Here Lies Love at The Public Theater (photo by Joan Marcus)

For some people, the words “interactive theatre” strike fear into their hearts, and they’ll do anything to avoid it. The prospect of being accosted by an actor, of having the spotlight turned on them, of potentially being embarrassed in front of others for the sake of everyone else’s amusement is something they equate with impromptu public speaking or a trip to the dentist. They certainly don’t want to pay for the opportunity to have this occur.

I have no such fear. I gave in to the participation at Sleep No More with only slight resistance (I was ultimately rewarded with a soft kiss on my neck from one actress, the only person to access that area in such a manner since I met the woman who is now my wife more than a dozen years ago). I threw myself into Queen of the Night with more enthusiasm. I dream of being brought up on stage by Bill Irwin and David Shiner, or by Penn & Teller, to be their prop or their stooge, as they see fit. I lean forward eagerly when those teams start scanning the audience. Perhaps I’ve never been selected because, after many visits, I look too eager.

But this should not suggest that I am an exhibitionist, least of all in every circumstance. As a result, my own particular bugaboos initially kept me from even considering two current shows, until I reminded myself of my commitment to not just see work that has the most obvious appeal for me, but to challenge myself more. That’s what pushed me into seeing Here Lies Love and Drunk Shakespeare, two radically different shows that few would likely ever group together. But they each featured elements that trigger my anxiety, my awkwardness, my flight reflex, so for me they’re of a piece.

Even with all the acclaim for its original engagement at The Public Theater, the words that leapt out at me in connection with HLL were “disco” and “dancing,” which both separately and together hold no appeal whatsoever. I lived through the original disco era without ever enjoying the music (I was moving out of prog rock and into British power pop at the time), and while I wouldn’t have undertaken to steamroll disco records (someone really did this as a stunt), I didn’t care to own or hear the music at all, unavoidable as it was. As for dancing, I have no natural gifts in this area whatsoever and few things make me so self-conscious as the act of attempting to move in some relationship to music, be it a formal waltz, a Broadway showstopper, or rock and roll. I’ll nod my head or tap my feet in rhythm, but that’s my limit.

The complete, rotating cast of Drunk Shakespeare (photo by Della Bass)

With Drunk Shakespeare, the first word in the title was more than off-putting, despite my affection for the latter. Though I have sampled alcohol on a few occasions over the years, I never cared for it; I was probably priggishly moralistic about it in my youth (though the only two times I was ever drunk were as a teen), but my ongoing avoidance of liquor is really rooted in nothing more than not caring for the taste and having no interest in developing it (this applies to vegetables as well, FYI). As a result, I have spent many an evening watching friends get gently tipsy or utterly blotto, while my consciousness remained unaltered. So a show in which an actor aggressively drinks but still performs his or her role, in an environment which encourages the audience to imbibe along with them, seemed like paying for the opportunity to watch strangers get smashed, which wasn’t much fun even when I watched my friends do it.

I ultimately saw Here Lies Love because of the overwhelming critical enthusiasm that prompted its return to The Public this spring; I needed to find out what had everyone so excited. I decided to see Drunk Shakespeare because it is drawn from the work of the company Three Day Hangover, the leadership trio of which includes a woman who interned at The O’Neill when I ran it, as well as her husband. I had skipped their last production because of my prejudices and I didn’t feel good about it, because I felt I was being unsupportive of the woman who had been a diligent worker years earlier and who I was pleased to reconnect with recently.

Now this is where you’ll expect me to say that in both cases, the shows were revelations which upended my previous biases. But I’m afraid I can’t. When exhorted to dance along at HLL, I hugged the perimeter of the endlessly reconfigured staging areas and moved only when a shifting platform required me to do so, even as others joined in with abandon. At Drunk Shakespeare I attempted to sip some Jameson’s Irish Whiskey, once the favored spirit of my college drama troupe, but found I could barely get it past my lips, let alone consume enough to have any impact on my blood alcohol level. No fun at a party then, no fun at a party now.

That said, there was a key difference. I have long ago stopped wondering what within me makes dancing such torture, or caring when people quiz me in amazement about my abstemiousness. There’s no real peer pressure on these issues anymore and if one or both are limitations in the perception of others, then so be it. I never wanted to be John Travolta and realize I can’t possibly be Gene Kelly; I’ll never appreciate a fine wine or enjoy a round of beers at the end of the day. I don’t need to move to love music; a truly great hot cocoa gives me all the spirit lifting I need, sans spirits.

