understand that as frightening as taking new chances may be, people usually don’t die when they make them.

That’s not meant as glib as it might sound; fear is fear, and it’s never pleasant. But in the words of Yoda – or as he’s better known, the John Kander of The Jedi – “Do. Or do not. There is no try.” More recently he’s been heard to utter, “Failure the greatest teacher is.” He was right both times. My best and most cherished role models consistently practice these ideas both on and offstage, in public and at home.

They are the “Yes And” people. And is there any better ethic to follow than “Yes And?” Any better philosophy than to call on yourself to agree wherever possible? To build relationships? To heighten possibilities and explore new processes? To make others look good while expecting that others will do the same for you? To avoid attachments to individual specific outcomes, and explore those that we could never have imagined ourselves but which wind up being possible in the company of others? To find the words “I,” “me” and “mine” much less interesting than “We,” “us” and “ours”?

HMS and Friends have been honored to work with thousands of “Yes And” practitioners over the years. Whether lasting an hour or for decades, each collaboration has changed us for the better, allowing us to learn more while inviting us to “know less.”

Matt and I are surrounded by these people every day, and I’d like to make sure you know their names. It begins for us with our extraordinary core team of John Ford, Kristin Klinger, Catherine Haremski and Christie Fall. Whether behind a camera, on location, behind a writing desk or in an edit suite, these inspired artists make us smarter than we were the day before and HMS’ work more beautiful than we ever could have imagined.

The same can be said of our incredible freelancers. Shoot after shoot, edit after edit, these independent creatives broaden our horizons and challenge our preconceptions. Thank you Joe Lukawski, Greg Stasevsky, Jenny Conway, Tom Szklarski, Todd Clark, Erin Carey, Tom McCosky, Tom Bergin, Dave Sperling, John Christianson, Matt Mayer, Ken Dabek, Aren Viramontes, Andre Shane, Chris Seivard, Eli Alanis, Jillian Weimer, Howard Heitner, Phil Iglesias, Bennett Spencer, Margaret Nelson, Timothy Powell, Andrew Twiss, Cindy Surman, Erin Steilan, Marshaun Robinson, the entire team at TC Furlong and all the other wonderful talents with whom we’ve worked over the years. And Danielle Beverly, Lisa Levin, Laura Brauer, Danny Romain, Josh Jones, Greg Steinbrecher, Lauren Thompson, Lauren Teng, Joe Moese and Aly Quigley… we miss you!

We’re also feeling especially grateful to our mentors, who have been so generous with their experience and knowledge, and have helped us learn to make our way in a very tricky world. In addition to John Kander, there’s Donna LaPietra, Bill Kurtis, Mike Leiderman, Thea Flaum, Rick Elice and dear departed friends like Bill McCarter, Roy Leonard and Sheldon Patinkin. And from the beginning, there’s always been “the Captain” (you know who you are).

And Yoda. We’d be nowhere without Yoda.

Finally, there is literally no way to list every artist, arts organization, management team, press rep, marketing company, design firm, school or tech company with whom we’ve worked these last thirty years who have opened the world to us and made this life of ours possible. To all of you, please know that you daily provide us with the heat, mass and gravity around which we orbit. You give us reason, purpose and inspiration. Through your friendship and confidence, you make our world feel more intimately connected; through your vision and your discoveries, you make our world more thrillingly vast. You are the reason we aspire to “Yes And.”

I’ll leave you with another John Kander story. Last summer, shortly after we’d produced “First You Dream,” a national PBS tribute to the songs of Kander & Ebb, we sat down to a pre-production meeting for another project, at which John said something genuinely and startlingly lovely: that it was in the last five minutes or so of his most recent show “Kid Victory” that he felt he was finally – FINALLY -- starting to get to the core of the truth of what he’s always wanted to say as an artist.

Not for nothing, but John turns 91 in two months. Clearly, the work is never done, which is both its most daunting and joyful quality. This is a wonderful lens through which we can look at where we’ve been and where we’re going.

As for where we’ve been:

From time to time we do enjoy looking back…. at our summer camp days (ask us sometime to show you those old 8mm movies of us as teens in the Camp Nebagamon version of “Beatlemania,” when Matt was Ringo and I was John). At the day we planted our flag here in Chicago, terrified but thrilled. At making our broadcast premiere by creating what we’re told was the first broadcast documentary about survivors of rape and sexual assault. At the early days we spent cultivating the relationships with Chicago’s music, theater and dance companies. At the WTTW and PBS specials. At those first nights on Broadway. At the countless opportunities we’ve been given to bring a dazzling array of artists, social issues and cultural ambassadors to television and computer screens, and add to the world just a bit more beauty than it had before.

As for where we’re going:

We reject outright the premise of the question, “where do you see yourself in five years.” That’s a question people ask to make themselves feel better, but it’s a dead end – anyone who answers that question definitively is either indulging the interviewer or making something up. Like everyone else, we don’t know for sure where we’re going. But that never stopped us before and it won’t stop us now. What we do know – the only thing we know – is that we’re in for the long haul. We just want to keep getting better. Trying new things. Taking even bigger risks. Pursuing new content initiatives for every kind of screen imaginable. Collaborating on new work with our fellow artists, advocates, activists and ambassadors. Becoming more thoughtful, responsive and diverse, in every way possible. Rising to our best possible occasions.

Have these first thirty years filled us with infinite love and gratitude?

“Yes.”

As for the next thirty?

“And…”

Widening The Net

If you forward only one of my blog posts, this is the one to forward. 

Yes, you're right, it is a bit nervy to say, “If you forward only one of my blogs, this is the one to forward,” as if forwarding my blogs is a thing people do. But if I have a voice in our community, and a handful of colleagues recently assured me that I do, then perhaps 2018 is the year to embrace that more fully.

Perhaps 2018 is the year we all do that, because if I have a voice, then surely you do, too. I follow a lot of you on various forms of social media, and none of that has been time wasted. I love learning more about who you are, what you do and above all what matters to you. We might not agree on everything, but whatever our relationship, whatever we may have worked on together and whatever you may think of my views on politics, art, business or the latest STAR WARS movie (and don’t believe the haters, it is mind-blowingly surprising and exciting, but more on that in my next eminently forwardable post), the following sentence applies:

Everything I’m going to write about in the next ten and mercifully brief paragraphs impacts everything we do and love, and it matters as much to you as it does to me.

Because stating the obvious is one of my most treasured hobbies, I'll offer this: if you’re reading Adventures In Yes, you’re online (unless you’ve broken into my house and are reading this on my laptop, in which case be assured that my browser history is strictly for RESEARCH PURPOSES ONLY). Being online, you are, like most others, operating under the assumption that you can more or less depending on your ability to view, send and receive content reliably and without genuine Orwellian oversight. In which case, Happy New Year! You’ve just been stabbed in the microprocessor by the Federal Communications Commission.

Dry as an institution like the FCC might sound, and brain-numbing as the phrase “net neutrality” (a Blade Runner-esque phrase you’ve likely heard being bandied about in the last few weeks) might sound, the former has just repealed the latter. The FCC has repealed the principles of net neutrality, and the regulations that go with it. So why is this perhaps the scariest thing that happened in our country last year, in a year defined by scary things happening to our country?

