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The Miracle Worker, the first and last show I did props for.
My Fair Lady, not my first show for which I worked on the set, but my favorite.
Jesus Christ Superstar, the first show I was the crew head for the light crew.
And the most formative memory for me:Jekyll and Hyde. I was sixteen years old when I got the opportunity to design lights for that show, my first one. To this day it’s one of my favorite musicals. Besides being wildly underrated in the theater community, I will forever associate that show with realizing that I didn’t care what it took; I would find a way to do lighting design for the rest of my life. I remember telling my dad that I didn’t care if it paid pennies—I couldn’t believe people got to do that for a living.
I haven’t listened to the soundtrack in ages, but now that I’m thinking about the show, I bring it up on my phone and throw in my earphones. “This is the Moment”—my favorite song from the show—plays like surround sound in my ears. It takes me right back to being in high school, listening to this soundtrack on repeat, colors and concepts looping in my mind for weeks. My grades at school suffered for a couple months because I was singularly obsessed with lighting this show. I barely slept; my parents had to remind me to eat. I was a teenage boy lovesick over a musical and its lighting design.
I still get this way when I design a show. It’s one of the few things that, when I’m in the zone, I lose track of time and space and self. I try to imagine a version of my life where only a fraction of my time is spent on the lighting design and I’m forced to split my energy and attention between all tech aspects of a show. My limbs feel heavy and the theater seems smaller.
As a thought exercise, I consider my life if I focused solely on lighting design. On what it might feel like to chase opportunities but to always be doing something that makes me feel alive. My limbs don’t feel so heavy anymore.
Maybe I’ve always known what I wanted to do. Maybe the issue isn’t the knowing.
“Ian?” Robert says my name, but it sounds far away.
I shake my head, clearing my thoughts, and realize that Robert is standing in front of me. And probably has been for a bit. He’s waving and I pop my earphones out and back into their case.
“Sorry, I was— Actually, I was listening toJekyll and Hyde. Thinking about my first show here,” I say, but I feel like I’ve been caught. Like he could hear my thoughts.
“What a fun show. You did a great job lighting it. As good as people twice your age have done for shows here.”
Robert takes the seat next to me, surveying the stage.
“I love it here,” he says. His voice is softer, somehow more vulnerable than I’ve ever heard it. “I won’t stay forever, but it’ll kill me to go.”
I relate to his words more than I expected to. “Are you thinking about retiring?”
“Maybe in a few more years. There’s life in me yet.” He turns to me with a grin. “And you? Will you pass a few years here?”
He asks like he knows the answer and yet still asks with hope.
“I think I’d regret choosing this,” I say with a shaky voice. “As much as I love it here, I don’t think this is my final destination.”
Robert nods, his smile never faltering. “I feel there’s only one appropriate response to that,” he says.
I know what’s coming. Robert says this at the end of every show closing. He gathers the cast and we stand in a circle, holding hands, awaiting the benediction. Even now, he puts a fatherly hand on my shoulder and recites the words I know by heart.
“Your name is forever etched into the walls of this theater. Your voice forever absorbed into its foundation. You are stamped upon the heart of this stage. Whether this is your first time here, your fifth, or your last, you will always have a home here at Red Barn.”
And now, as it always does, his words bring tears to my eyes. It feels right, saying no to the safe thing, something I never thought I’d say.
But I’m a different man than I was three months ago.
All thanks to a one-act I never even wanted to be in.
25
JADE
“It is not night when I do see your face . . .”Act II, Scene I
“Hey, Jade, it’s me. It’s Ian. I didn’t think you’d pick up. I actually sort of hoped you wouldn’t. I wanted to be able to tell you this and make sure you had all the space you needed to think or whatever. I . . . I still have really strong feelings for you. Maybe there’s another word for it—I don’t know. What I do know is that I’ve never felt anything for anyone close to the way I feel about you. And you might be ready to give up on that, but I’m not. So I’m going to wait for you. We only have a semester left of school, but I want to spend it with you. I want you to be my girlfriend, and maybe that word scares you, so we don’t have to use it. We can use whatever word you want. As long as it means that you’re mine. You asked me once what I wanted to be when I grew up, and I have a new answer: yours. I want to be yours, Jade. So . . . yeah. The ball is in your court. Sorry for the sports metaphor. What about . . . ‘it’s your line now’? I said my monologue, and now it’s your turn?Anyway . . . I hope your Thanksgiving break is okay. You know where to find me when we get back to school.”
By the time my Thanksgiving break is over, I have Ian’s voicemail memorized.
When he called, I watched his name pop up on my screen. I almost threw my phone across the room, but instead I held it and stared at it while it vibrated in my hand, until the call went to voicemail. I thought I was in the clear until the voicemail notification popped up. I didn’t listen to it for a whole day for fear of what he had to say. He wouldn’t have called if it was just a casual chat. Whatever was in that voicemail was going to make it very difficult for me to keep away from Ian. My resolve when I walked away from him two weeks ago was exactly enough to help me walk away. Staying away has been much harder.