Selfie with cast members of Drunk Shakespeare

As a result, though I stood outside the action of Here Lies Love and Drunk Shakespeare, much as I had stood literally at the fringes and figuratively outside so many social events over so many years, I could enjoy them – and the people enjoying them – without condescension or alienation. I could appreciate the shows even without being fully immersed, but also without feeling like the odd man out, the way drinking and dancing had made me feel for so long. I guess it’s a sign of comfort in my own skin that I didn’t feel for many years, as well as an affirmation that things I might instinctively avoid because of long-held fears, I can now enjoy, opening me up to new experiences in the theatre and, perhaps, outside of it as well.

So shake that thang, boogiers of all ages at Here Lies Love. Drink up, college dudes and bachelorette parties who enjoy The Bard and Jagermeister at Drunk Shakespeare. I can’t fully join with you, but I’m glad you’re having fun with theatre.

P.S. Three Day Hangover is about to begin performances of Twelfth Night, or Sir Toby Belch’s Lonely Heart Club Cabaret, featuring karaoke with a live band. Have I mentioned that I happily sing in public, often a bit too loudly, even when I probably shouldn’t? I can’t wait to go. They’ve been warned and, now, so have you.

It’s a funny thing about milestones, the way certain thresholds get set in our minds. If you follow reporting on the movie industry, breaking the $100 million gross barrier is a major achievement (and for those of us in the arts, an astronomical figure), although its not always connected to the cost of the film under discussion. But that number has been a yardstick for years, once cause for double page ads in Variety whenever it was reached, regardless of whether the movie that achieved it was released in the 60s, 70s, 80s or today – despite inflation making the success happen a little faster with every passing year. To be sure, plenty of movies still don’t make it, but it’s a less rarified club than it was in the days of The Sound of Music or Star Wars.

Once upon a time, when people still spoke of the price of a loaf of bread as an economic indicator, gas prices crossed a big threshold when a gallon broke over the $1.00 price point. People under 40 may not even remember this being breached. This was a big deal in those non-digital days, when prices couldn’t simply be altered with a tiny bit typing; I happened to be in England a few years back when the price of a liter of petrol broke the £1 mark, resulting in some creative solutions to signage that never anticipated announcing such a sum.

In theatre, in my lifetime, the big round number that sticks in my memory was the $100 ticket for The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby, though it could be explained away by the massive physical production, cast size and length. It seemed a one-off as opposed to a trend-setter. Miss Saigon had $100 tickets at the start of its run, but didn’t sustain them, dropping back to the then more typical $65. The $100 price cropped up again for the 1999 revival of The Iceman Cometh, which by virtue of its length, simply couldn’t give enough performances in a week to make economic sense otherwise. You may know of other isolated instances.

We didn’t truly reach the $100 asking price per ticket milestone until The Producers introduced the $100 ticket in the wake of rave reviews, also giving us the innovation of the VIP ticket at the extraordinary price of $480. This was in 2001, just 13 years ago. At the time, other hits were quick to match The Producers, with Mamma Mia! jumping to $100 per ticket just two months later.

But it should be noted that the $100 price was the theatre equivalent of a hotel’s “rack rate,” the stated top price for rooms which were in reality variable and negotiable. In theatre, through group sales, discount offers, the beloved TKTS booth and day of show lotteries you could still see a Broadway show for much less than that. As a result, over the past decade, while regular prices have risen, especially at the most successful shows, the average price paid on Broadway stayed under $100 per seat. That is, until last year, the just-completed 2013-14 Broadway season, when the average ticket was $103.92, up $5.50 over the year before.

So while articles may be trumpeting record revenues and record attendance, they’re either downplaying, avoiding or ignoring the true breaking of the $100 threshold, preferring to lead with the allure of numbers in the millions (attendance) or billions (dollars). That’s a shame, because in terms of what matters to the average audience member, the average ticket price seems much more essential news. To me, that’s the headline.

It’s always important when discussing prices over time to acknowledge overall price changes in comparable fields or the economy as a whole. So let me point out that in the period since The Producers in 2001, the Consumer Price Index has risen from 177 to 233, an increase of 32%. The average movie ticket price nationally has gone from $5.65 to $8.13, a jump of 44%. But the Broadway jump from $58.72 to $103.92? That’s an increase of 77%.

I don’t have the resources to analyze all of the factors contributing to that jump, beyond the prevalence of premium or VIP seating, along with hit shows with higher prices that don’t need to discount (The Book of Mormon and Wicked) and superior supply and demand management (The Lion King). Maybe Nate Silver and his Five Thirty Eight team could work on this and tell us whether there’s a valid economic underpinning, or whether its just naked supply and demand having its day.