Rolling Stone sums it up nicely: “When you pay your fee to get online, you get everything. But under the new regime, a handful of the most powerful telecommunication companies in the U.S. – Comcast, Verizon, AT&T – will have unlimited freedom to slice and dice the Internet ecology as they please.” Which means that if you’re making content and relying on it being seen and shared, the FCC wants you to be at the mercy of the big internet service providers, who could now slow down your streaming speeds because you’re not as important to them as Netflix or Amazon; upcharge internet users for access not only to your site but also your social media networks; and, if they so choose, block your content if they deem it unsavory to their boards or financial stakeholders.

If you think that sounds paranoid, think again, because it’s already happened. FreePress.net has the details on some of the more notable cases, including AT&T forcing Apple to drop Skype from its phones unless it imposed an upcharge; Verizon blocking people from using tethering applications on their phones; and Windstream copping to hijacking Google searches within Firefox and redirecting them to its own search engine. And that was PRE-repeal.

HMS, our clients and our colleagues – everyone reading this, in fact (even the ones who jimmied my front door lock and are currently sitting in my house, sipping from one of my many herbal teas while reading my laptop, and you had better be gone by the time I get home) are relying on dependable distribution of our content. Our livelihood, and our ability to communicate in an honest, fair and timely fashion, is contingent on a free and open internet.

But The FCC, in a brazen and openly partisan way, has just removed the mechanisms that guarantee our ability to reliably and effectively communicate online. The three Republican appointees voted for repeal, while the two Democratic appointees not only voted against it but also begged the general public to help the FCC save it from itself. Proponents of repeal call net neutrality “a solution in search of a problem.” I call them “lackeys to the corporate overlords who want to police what you say and control how and when you can say it.”

If that sounds paranoid, consider that just before Christmas, the Center for Disease Control banned its budget grant writers from using the words “vulnerable,” “entitlement” “diversity,” “fetus,” “transgender,” “science-based” and “evidence-based.” Think about that for a moment – not just that they banned words, but the actual words they banned, from documents pertaining to the funding of scientific research – and tell me your calendar doesn’t resemble 2018 so much as it resembles 1984. (I never thought I’d write a sentence like that without it seeming paranoid or hyperbolic, but… here we are.)

The question that feels most pressing is “How could the federal government allow the CDC to ban these seven words?” But the truly pressing question is, “What are the next seven?” Perhaps the question after that might be, “Where will the word police strike next?” And, most chillingly, “For how much longer will we be able to publish blogs written to protest this kind of terrifying authoritarianism?”

While it appears that we’re on the verge of finding out, we’re also not without weapons of our own. One is that attorneys general across the country are readying their legal challenges to the repeal of net neutrality. Another is by using our voices and our votes. Elected representatives like to talk about The American People, but many have forgotten that they don't deserve our voites, they have to earn them. These people work for us, and much as many of them would like us to forget that, we hired them and we can fire them. To paraphrase “The West Wing,” it's really something that every two years we get to overthrow the government, and we damn well better show up in 2018 to get the one we need and the one that this country deserves.

So let’s give them the job review they deserve, call them out to get their perspectives on these issues, and decide whether or not they continue to get the privilege of working for us. And yes, I know, in the wake of the recent tax law there is every reason to be cynical about participating in the public conversation with our elected reps. But as “The American President” reminds us, “America is advanced citizenship; you gotta want it bad, because it’s gonna put up a fight. “I still believe that after the punch in the face that was 2017, 2018 is where the real resistance begins. Your elected officials are eminently reachable by email and phone (click here to find yours). And we’ll be seeing them face to face on March 13 for National Arts Advocacy Day (you can come too -- click here to find out how). We have opportunities to act – to let them know how devastating the repeal of net neutrality and the passage of the new tax laws are to the millions of us who work in a field that generates billions of dollars of economic activity (not to mention even more billions in tax revenue that goes to our federal, state and local governments). Our work is alive in every congressional district in this country, and those that want to kill it had better take heed: 2017 might have been their year, but 2018 is ours.

Pass it on.

Dear Emmy

I'll never get tired of this kind of losing.

YES!

HMS’ recent special CHICAGO VOICES, produced with Lyric Opera of Chicago, was nominated for five Chicago/Midwest Emmys and received three!

NO!

I did not win in the category for which I was nominated!

YES!

It was still a fantastic night even though I didn’t win. Maybe an even better one. There is always something to be gained from being humbled; to do so while giving your friends celebratory bear hugs is not a bad way to spend a night in a tux.

It is one of the oldest clichés in the book, but that doesn't make it any less true: it was an absolute honor to be nominated for a Chicago/Midwest Emmy for producing CHICAGO VOICES, alongside the talented team at WTTW, our fair city’s public television station and the most watched PBS outlet in the US. Their doc NAVY PIER: A CENTURY OF REINVENTION took home the trophy for Outstanding Arts & Entertainment Special, and well done them. If an HMS show isn’t going to get the big trophy, I’m glad a WTTW show did. And if WTTW hadn't aired CHICAGO VOICES in the first place (as they have all of our shows for the last 28 years), HMS doesn’t have 20 Emmys on our shelf.

I was delighted to see my WTTW friends and colleagues win, and even more so my fellow CHICAGO VOICES nominees, who picked up awards for lighting, audio and on-camera performance). I am not being falsely modest here. My team getting recognized mattered more to me than taking home a statue of my own.

I mean, look at these guys. Todd Clark? The best in the business when it comes to lighting for television and stage – not just what he does but how he does it. You won't find a more supportive and responsive guy in the room.

Timothy Powell, Marshaun Robinson, Mark Grey and Joe Schofield? Cream of the crop audio engineers and designers, whose work you can count on the way you can count on Tom Hanks or Meryl Streep being good in a movie.

Andrew Twiss? Simply a brilliant audio mixologist, who feels music as well as he hears it (and he hears it magnificently).

And holy smokes, John Prine was in our show -- JOHN PRINE! -- and got an Emmy for his funny and poignant performances. Getting up on stage and accepting an Emmy on his behalf was one of the cooler and more humbling experiences I'm going to have.

To be clear... sure, I wish I'd won, too. I’m not ego-less. But more than that – way more– I so wish Jessie Mueller had won. Her dazzling multiple appearances in CHIGAGO VOICES are among my most very favorite of anything we’ve ever pointed our cameras at (and that’s saying something).

When I first posted photos from last weekend's Emmy ceremony, someone sent me a note asking, "Where are the photos of you?" Truth is, I didn’t have any then (although I do now, which, along with the others, are up on our Facebook page). My favorite pic is the group shot, with all of us holding the CHICAGO VOICES Emmy hardware. It's all about the team.

But there's one photo of me that no one took. I so wish someone had grabbed a shot of me watching Todd, Andrew, Timothy and Marshaun’s faces as their names were announced and they took the stage to receive their Emmys, and then later as I sat just off camera and watched their live-streamed interviews.

It’s the same look I’m sure I wore the night we shot CHICAGO VOICES at Lyric Opera of Chicago, watching Renée Fleming, Jessie Mueller, Kurt Elling, Shemekia Copeland, Michelle Williams, The Handsome Family, Terrance Howard, Jussie Smollet, Doug Peck, Matthew Polenzani, the Voices of Trinity Mass Choir and the band that backed them all fill that cavernous room with the kind of music that makes you feel you’re cozied up and singing together in someone’s living room.

