josephandrewhanson: The first day of rehearsals for Dames at Sea in Tangier nearly ended me — I was the only person in the company who had never done this before. We all had five days to learn the show. Picture standing in the beating Moroccan sun, attempting to hold your own with some of the most accomplished musical theater professionals in the world, while privately aware that you prepared for it partly on YouTube. My own credentials were a senior-year production of Oklahoma! at St. John's School in Houston, and a few weeks of tap lessons. Something in me just shut down. That night juleshough and summerstrallen quietly came to check in with me. They did what theatre people do when they are at their most generous: they made room for someone else's terror. I went home, screamed into my pillow, and slept. The next morning, I made a deal with myself: I would enjoy every second, whether I was any good at it or not. I stopped trying to prove I deserved to be there and started paying attention to what a privilege it was to be there at all. The stage was built directly over the swimming pool of veere_grenney . One night only. No recording. No second performance. No net. Somewhere in the interval, Morocco beat Canada. We were standing backstage in the dark in sailor costumes, and an entire country was roaring somewhere beneath us. I keep thinking about the man who walked onto that stage that night. He learned an entire musical in five days and walked out over the water to perform it a single time, in front of people whose work he had admired his whole life, with no net and no second take. He did not flinch. — None of this happens without Rob Ashford. There are very few people generous enough — or mad enough — to hand someone an opportunity like this and trust them to rise to it. Thank you for believing I could. And to samgravitte and rashaanjames2 , who taught me to sing and tap in what can only be described as musical theatre triage — thank you.