But surely if Broadway price hikes outstrip the economy and even other entertainment options, Broadway will eventually reach a tipping point that could have an impact on the already dicey economics of producing and running shows. Purchasing decisions based on price could put even more shows at risk for sustaining an economically viable run, whether in theory, as a Broadway engagement is contemplated, or even once it’s up and running.

So I want to call out this pricing milestone for all to see, and wonder where it will lead our commercial theatre yet a few more years down the line. If price resistance takes hold, if the Broadway price-value equation tips too far with the former outweighing the latter, will it be a place where shows can only be smash hits and utter flops, with no mid-level performers managing to run? If that happens, I hope it will prompt more people to sample institutional and independent theatre, here in New York and elsewhere. But on Broadway, and indeed at every level in the arts, ticket pricing is our global warming crisis, steadily rising year after year without raising true alarm and provoking meaningful action, until it threatens to swamp us all.

“Saturday at 10? It’s a date!”
Neil Patrick Harris in Hedwig and the Angry Inch

Imagine my surprise when I discovered that Broadway’s 7 pm curtain on Tuesdays was introduced more than 11 years ago. I thought it a somewhat more recent innovation, especially since I still regularly attend shows where audience members enter at about 7:50, usually far into the first act, looking embarrassed, angry or both.

Of course, this curtain time is no longer limited to Tuesdays, as many shows also play on Thursdays at 7, and shorter shows that can still give their company an appropriate break between matinee and evening even manage it on Wednesdays.

I remember the doomsayers when the Tuesday plan began: people wouldn’t be able to eat dinner, restaurant business in the theatre district would suffer, suburban patrons would be deterred from coming in for a show given the compressed travel time. That doesn’t seem to be the case, because while overall seasonal attendance has fluctuated between 11.5 and 12.5 million in the past 10 years on Broadway, there’s no evidence that the change in curtain times hurt business and it’s entirely possible that the adjustment helped to stave off declines by introducing flexibility.

Of course, that flexibility has gone far beyond the 7 or 8 pm curtain options. There are also shows with 7:30 weeknight performances, matinees variously at 1 pm, 2 pm, 2:30 pm, and 3 pm, and family oriented shows may well play two shows on Saturday and two on Sunday. (I remember the 1999 Broadway revival of You’re A Good Man, Charlie Brown experimenting with three show Saturdays, though that was short lived and, to my knowledge, never repeated.). At long last, the Thursday matinee (long seen in London) has been added. Right now, Hedwig and the Angry Inch, perhaps to retain a connection with its downtown roots, has 7 pm and 10 pm shows on Saturdays, a performance schedule that was once commonplace in the Off-Broadway of my younger days. I’m probably leaving a few options out.

I recount all these variants because I think it’s worth recognizing that Broadway producers and theatre owners, no doubt in collaboration with the theatrical unions, have proven that by being responsive to the changing needs of audiences, they can break out of habits for which the rationale may be long forgotten. For tourists, this means there are more possibilities of catching a show; for die-hard theatregoers, it means their binge weekends can be even more packed, in that eternal quest to see as many shows as possible in a limited number of days. For local audiences, it means they may have plenty of evening ahead of them post-show, or the opportunity to get to bed earlier on theatre nights.

I will say that this proliferation of performance times doesn’t surprise me in the least. Growing up in Connecticut, many theatres there had 4 pm Saturday matinees (followed by 8:30 or 9 pm evening shows) and the 4 pm shows were usually the fastest to sell out, no matter what was on stage. 4 pm shows also yielded the most geographically diverse audience, since the schedule allowed for day-trips with the greatest options of complementary activities – even plenty of time to sit by a pool or at the beach before heading to the theatre. And it was in 1985 that we surveyed our audience at Hartford Stage about their weeknight performance preferences, finding that by a 2 to 1 margin, they wanted 7:30 instead of 8 pm. It was implemented with nary a complaint.

All of this is merely a reminder that, as we search for ways to retain or develop audiences, the most simple tried and true elements of past patterns may not be something to cling to, just as abandoned practices may yet come into vogue once again. What may have been just fine five years ago may not hold today. We’ll only know for sure by experimenting – and by asking our audiences for their input whenever possible. We’re never going to be Netflix when it comes to entertainment on demand, but we might find there are some demands we can easily meet, if we’d just listen, and give things a try.

Note: I fear the headline that ran with this piece was misleading, since the column focused more on how companies not known for traditional musical theatre were making it a part of their producing mix. That said, if the resources expended on opera were allocated to new musicals then, well, wouldn’t it be loverly?