And the look I wore at production meetings, siting with the Lyric Unlimited producers, the design teams and Lyric’s leadership, knowing that while putting this show together would be a long and winding road, I was in the company of the perfect orienteers.

I can’t help but smile again, just sitting here sharing these memories with you. And so if I had to share with the world one image of myself, it would be exactly this look, one of pure, unadulterated joy, reveling in the moment as my friends create and are celebrated for their gorgeous, entertaining and life-affirming work, and wondering, how did I get so lucky to be here with them?

I'm not saying I'd look especially great in this image. Very few people can pull off the Giant Goofy Grin I was sporting. One’s face can only stretch so wide. So I might look ridiculous… but I sure would look happy.

In my various HMS adventures, it's that look – the Giant Goofy Grin – that I wear more than any other. Watching the HMS team in action is one of the greatest joys of my life. If you're that happy, who cares how goofy you look?

One thing's for sure: when I’m basking in the glow of my friends' successes, I am, to be sure, very well lit.

Better To Have Loved and Lost

Reflections on knowing, losing and still being inspired by Steppenwolf's Martha Lavey and Mariann Mayberry

It’s the Sunday before Thanksgiving as I write this. In a couple of hours, I’ll be heading down to the opening of Steppenwolf Theatre Company’s newest production, The Minutes.

Steppenwolf’s very much on my mind this afternoon. Not only is this a big opening for them, but it’s also only been a couple of months since the memorial service for Martha Lavey, the company’s former artistic director and a towering figure in Chicago theater. And it’s been less than two weeks since we said goodbye to Steppenwolf ensemble member Mariann Mayberry, a singular bolt of elegantly jagged lightning who electrified every stage onto which she stepped.

The fierce, funny, brutally honest and deeply felt recollections shared at those memorials by various family, friends and fellow artists left me wondering if I deserved to share my relatively puny responses. I think this is a big reason why I’ve put off blogging for so long. I feel jammed up with feelings, and not sure enough about my place in the world to know how to comfortably share them.

It's not like I didn't know them. I worked with Martha and Mariann many times over the years, producing multicam shoots of their live performances and collaborating on 25 Years on the Edge, HMS' PBS special about the history of Steppenwolf. So, yes, we have history. But many others had far more, and so I’ve been feeling unworthy to say much of anything about their passings, for fear of looking like I’d be grief surfing on the waves of others’ endless sorrows.

But with the benefit of a little distance from those nearly unbearably beautiful celebrations of their lives, I’m beginning to realize that this unworthy feeling is a little strange. Martha and Mariann were genuinely collaborative artists deeply interested in other people’s thoughts and feelings, and I doubt they’d ever marginalize the feeling of an audience member, or discount the attachment that person might feel to a story or even a storyteller.

In the spirit, I’ll hunker down, and express how appreciative I am for the life-affirming moments offered to me by Martha and Mariann.

I met Martha when HMS began its long history of archiving shows at Steppenwolf, beginning with 1994’s Libra, the John Malkovich-directed adaption of the Don Dilello novel which starred Laurie Metcalf. Meeting Martha Lavey is a momentous occasion for even the most brilliant individuals. I’m not a dumb guy, but I know a more formidable brain when I meet one (which is often), and there were few more formidable than Martha’s.

So a couple of years later, when it came time to interview her for 25 Years, I was decidedly nervous, not because I felt pressure so much as a calling to be the best possible interviewer in the world for her. I sensed that Martha was someone with much to say and a desire to say it, but who wanted – demanded, perhaps -- the right context in which to say it. This was clearly an interview, but I think she just wanted a good conversation, and to get that, I had to earn her time, her thoughts and her insights.

Interviewing is not an easy thing. I want it to feel conversational, and my tone and questions tend to take the form of a conversation, but it’s not a balanced exchange of information, and in any case, the general public will only hear the interviewees words, not mine. That said, I still feel it’s important to offer something of myself to the people I’m interviewing, so they don’t feel – in fact are not – alone.

Some interviews are personal and professional game-changers, ones that are not only exciting and productive but also make me a better interviewer on the spot, or at least aware that I want or need to be one. The Steppenwolf doc was filled with those, but Martha’s piercing presence and insights especially raised my game, or at least my awareness that it needed to be raised. Moments like that aren’t always comfortable, but growth seldom is, unless you’re in the company of someone taking care of you, or at least rooting for your success. I could feel Martha wanting me to be a good interviewer, egging me on to be a better improviser, and I will always be grateful for that invitation.

The irony of this – that our first lengthy conversation was one where I interviewed her – was that, generally speaking, it was Martha who asked the questions, not you. As my pal and fellow Lookingglass Theatre company member Andy White said at Martha’s memorial, Martha could successfully excise information from you that you might not even tell your spouse or therapist.

Those kinds of conversations with Martha came later for me, memorably at the several shows at which I saw her that we both attended alone. “Isn’t it great to see theater by yourself?” she asked me one time, when we happened to sit together at a matinee at Steppenwolf’s Upstairs Theater. In truth, that’s not the case for me. I go to shows alone a lot, but I would always prefer to share the experience with someone. Driving home after Martha posed that question, it hit me that for all of the declarations she made that day about the joys of solitude, in theater going and in life, she was still the artistic director of an ensemble theater company, and an ever-present face in a sea of audiences and theater makers throughout the city. Like all of us, Martha never really did theater by herself. Whether making it or watching it, and no matter how lonely or irrelevant we may feel – and a whole bunch of us do – none of us ever really do theater, or life, alone.

A few months after meeting Martha, when HMS shot Barbara Gaines’ beguiling production of “As You Like It” for Chicago Shakespeare Theatre (the known as Shakespeare Rep), I met Mariann. Barbara had transformed the Ruth Page Theatre into the lushest of green forests, through which Mariann’s Rosalind bounded joyfully and irresistibly. She positively glowed, and I was helplessly crushed on her. Who wouldn’t be?

I sheepishly inquired of Barbara what Mariann’s social status was. I learned that yes, she was single, but had just come out of something serious, so while Barbara would put in a good word for me, I’d be well-served to keep my expectations low.

That was good advice. Mariann did indeed call a few times, but when I answered, she always hung up, unaware, I assume, about a new technology called Caller ID. Years later we joked that somehow she knew I was simply the wrong Scott, and that she was, very wisely, waiting for the right one. I can’t imagine what her wonderfully gifted husband, the very special Scott Jaeck, is going through right now, but his gorgeous and brave recollections of his bride at her memorial service will forever haunt and inspire me. Thinking back on Mariann’s wholly original performances – her profound and heartbreaking Ophelia, her electrifying turn in Good People, her brave work in her final Steppenwolf show Grand Concourse, among many others -- I am thinking that perhaps it really is better to have loved and lost, even if I'm not feeling it.

That idea filled my mind as I tearfully listened to Scott’s astonishing eulogy, and the ones offered by other remarkable souls in her personal and creative worlds. What I take away from knowing Mariann and having seen most of her body of work -- what I've loved about that, and hope never to lose -- is the notion that whatever we feel is worth feeling and expressing through art, in large, expansive and communal ways. That what really matters is how we, in every sense of the word, act.

