When I was eleven-years-old, my life was forever changed. It was not changed in tragic circumstances, as it would be continually over the next few years of my adolescence, but by a beautifully unexpected evening. That summer, as I was dancing on the precipice of puberty, I witnessed a musical live on stage for the first time. Now, I had seen a production of Christmas Carol here and there, as well as a couple of ballets, but those had not stirred much in me. But as I sat on a blanket in eastern Kansas, sweltering in the heat of August with three hundred other captivated souls, I was transfixed by the production of SEUSSICAL happening before me. I had always been attracted to stories, both literary and cinematic, and had devoured any Golden Age movie musical I could growing up. Seeing SEUSSICAL was the closest thing to an MGM musical I had experienced to that point. But THIS was better; THIS was on a whole new scale: I could feel it, I could sense it, I could touch it in theory (though that would have been inappropriate). The aspect of the show that had me most enraptured was the young woman playing Gertrude McFuzz, the bird with the one feather tail. Her name was Ashley, and she was the daughter of my mother’s best friend from high school. Ashley was someone I had known practically since infancy, and being that she was almost ten years my senior, I had always looked up to and idolized her for her humor and vivacity. Those qualities were dialed up to a hundred when she was on stage–her very being seemed to propel itself into the audience; she was effervescent. By the time the show ended, I declared to my mother that I was going to be an actor. This was really seismic because, you see, I had never really wanted many things for myself before. Nor, to be honest, did anything especially excite me–at least, it hadn’t for several years. The painful period between childhood and adolescence had not been easy for me, but in the theatre I found not only a means of expression, but a way to connect with people of all ages. Suddenly, I was not frozen with shyness all of the time. Moreover, as someone usually uncomfortable with excess attention, I found I reveled in it, especially when I got to make people laugh. I fell in love with watching Ashley perform, because it felt like the natural extension of her core gifts as a person, and I have been pursuing that honest self-expression ever since. By declaring my intention to be an actor that evening, I gave my life a meaning and a shape that I am continually grateful for–and I have mainly Ashley to thank.