Bryn Terfel and Emma Thompson in Sweeney Todd. Nathan Lane reprising his career-making role in Guys and Dolls. Film actor Billy Zane and musical veteran Jenn Gambatese in The Sound of Music. Three intriguing stage productions with one common thread: none was produced by a theatre company.

Respectively, they were mounted by the New York Philharmonic, Carnegie Hall and Chicago Lyric Opera. They drew upon Broadway artists, but none were on Broadway.

It seems that when non-theatre companies want a sure thing they turn to musicals. While theatre companies, subsidized and commercial alike, seek to sustain audiences amid an array of entertainment options and ever-escalating price barriers, musicals are offered as budget balancers by symphonies and opera companies, with ever greater frequency. That’s on top of theatre companies which were once devoted solely to dramatic works having made an annual musical de rigeur. And when it comes to the big halls, it’s big names, both for titles and performers.

These events owe a great deal to the Encores! series at City Center, which has proven the significant audience for limited run versions of great musicals, some rarely seen. But they also attest to the broad appeal of musicals when companies step outside their own repertoire.

Thirty years ago, it was considered startling when the late New York City Opera embraced Sweeney Todd. Theatre only seems to attempt opera perhaps once every decade or so, notably with Baz Luhrman’s La Bohème and Peter Brook’s La Tragédie de Carmen. It seems that when it comes to producing across disciplines, for theatres it’s primarily a one-way street.

With the English National Opera’s announcement of plans to produce commercial musicals, it’s not quite the “unique” venture cited in their announcement. In their efforts to “embrace the new climate where audiences seem to enjoy the blurring of boundaries between opera, theatre and musicals,” one cannot help but wonder how the balance will play out if a West End berth, as stated, is a goal for these projects. Several years ago, the Metropolitan Opera announced a joint venture with its neighbor Lincoln Center Theater to develop works along such lines, but it has yielded little.

Given the budgets for major operas, or the musical richness of a full symphony, it’s easy to see why musical theatre artists would be eager to work outside their usual sphere. But so long as musicals are viewed as cash cows, economic pressure will dictate reliance on the tried and true, with the same repertoire being repeatedly mined by ever more groups. What musical theatre really needs is more resources and new models for sustaining new works beyond the hit or flop reality of Broadway and the West End. If only the symphonies and opera companies could help out there.

We all know that web traffic is the lifeblood of online media, giving rise to such essential reporting as “Which Game of Thrones Character Are You?,” “Which Breakfast Club Character Are You?” and every imaginable variant on this gambit. It is, of course, clickbait, designed to get you to interact with a site and see some advertising and increase page views, engagement time and other such metrics. Frankly, after finding out which Muppet I am (Beaker, if you must know), I stopped taking the bait.

But there’s some more high-minded clickbait out there, and The Hollywood Reporter is engaging in it right now. Via SurveyMonkey, THR is asking people to vote for what they think are the Best Drama Programs, at the high school and collegiate level (there’s no distinction between undergraduate and graduate for the latter). While I couldn’t find the survey on their website, it was being tweeted around, so I have the survey sans preface, sans methodology, sans everything. The fact that the schools you can choose from are pre-selected could be the top results of a larger study, but as it travels the tubes of the Internet, there’s not necessarily any way to know. (If there is any science behind this, I challenge THR to append it to their survey, and I’ll amend this post accordingly.)

To put it simply, I think this is preposterous and rather insidious, because when the resulting article comes out, a number of aspiring young theatre artists just might think it’s based in some degree of expertise, rather than the result of a narrowly defined popularity contest. A few schools might even cite it in promotional materials, and you can be sure the results will go zipping around with both pride and dismay.

So I’d like to say simply this: if you come across it, ignore it. Don’t fill it out. Don’t share it. Don’t comment on the results when they appear. Recognize it for the clickbait that it is, far beneath the sometimes excellent reporting that has been a part of the truly resurrected THR. If they exist to report on the industry, then they surely could commission a real study, or build a special section about drama education, not exploit us for our eyeballs. Offering a list of schools (and classes and even summer camps) with a slight nudge towards the fame of a few graduates (mostly actors, some of whom graduated decades ago) isn’t designed to inform anyone, it’s designed to get people to read and talk about The Hollywood Reporter. It doesn’t even offer the opportunity for write-in candidates, which would at least make it a fairer popularity contest. And who thinks the resulting article, revealing the skewed results, is likely to come out right around The Tony Awards, when theatre’s profile, like it or not, is at its highest nationally? I sure do.

What’s the harm, I hear some of you say? Isn’t it just another benign internet survey? No, because it will be the basis of boasting, of decision making, of aggravation, depending upon who you are and how you relate to the results.