Several times during Martha and Mariann’s memorials, people spoke of theater being a refuge for the wounded. That it most certainly is, but a lot of people – theater people included – misinterpret this to mean it’s just the theater practitioners themselves who are wounded, because they choose against common sense and in the face of genuine anxiety to publicly reveal these wounds – revel in them, even. In our 25 Years doc, Amy Morton describes that as a freakish choice, and Andy has gone so far as to describe it as addictive.

But Amy also said it was a very tasty choice, and the kind of addiction Andy’s talking about can actually benefit everyone. To choose to be a part of the theater world, to indulge that addiction, is to open one’s self up to the mysteries and miracles found in the sacred space between the story tellers and the story listeners. In that space, we seek and often find healing in fellow players and audiences alike.

We are all the walking wounded, but in theaters – in all of the arts – we offer each other, whether knowingly or not, solace and comfort, simply by partaking in actions that on the surface look very much like the buying of tickets and the putting on of plays, but are actually perfect gestures of communion, confession and confirmation. And in the pursuit of the perfect pretending, we safely and joyfully bump smack face first into truth, fall headlong into community, and barrel helplessly into love.

In this act of surrender we hit upon one of life’s few certainties – perhaps it’s only one – a certainty Martha Lavey and Mariann Mayberry bestowed upon me and so many others, and it’s this:

That wounded as we are, and vulnerable to the temptation to go through life alone as we may be, it is better to be scared in the company of good people than comfortable in the company of none.

So I thank you, Martha. And I thank you, Mariann. I’m off to Steppenwolf now. See you both there.

Breathe Deep.

Here's looking at you, Kid Victory.

As I write this, it's Saturday March 18, 2017, the 90th birthday of the great John Kander. We're all familiar with John’s work – everyone knows “New York, New York” and the plethora of incredible songs he and Fred Ebb wrote for shows including Cabaret, Chicago, Kiss of the Spider Woman, The Scottsboro Boys, Zorba and so many others.

Since I was in my late teens, John has been my thoughtful mentor and dear friend. He is -- to me and to the countless others who have seen and loved his shows, or, even more luckily, worked or collaborated with him in music, theater, film and television -- a profound inspiration.

Isn't that what we're all looking for? Inspiration? I know I am, all the time, and that's one of the reasons, perhaps the primary one, that the arts are so important to me.

So it seems fitting that, because many of John’s shows explore the roots and ramifications of criminal behavior, I should take this moment to state my intent to a crime of my own.

I’m going to steal something from Julie Brannen.

You might not know Julie, but I hope you will. She’s a Chicago-based dancer, teacher, choreographer, creative arts therapist and all-around inspiring human being. Julie was one of three curators of the recent Annual Alumni Concert produced by Columbia College Chicago’s Creative Movement Therapy Department, a lovely and intimate collection of dances and scenes steeped in vulnerability and empathy.

Julie's own piece, which closed the first half of the program, was fused with exquisite ideas, movement and rhythms. But before the show had even started, she had already made a major contribution to the evening.

As the de facto host of the evening, Julie offered a pre-curtain greeting which ended with an invitation to the audience to take a deep breath together.

That was a beautiful move, and next time I warm up an audience when HMS shoots another live performance special, I’m copping it. (There. I've confessed. Whatever happens now... "I had it comin.'")

Audience warm-ups are a big deal. They're functional, to be sure; for HMS, they are the moments when Matt Hoffman, our brilliant director and editor, leads our equally talented camera team to capture shots of audience members listening and applauding, shots that we’ll cut into the show when we’re editing it for broadcast.

They're also opportunities to declare what the evening is really about.

Here's a good example. Last month, HMS captured Chicago Voices, a magnificent concert created by Renée Fleming for Lyric Opera of Chicago (it will air in Chicago Thursday March 30 at 9pm on WTTW11 -- stay tuned for national airdates).

When Renée conceived the project a couple of years ago, the idea was to celebrate the diversity and worldwide impact of Chicago vocalists. By including artists like Kurt Elling, Shemekia Copeland, Jessie Mueller, Michelle Williams, Matthew Polenzani, Terrance Howard, John Prine, Lupe Fiasco, The Handsome Family, Jussie Smolett and more, "The People's Diva" had certainly accomplished that.

By the time the show was performed to a sold-out crowd at the Civic Opera House, fifteen days had passed since Donald Trump had been sworn into office, and no one saw the world the same way anymore. Thus audiences could not help but see and hear Chicago Voices (a show that, like so many other happenings on stages and screens around the world, celebrates inclusiveness, truth and empathy) in a different light.

Rather than ignore our current social and political climate, or exploit potential antagonism, our collective choice was to use the warm-up to invite our Chicago Voices audience to come together, and we did it by asking them to take a few minutes before the show started to introduce themselves to someone sitting near them they’d never met before.

Go ahead. Reach out. Touch. Share some time and space with strangers, who might have come to hear something or someone different you did, but who all came to hear music. Together.

Our Chicago Voices audience did just that, and it was lovely. The theater was instantly filled with the same camaraderie that the performers were experiencing themselves, both on-and-backstage.

I like to think that this gesture of welcome, which reminded me of the “handshake of peace” we used to do in church, was the physically interactive version of what I would see Julie ask her audiences to do a few weeks later.

Share some time and space together. Be here now. Breathe together.

Quietly inspiring stuff.

The word “inspire” is, of course, derived from the Latin root for breath. I love the idea that breathing together is a way to connect with each other, on very deep and soulful levels. It’s a profound opportunity to show some support, exert a peaceful influence, and do something that we all too rarely get to do: really, truly connect.

We describe momens that are especially striking as “taking our breath away” or “breathtaking.” I love variations on words and phrases, and have always found it interesting that we use those phrases interchangeably, because to me, they're not. The former made me think of exhaling, while the latter conveyed inhaling. They're both necessary, but they're different kinds of moments. I love that the arts make us do both.

Birthday boy John Kander’s new show Kid Victory, created with the terrifically talented playwright and lyricist Greg Pierce, premiered a couple of years ago at the Signature Theatre, just outside of Washington DC. It told the tale of a young man attempting to recover from the trauma of having been abducted by a man he’d befriended online and then imprisoned for a year in his basement. Sounds horrifying, and it is, but in typical Kander fashion, this is not a punishing show. Kid Victory, like so many of John's shows, is not about exploriing darkness for the sake of being dark, but rather, diving deep into both human lightness and darkness with all nsight, compassion and love that demands, and seeing how we come out the other side.

That first production of Kid Victory was told in relatively objective terms, in that it moved us through a series of events and flashbacks, effectively showing us what happened to whom. It’s final image, a gorgeous moment between father and son, was powerfully impactful, and when the lights came up, I could feel the audience exhale as one. You know that feeling… the whispered “whoooooo” we make as we process a moment of sad and profound beauty, and together exhale it in a moment of genuine catharsis.

So memorable was that experience that I wondered what it would feel like seeing Kid Victory’s second iteration, which is still running at New York's Vineyard Theatre. The show is now more of a memory piece, with everything happening within the perspective and recollections of the young man as he struggles to re-acclimate to the world from which he had been so cruelly and manipulatively snatched.

In this new form, Kid Victory is even more empathic and beautiful, and when that same ending image of father and son reveals itself, I found myself taking a deep breath in, rather than letting one out. What had once left me feeling so beautifully devastated that I had to breathe it out, now filled me with something so devastatingly beautiful that I had to breathe it in.

