“Voyage de la Vie” – Singapore
The saying goes: “There’s a broken heart for every light on Broadway.” My feeling is for every light on Broadway there’s a kid with a dream. Somewhere along the way the kid stopped living his/her dream and started to live someone else’s and that’s where the broken hearts come from. I’ve always said be careful who you stand next to, you don’t want to catch their dream. Live your own dream. I’m a kid that lived my dream and I’m fortunate enough to still be living it.
I suppose I’m too old to be called a kid anymore. But I’ve always thought of everyone in the theater as a kid. To me it’s not a sign of age, it’s an indication of your spirit. The colleagues I’ve worked with whom I’ve admired the most had that “can-do” spirit that we all have as children. There are no boundaries, no restrictions, only hope and the belief if I dream harder it will come true. I worked with George Abbott who is often referred to as the “Father of American Theater.” Mr. Abbott was the biggest kid in the neighborhood. At one hundred years old he still had that gleam of adventure in his eye you only find in the undying spirit of a child with a dream and a purpose.
There are people I’ve worked with who have taken offense to me calling them “kids.” They find it demeaning in some form or other. It’s as if I’m indicating their lack of knowledge or education. But for me, we’re all a bunch of “kids” just putting together a show in the backyard. The same way we put on shows when we were growing up in all those small towns across the country before we packed up and moved to the big city to find our dreams. I use “kid” as a term of endearment to illustrate the person has not lost their inner child, the kid that allowed us to search for the dream.
The difference for me now? Not much. I’m still that “kid” putting on shows in the back yard. The shows just got bigger and a lot more expensive.