A Late Start

Good morning. I am currently just waking up and it’s almost 9 am. We stayed up late for the Tonys and to keep track of what was happening in Los Angeles. (I believe it’s the beginning of the end for this regime.) So, both of us slept in and it’s thrown us off.

On my mind this morning. Let me just say that Audra McDonald’s performance as Mama Rose, singing the number Rose’s Turn, is the most powerful musical theater performance I have ever seen. This is a performance for the ages. Don and I are still talking about it today. She should have won the Tony. It was the musical theater equivalent of King Lear. Extraordinary. Gut wrenching. A reinterpretation of Rose that is stunning.

And one more thing about the Tony Awards,. I stopped counting the actors I have coached and worked with at the number 15. Two of my former students were up there. I’ve worked with Brandon Jacobs Jenkins, who won the Pulitzer Prize and the Tony for Purpose. In those years when I watched the Tonys as a young girl, then an aspiring actress, I would have never imagined that these people would be my colleagues, that I could say “I know him or her, I’ve coached them.” Or, “I was his teacher.” I’ve been working in professional theater for over 50 years. I’ve trained young actors. I’ve worked on and off-Broadway, in regional theaters around the country, When I have the opportunity to step back and note the number of people I have been blessed to teach and/or coach, I am humbled. Things get put into perspective and I realize that I’ve made an impact. I am so blessed.

And I have to note that my dear friend Jan and my dear friend Joe are the ones who encouraged me to quit my dead-end job in Detroit, audition for graduate school, and change my life. Nothing that has happened in my career would have happened without that loving push. To say my life changed for the better would be putting it mildly.

I’m enormously grateful always, but especially today.

The spirea has bloomed and it’s a massive splash of pink. I’ll try to take a photo of the entire bush, which was tiny when I planted it, believe it or not!