Another mentor in my life, Jean Rothenberg, told me not long before she passed that we should view the truly important things in our lives the way we look at breathing. Which is to say, we can't live without them, but we’d be ill-served to obsess over them. That was her way of encouraging me to stay present, and be in the moment. Just like Julie Brannen. Just like John Kander.

So, in memory of Jean, in the wake of Julie's invocation, and on the anniversary of John's birth, I will now listen to some music, take some deep breaths, and then I think I’ll go see or hear something in a theater.

I think that's the way they'd want it.

Let’s See Action

If you're an arts lover, you are also an advocate and an activist. Here's how we can take some small but important steps together to make a real and much-needed difference in 2017.

Yesterday, I attended Congresswoman Jan Schakowsky's "Join The Resistance" rally at the Broadway Armory in Chicago, a stirring call to stand up for American values and against those who confuse those values for "whoever has the most toys wins."

Congresswoman Schakowsky, who has been representing Illinois' 9th Congressional District ("the fightin' 9th!") since 1999, is what you want in a congressional representative: smart, determined, responsive, pro-active and a genuine "speak truth to power" kind of person, no matter which party holds the White House, the Senate or the House of Representatives. I've been meeting with Jan for many years to talk about arts-related legislation, and can tell you that without question she's one of our fiercest advocates, someone who actively walks the walk when it comes to the arts (and, frankly, everything on which she works).

So it was unsurprising, deeply gratifying and extremely energizing that after the rally, she challenged me to help rally the arts community to create messages and take action that would not only effectively tell the good stories that need to be told (and who better to tell stories than people in the arts?) but also to make the telling and hearing of those stories fun and exciting.

So, as The Who once sang, Let's See Action.

So what does that mean? What can people who work in and around the arts, or simply love them passionately and recognize their power and their reflection of the best of humanity, do? Given our limited time and resources, what positive steps can we take? There must be some, because whether you wear the red, the blue or the purple, there's something for you to be concerned about as this new era begins.

Passivity is not an option. We must be positive and pro-active. I have complete sympathy for anyone who’s been protesting the outcomes of the election or the Electoral College. I understand why people have marched through streets, shut down buildings and flooded social media with angry, despondent cries of “Not My President.” If I can't get to Washington to march on January 21, I'll be marching in Chicago.

But I worry that this will be the extent of what we do. Many of us are deeply upset about the direction our government is taking, and I suspect many more will feel that way in the coming weeks and months, especially if they voted for Mr. Trump. But the fact is, he is, or soon will be, my President, and, if you live in America, yours. To say otherwise would be markedly un-American, not to mention short-sighted, petulant, counterproductive and the height of hypocrisy. Those of us who supported President Obama took rightful offense to Americans who said that he was not their President. Those who did not support Mr. Trump's candicacy, and I was among them, should remember that now.

More to the point, that kind of thinking risks letting ourselves off the hook too easily. It allows us to feel righteous and superior, which not only discourages us from participating in the process, it essentially removes us from the process altogether, on a volunteer basis. It's a haughty and wildly unproductive form of surrender.

I'm not suggesting that we shouldn't protest things that matter to us. We should, absolutely, and I am eager to see the constructive and creative ways that happens. That said, I'm more eager to see how we proactively work together for positive change, even if the only result is that key issues that matter to us are represented by greater numbers. That alone is huge. That alone is an election.

If you're an arts person, your mandate to take positive action is huge. Most of us who work in or around the arts, or support them in any way -- including being audience members, which for my money is one of the most important ways anyone can support the arts -- are, no matter what our political affiliations and philosophical predispositions, unnerved by a new administration whose leader has expressed a confusing and often contemptuous regard for free, creative and artistic expression.

The arts are about truth. They are about empathy. They are about democracy. Driven by both individual and collective expression, the arts are as “of, for and by the people” as it gets. Steeped in both establishing and following social behaviors of profound good and deep moral standing, their absence or diminishment makes this world scarier, more vulnerable, less beautiful, less democratic and decidely less human. A president who feels he can bully and abuse the arts, as he has done to so many other individuals, communities and entire sectors of business, is a president to whom we must stand up.

Confronted by this new and unprecedented reality, how do we, as vital and active participants in the arts, respond? Especially if our time and resources are limited?

I have an idea about that. It's incredibly easy and won’t cost you a dime. It's a small step, and I promise you won’t find yourself writing a check or being forced to volunteer time you may not have. (You can always do those things if you like, but that's not what I'm asking of you now.)

Here goes.

Join two email lists.

That's it.

The first one is the e-mail lists for Americans for the Arts, your nationwide arts advocacy and lobbying group. The second is for your statewide arts advocacy organization (if like me you live in Illinois, it's Arts Alliance Illinois; if you live elsewhere, in a moment I'll give you a link to find out who represents you).

Sounds easy? It is.

Sounds too small to make any kind of difference? Read on.

Lots of folks in the arts don't realize that we have our own lobbying groups working year-round to advance legislative efforts vital to our ability to carry on as working artists, arts organizations and arts-adjacent companies and individuals (in other words, all of us).

But we do, and they're terrific. I see firsthand what Americans for the Arts and Arts Alliance Illinois do for us, as an individual member of the former and a board member of the latter. I'm proud and impressed by the way these organizations serve, advance and lead the network of groups and individuals who cultivate, promote, sustain, and support the arts. They work hard to ensure that everyone has access to their transformative power. Through research, close collaboration with policymakers and public agencies, and robust communications, AFTA, AAI and other state organizations advance widespread support of all the arts, enhance the health of the arts & cultural sector, and foster a climate in which the broadest spectrum of artistic expression can flourish. When have these efforts ever been more important than now?

And there are a lot of current and critical issues over which Congress have authority to legislate, right now, including:

• arts funding on the local, state and national levels (and we who live in Illinois continue to learn the hard way about what happens when stage funding is held up or disappears);

• arts education policy and funding (and isn’t this more vital than ever? Isn’t it imperative that we provide models for creative, collaborative and cooperative thinking as early as possible?)

• tax policy (like whether people can take tax deductions for contribution to not-for-profits — and yes, this is one of the things that could go away, which would be devastating for our field)

• support for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, PBS and NPR (and I can personally vouch for the fact that these are and will continue to be the arts’ best media advocates);

• tech issues (like a free and open internet, which is critical to our field and which incoming cabinet members oppose; access to wireless microphone frequencies, which is in deep jeopardy and which could hurt or cripple many arts organizations; and online “bots” that allow online scalpers to gauge unwitting ticket buyers and undermine the credibility of our companies);

• cultural exchange programs through the State Department;

• improving the visa process for foreign guest artists;

• supporting programs that promote health through the arts, including veterans, children, and people suffering from dementia, Parkinson’s and other serious medical conditions;

• tax fairness for visual artists, which would allow them to take a deduction for the fair market value of their work when they donate it to charitable collecting institutions;

• and many more important issues that impact each and everyone one of us who works in, supports or simply loves the arts.

Huge stuff, right?

To help AFTA, AAI and other statewide organizations do their jobs effectively, we need to add as many supporters and voices as possible to their efforts. And that’s why I'm asking you to sign up for a couple of e-blast lists.

Here’s all that will happen when you do. You’ll get a couple of extra emails every month that will bring you up to date on important issues that affect our lives and our work. The information you receive will make it easier for all of us to protect and nurture the arts. It will provide insights into how our elected officials — who, we should never forget, work for us — deal with the arts and arts-related issues, which offers keen insights into how they govern in general.

This will make it easier to connect and work with your fellow artists, advocates and activists, and will go a long way to make sure that we will be able to continue the work that we and the world both cherish.

We are stronger than we think, and, in even greater and more enthusiastic numbers, we can be more influential than many of us know. Ours is a field that is not only a vital cultural, education and social force, but also a powerful economic driver. The arts are a multi-billion-dollar industry that employs more than four million people and generates more than $9 billion in federal tax revenue (and nearly twice that amount in state and local tax revenue). When legislators understand our economic impact, they tend to pay more attention to the vital social, cultural and educational issues about which we care so passionately.

Any legislative effort is an uphill struggle, but I’ve seen firsthand that Senators and Representatives do respond to our efforts. I’ve sat in congressional offices with fellow arts constituents, collectively presented our wants and needs, and then seen legislation supporting those wants and needs introduced on the floor of the House of Representatives. (You can, too… anyone is welcome to participate in these kinds of advocacy efforts in DC, state capitals and local communities.)

During our visits to DC with AFTA and the Alliance, we've asked our elected reps and their staffs this question: from how many people do you need to hear about any given issue for it to be given priority in the congressperson’s legislative agenda?

The answer: on average, between ten and fifteen people.

Between ten and fifteen people.

That blew us away. Just ten to fifteen emails or calls about the same issue during one week, and that issue gets on the boss’ desk. The cast of a small theater, dance or music performance could do that in one fell swoop. Imagine what could happen if our numbers were greater and our voices were louder.

Rest assured, if you sign up for these e-blasts, your email address won’t be shared with other agencies or individuals. It’s just us and our arts lobbyists, sharing information and working together to protect our field and the ever-important right to free speech, creative expression and free assembly.

If you want to get involved by coming to advocacy events, like coming to Washington DC for National Arts Advocacy Day (which this year is March 20-21) or other local community events, that would be fantastic. Not required... but fantastic.

And if not, please consider me your point person on helping to get issues that matter to you in front of our advocacy groups and our elected representatives and their staffs. I’d love work side by side with you, and if that isn’t feasible for you, then I’d love to be a rabble-rouser on your behalf. Seriously, bring me some rabble. Watch me rouse.

Having just witnessed a successful presidential campaign in which terrible stories were told and succeeded because they were conveyed with the bombast and apocalyptic urgency of a “Transformers” movie (and because better stories were told less than successfully), can there be any doubt that we have a more-urgent-than-ever need for a good story? Told well? By good storytellers?

That’s us.

And that’s what we need to do, together, right now.

Many of us will want to do more than this, so that we can actively rise to Jan's challenge. I can't wait to hear from you and brainstorm how we're going to do that.

But first, so that we can all take this first step together, I ask you to please join me. Click here to join the Americans for the Arts e-blast list; here for Arts Alliance Illinois; and, if you live elsewhere, here for the link to the National Assembly of State Arts Agencies, where you can find contact info for your state organization.

Individually, this is just a small step. But taken together… it's a march.

Winning vs. the Win-Win

One requires losing. The other is for everyone.

It's been several weeks since I last blogged, barely able to contain my rage after the release of the Access Hollywood tape that, somehow, did not manage to derail Donald Trump's presidential aspirations. It's been an excruciating stretch of time since then, where my words have failed me and my actions have seemed to me to be inconsequential relative to the hellstorm that I've feared will come to pass sometime after January 20.

I'm calmer now than I was then, and I'm pretty sure it's because in the last month or so, I've seen sixteen stage productions, gone to five movies (one of them four times -- a "Star Wars" movie will have that effect on me), read three books, listened to twenty or so new albums, gone to four museums and hung out with a whole lot of creative and artistic people.

It took a lot of art immersion therapy, but I feel like I finally have my feet back on the ground. Being around that much beauty, appreciating the extraordinary collaborations each work of art required and reminding myself that partaking in art is just as important as making it made me realize that, by hanging on to fear and anger as tightly as I have and by dwelling on the past and the future rather than the present, I was betraying every liberal bone in my body.

My favorite definition of “liberal” is “willing to respect or accept behavior or opinions different from one's own.” There's a lot that's been said and done that I cannot respect, but that definition said I could either respect OR accept, and so I accept what's happened as real, something on which I can build, and something from which I can move forward. Finally, I've been able to find a way and a place to use those all-important words born from the world of improvisation: "Yes and." Which, come to think of it, is now my new favorite definition of the word "liberal."

My favorite ways to be a liberal "yes-and-er" are to be an artist, an audience member and an arts advocate. In some way, no matter who you voted for, chances are that you, too, partake in one or more of these wildly liberal activities, all the time. You go to the movies, right? You watch TV, you read a book, you see a show, you listen to some music, you admire some fashion, you look at a building and think, wow, that's cool. And it is. All of it is very, very cool. And very liberal of you, opening yourself up to something new and beautiful like that. Well done.

Chances are that whatever you did, you loved it, and you'll do it again, and again. We’re all liberal that way, and it doesn’t matter if our next trip to a theater is to see “Rogue One” or “Hamilton,” we want to come out of it more excited and energized than we were going in. Transformed. Liberated, if you will.

That's what the arts are all about. And our incoming President, whom I and many others would call neither liberal nor conservative, says and does a lot of things that appear to stand against those things which the arts (and by extension all of us, as living, breathing human beings) stand for. Mr. Trump’s words and tweets about “Hamilton,” “Saturday Night Live,” the media at large and civil protests in general carry with them dangerous implications -- for all fields, and all countries. Whether his attacks on free speech and creative expression were genuine or simply a means of misdirection away from other pressing issues, they are an ominous and lazily crafted group of words to be coming from any democratic leader, let along the incoming President of the United States.

And yet I must stand in defense of Mr. Trump’s right to say them. That’s the artsy thing to do. It’s also the American thing to do.

Well... it's a half-artsy, half-American thing to do. At this point I've only listened. I haven't responded. I haven't said "and." And I will not allow myself to be someone who simply says "yes" to these words and ideas.

So... the "and."

In the stirring finale to Aaron Sorkin’s spectacularly written film “The American President,” Michael Douglas, portraying President Andrew Shepard (my second favorite fictional president after, of course, “The West Wing’s” Jed Bartlet), offers the kind of speech that I wish more people with microphones -- pundits, Republicans and Democrats alike -- had offered. Shepard, having been repeatedly provoked by a challenger for the presidency, finally decides that no one puts Andy in a corner.

“America isn't easy," he says. "America is advanced citizenship. You gotta want it bad, 'cause it's gonna put up a fight. It's gonna say, you want free speech? Let's see you acknowledge a man whose words make your blood boil, who's standing center stage and advocating at the top of his lungs that which you would spend a lifetime opposing at the top of yours. You want to claim this land as the land of the free? Then the symbol of your country can't just be a flag; the symbol also has to be one of its citizens exercising his right to burn that flag in protest. Show me that, defend that, celebrate that in your classrooms. Then, you can stand up and sing about the land of the free.”

When the fictional President Shepard pushes back on his fictional opponent Senator Rumson, he might as well be talking about the very real President-Elect Trump. "We have serious problems to solve, and we need serious people to solve them, and whatever your particular problem is, Bob Rumson is not in the least bit interested in solving it. He is interested in two things and two things only: making us afraid of it and telling you who's to blame for it.”

I like to think in most parts of the world, we operate differently than Senator Rumson and President-Elect Trump. Certainly we do in the arts worlds, where, bereft of significant fame and money, most of us do the work for the only reason left: because we love it, and because so does almost everyone else.

Sure, people have their own tastes. Some prefer movies to musicals, or books to sculpture, in the same way that some sports fans prefer baseball to football. Some music lovers think that rock isn't music at all, in the same way that some football fans think that what we Americans watch on autumn Sundays isn't really football. That's all fine -- at least we love something. In the end, whether your big thing this year was the "Game of Thrones," the “Gilmore Girls” reunion, the new Anne Patchett novel, the new Chance The Rapper album or the Shakespeare 400 festival, you’re an arts lover.

We all are.

Plus (and this can’t possibly be said enough), by any measure, be it economic, educational, social and cultural, any investment in the arts pays off exponentially for individuals, communities, states and countries (that they also unite us, touch our souls, create community, define humanity, explore our weakness, challenge our strengths, entertain, enlighten and promote the best possible behavior among people of all sizes, shapes, ages, nations, creeds, colors and political affiliations is a nice little side benefit). Bottom line: the arts practically invented the win-win scenario.

This is not to be confused with the “winning” that the President-Elect likes to talk about. His kind involves other people losing, which is usually unnecessary; and, according to him, it's going to happen so often that it will, in his own words, become “boring,” which is just weird.

“We’re going to win,” he says. “We’ll have so much winning.” “We’ll win everything.” To borrow from “The Princess Bride,” Mr. Trump, you use that word a lot. I do not think it means what you think it means.

The truth is, sir, that it's here within the arts that the lives of most people in the world are reflected and portrayed with far more honesty than anything I’ve ever seen you describe or any lifestyle I've seen you inhabit. Like most folks, and unlike you, we’re too busy working and caring for our families, friends and neighbors to spend a lot of time talking or thinking about "winning." In fact, the word “winning,” as you use it, doesn’t mean much to us. (And I know you're very enamored of award shows, but that’s other people talking about and evaluating the arts, and no, they don’t know what "winning" means, either.)

We work with and for each other, with a very simple and beautiful goal, which is to create things that will make people’s lives more interesting and beautiful. And if we have a hope for ourselves, it's that the work they've seen us create leaves them feeling inspired and empowered to go back to their lives with that much more energy, empathy and compassion, and that maybe they'll appreciate it enough to come back and let us do it again.

You seem to love outcomes, Mr. Trump, but we're more interested in a process (over which we have at least a little control, by choosing who we spend time with) than an outcome (over which we realize we have relatively little control, and from which we work hard to avoid getting too attached).

That’s why “win-win” makes so much more sense to us than “winners" and "losers.” That’s why we’re liberated to welcome the new, follow the fear, wade through the unknown, embrace the different, confront the awful, and overwhelm it with the power of good.

Which is why, Mr. Trump, unnerving as we find you, we’re rooting for you. As Americans and as artists, that’s what we do: root for people. When we write and tell our stories, we want all our characters to be interesting, and we want everyone in our audience to empathize with them. Even -- sometimes especially -- our antagonists, through whom we can explore our dark sides. We want them, at some level, to evolve, so that we can offer them, and thus ourselves, forgiveness and redemption. We did it for Darth Vader, Ebenezer Scrooge and The Grinch, so I bet we can do it for you -- if you're up to the challenge.

But don’t cross us or take us for granted; the Voldemorts, Saurons and Wicked Witches of the world stuck to their guns, and while they may have had their brief moments of power and control, in the end, they lost everything, as their kind always does. We learned a lot from them too, but they were obliterated. And while a lot of us don't like what you're about, we're not actually hoping for your obliteration. That would likely be bad for all of us. We'd much rather you be visited by three ghosts and wake up a better man, have your heart grow three sizes and take off the helmet to look upon us with your own eyes.

Should you be tempted to dismiss these stories as mere frivolous fantasy, Mr. Trump, may I advise you, for your own good... don't. Stories are the map of the human experience. They are the guide books to our fears, hopes, dreams and ideals. They are our sources of inspiration and our cautionary tales. They offer understanding, compassion, reflection and forgiveness. They allow us to go to the darkest of places, and survive them. They invite us to think more about our own stories, and how we might tell them better. And they offer us something that you have thus far failed to offer: hope.

The difference between us, Mr. President-Elect, isn't that you have power and we don't. It's that we have hope and you don't.

We acknowledge your right to be a bad storyteller, and to tell a bad story badly. In fact we appreciate it, not because we like what you say or how you say it, but because you remind us that there has never been a greater need for the good stories, told well, by the good storytellers.

Having done what President Shepard told us to do -- having felt our blood boil, and having defended at the top of our voice your right to say at the top of yours that which makes us feel crazy, frightened and angry -- we are coming to terms with what happens in the absence of the good story, when good storytellers are silenced or mute, and how pressing is the need for us to get back to work. And rest assured, a bunch of us are about to start taking our hope out for a spin and see what it can do.

Join us. Don’t join us. It's entirely up to you. Whatever you decide, we're back. And we’re not just starting a new chapter. We’re writing a new book.

Everyone ready? Then we’ll begin.

"Once upon a time…"

Live Long And Prosper. Or Die Trying.

That was the year that was. And in way, it's the year that always will be.

For “Star Trek” fans, there’s a stern test to discover how dedicated you are to the now nearly 50-year old franchise. It’s called “Star Trek V: The Final Frontier,” and if you can sit through it and still want to see “Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country,” you’ve passed.

(Even if you hate “Star Trek V,” as many understandably do, you should still see “Star Trek VI,” not only for the great story but also for the best Shakespeare references that space opera has to offer.)

Any franchise, especially one that’s lasted five decades, is going to have its ups and downs, but one of Star Trek’s unique qualities is that even its lowest points have meritorious moments. I remember watching “The Final Frontier” with my dad and my sister (“Star Trek” is very big in my family), and even while knowing that this was not one of the series’ stellar installments, I was nevertheless struck by a particular piece of dialogue that, for all the silliness going on around it, still managed to cut me to the quick.

“Star Trek V’s” antagonist, y’see, is converting people to his own personal cult, in an effort to commandeer a starship and fly it to the center of the galaxy, where God, it seems, is rumored to live. Our villain does so by “taking away pain” – I still don’t really understand how he does that – after which people are overcome with serenity and calm, and are willing to do his bidding.

He attempts this on Captain Kirk, and of course our hero resists, saying, “Pain and guilt can't be taken away with a wave of a magic wand. They're the things we carry with us, the things that make us who we are. If we lose them, we lose ourselves. I don't want my pain taken away. I need my pain.”

I know others have said something similar, in more poetic and profound terms. To honor the spirit of “Star Trek VI,” I should note that Shakespeare did it pretty darn well when he wrote “Pain pays the income of each precious thing.” (This is no slight on Star Trek; Shakespeare pretty much said everything better than anyone else, even Mr. Spock.)

Ever since hearing those lines, I’ve carried the idea of needing pain, and of how pain helps shape who we are. Even during my roughest of times, I find myself both incapable and unwilling to repress feelings that some might call negative, and that I would simply call, you know, “feelings.”

Emotions to me are neither right nor wrong; actions, on the other hand, are a different matter entirely. If I feel horrible, there’s probably a pretty good reason for it. Doesn’t mean I can act however I want, but I’d be in trouble if I repressed those feelings. Repression does our relationships and us a disservice, and I don’t want that and can’t have that. I need to feel as bad, or good, as I’m feeling.

And I don’t want bad feelings to go to waste. Even now.

My friend Eric Eatherly was killed in an automobile accident last week. Eric, one of the nicest, smartest, most cheerful guys you could hope to meet, was 35. I first knew him as a performer with Hedwig Dances, when he and his fellow dancers in Jan Bartoszek’s wonderful contemporary company agreed to be part of our Chicago Dance Project series. Eric also danced for Shirley Mordine, Melissa Thodos, Rebecca Rossen and others, before an injury forced a career change, and, as a member of the terrific team at The Silverman Group, he became one of Chicago’s most beloved press reps. His brand of infectious enthusiasm and out-and-out niceness never ceased, and never ceased to impress.

And then, just like that, in the time it takes for one car to crash into another, or in the moment one needs to open an email with the subject line “sad news” and click on a link to a Chicago Sun-Times obituary, Eric’s particular brand of liveliness has been transformed into a memory, and a date in January that was to have been a party to celebrate his wedding will instead be a memorial service to commemorate his life.

The car crash that killed Eric and critically injured his dad happened less than 48 hours before the end of a year which, for the Chicago theater and dance worlds, was marked by a death toll not seen since the days when HIV was running rampant through the arts worlds and a diagnosis was an absolute death sentence. Eric’s passing shakes me to the core not only on its own terms but also as part of a seemingly endlessly mounting list of names:

Molly Glynn. Bernie Yvon. Sati Ward. Trinity Murdock. Terry Fox. Lori Helfand. Bob Christen. Dyane Earley. Harold Ramis. Joel Lambie. Roy Leonard. Fred Kaz. Sheldon Patinkin. Richard Schaal. And now, just as 2015 has started, Julia Neary.

I’m never ready for wonderful people to pass on, and losing mentors who were in their 70’s and 80’s is hard enough, but more than half of those people were under the age of 52 when they passed.

I’m neither a good enough nor smart enough man to find any sense of order or rightness in that, nor do I find any fairness in the rash of scary illnesses that over the last few years have struck so many family and friends.

In the face of all of this, I feel awful. I feel scared. I feel angry.

Which is also why, I think, I feel so lucky.

And I think I feel lucky not only because I’m still here, surrounded by amazing people and immersed in communities who have shown extraordinary grace and kindness to each other, but also because I have been gifted, undeservedly, with enough of their grace and kindness to allow me to feel as bad as I do without feeling self-conscious, and as hopeful as I am that better days are ahead of us without feeling delusional.

These people, and their good will, have allowed me to do something productive with this pain, and not let it go to waste. It’s true that I don’t want to feel all of what I’m feeling right now, but given the givens, I’d be worse off if I were feeling any way else.

I love that so many of us – and I’m biased here, but I think this is especially true in the performing arts worlds – are quickly compelled to talk, sing and dance in celebration of a life, rather than dwell on mourning a death.

For all of the dark and disturbing things that happen to human beings, on both intimate and global levels, there does seem to be something in the communal human psyche that urges us to revel in what we shared with the person we lost, what we remember about them and how they changed us. And maybe, just maybe, that something better, or at least something else, comes after this.

There are all kinds of books, films, plays and dances that speculate on what might happen after we die, which says something very interesting about us. Whether these are the result of humanity’s synchronous understanding that there is more to the universe than meets our eyes or pure wishful thinking, these visions are wonderfully revealing.

My favorite one is Albert Brooks’ very funny and insightful movie “Defending Your Life,” in which he starred alongside a never-more-luminous and funny Meryl Streep, with some shrewd supporting performances by Rip Torn, Lee Grant and Buck Henry.

In Brooks’ vision, we Earth-bound residents are wildly unevolved residents of a lower level of an expansive Universe. Because we’ve only learned to use somewhere between 3-5% of our gray matter (earning us the nickname “Little Brains”), we are thus equipped to deal with one thing: fear. When we die, we all go to Judgment City, where our fear-based lives are put on a trial conducted by some of The Universe’s more advanced souls (the ones who use up to 50% of their brains). The Universe, it turns out, records every moment of our lives, and the purpose of the trial is to measure how well we dealt with fear, from the first day of our lives to the last. Prosecutors and defenders present at key moments from our life recordings to present their case that we either conquered our fears or succumbed to them; if it’s the former, we get to move on to the next level, and if it’s the latter, we go back to Earth and try it again.

I remember seeing that movie with my friend Sara Bibik at the old Evanston neighborhood theater when it first came out. We must have spent three hours afterwards at the Noyes Street Café talking about what moments our attorneys would have chosen, and if we would have made it to the next level or been sent back.

I had a couple of big fear monkeys on my back at the time, and “Defending Your Life” indeed inspired me to go back and face them, successfully I think, although I won’t know for sure until I head (back?) to Judgment City. Certainly some other fears still linger, which is why “Defending Your Life” remains a touchstone, and a source or encouragement, as I think about them, face them, and ponder the continuity of my life from moment to moment, year to year, person to person, situation to situation.

As 2014 ends, many of us in the Chicago performing arts communities are bidding it an exhausted and embittered “good riddance.” Some part of us must know that none of what’s happened is a personal assault by the universe against us. And surely we intellectually grasp that however we attempt to divide time into years and days and hours, really it’s just one big river of time as far as the universe is concerned. With great humility, most of us must acknowledge that however awful this particular eddy has been for so many, there are others out there in the world being tossed about by stormier seas and sucked under by more insidious rip tides.

Still, we feel beat up, and rightly so. It’s no wonder so many of us have talked about being glad 2014 is done, and that’s ok. It gives us something to point at, maybe even something to blame, as if all of this had something to do with this particular revolution around the sun.

Still, I found myself nodding my head while reading a recent Facebook post from my friend Terry Kinney, a Steppenwolf co-founder, an actor/director extraordinaire and a fascinating human being. He wrote, “I actually don't think you can leave a year behind. It's the difference of a day. One day it's 2014, and then it's suddenly 2015. But can you leave 2014 behind you, discarded and rejected? I question that concept. Life is measured in years, but also in months and weeks, but mostly in days, minutes and seconds.”

Indeed. And I don’t want to forget any of it. I don’t want to numb the pain, considerable though it is. I don’t want to diminish the impact of any of the losses that, to this Little Brain anyway, feel senseless, tragic and sometimes just plain freakish and mean. Bring the pain. Every drop.

Because if I’m going to learn how to use more than my 3-5%... if I’m going to get smarter, and more peaceful… if I’m going to follow the one smart thing Captain Kirk said in “The Final Frontier” (and, seriously, that’s about the only smart thing anyone says in “The Final Frontier”)… then I’m going to have to feel it, all of it, and see where I land when I do.