While I’ve reproduced the survey, you’ll notice I haven’t linked to it. I won’t give them the satisfaction. I hope you won’t either. And if you want to give them a piece of your mind, tweet them at @THR.

P.S. I don’t mean to suggest that THR is the only site to do such spurious surveys. There are others. But this one is happening right now.

Program cover for Little Shop of Horrors

If you somehow managed to materialize in the auditorium of Jonathan Law High School in Milford CT this past weekend just as the band began the opening strains of Little Shop of Horrors, you would have simply thought yourself at a perfectly enjoyable production of that infectious musical, well-rendered by its teen cast. As the show progressed, however, you might have begun to notice something peculiar, a motif in the costumes, worn by every character: a purple ribbon, with a small circle affixed to it.

Of course, if you had seen the news in the prior week, if you drove into the high school lot, if you read the program, you would know that this was not your average high school production. One week earlier at the school, 16-year-old junior Maren Sanchez had been killed by another student, reportedly after she declined his invitation to the prom.

Director Michael Mele

Maren was a vigorous participant in many school activities; the drama club was high among them. On Saturday afternoon, and presumably at the two other performances, the drama club’s faculty advisor and director of the production, Michael Mele, took to the stage pre-show to speak about Maren. He also explained that when the tragedy took place, he assumed the production wouldn’t happen, and that it was the other students who wanted to go forward, as a tribute to Maren. In the program he wrote, “We feel that by proceeding with the show we are doing what she would want us to, to get up there and do the best damn show this school has ever seen.”

Having never attended a show at Jonathan Law before, it’s impossible for me to say whether it met that standard. But I can say that it met an even higher one: that these young students performed together as very likely the bravest cast that I have ever seen.

*    *    *

When we read about a tragedy like Maren’s death, and we read about them far too often, I suspect that most of us feel helpless. “I wish there was something I could do,” is a refrain I’ve heard, and thought myself. In the case of a natural disaster, some may go and donate blood, countless more make a financial contribution. If the tragedy literally hits closer to home, there may be more that can personally be done.

As I read various accounts of Maren’s death, I felt helpless once again, even though it did hit close to home: Milford is the town adjacent to Orange, where I grew up. As a teen, I spent a good bit of time in Milford, because that’s where the movie theatres were; even now when I take the train to see family and friends, I get on and off at the Milford station.

When I first read that Maren was an enthusiastic member of the drama club, I began to wonder whether there was in fact something I could do; when I learned she was to have been the person animating the ravenous plant Audrey II, I suspected I might be able to help. Imagining that if the show went forward they might need a puppeteer, I wrote to Mr. Mele (who I’ve never met before) and said that if they needed someone to come in and perform as Audrey II, I had connections to the puppetry community through my time at The O’Neill Theater Center, and I’d be honored to help. I wrote perhaps seven hours after Maren’s death.

On Sunday morning, a bit after 8 am, Mr. Mele returned my e-mail (apologizing for not responding sooner, if you can imagine). He wrote that the decision had been made to go forward with the show and that, yes, they could use help. I immediately sent messages to Stephanie D’Abruzzo of Avenue Q fame; to Pam Arciero, who runs the O’Neill’s Puppetry Conference; and to Martin P. Robinson, who designed and performed Audrey II in the original production and the Broadway revival. They are all Sesame Street veterans as well. Stephanie called within 20 minutes and as I reached for the phone, an e-mail popped in from Pam. This is all before 9 am on a Sunday morning.

By Monday, they had roped in Bart Roccoberton, head of the Puppetry Arts program at the University of Connecticut; by the end of the day, Bart had cleared the decks for a UConn student, Austin Costello, who had performed Audrey II before, to complete his academic work and be in Milford from Tuesday through the final show on Saturday. Austin carried the heaviest load, my puppetry friends had made the right calls, all I did was set things in motion. Inexplicably, they thanked me for doing so.

When I met Austin for the first time following Saturday’s matinee, I explained the chain of events that had brought him to the high school. My instinct was that if the show was to go on, it would have been very difficult for another student to take their friend’s role so soon, and to bring in a student from another high school would have been challenging in its own way. With someone who knew the show, who could focus on the work so that the drama club could focus on both performing and, if at all possible, to begin healing, one small part of the production might be less laden with sorrow. In our brief meeting, I sense that Austin was a perfect choice, warm and good-natured, utterly professional, pleased to have been able to help. Not to detract from the bravery of the students and their advisors, but Austin, especially due to his modesty, was an unsung hero this past weekend.

*    *   *

I mentioned that the cast all wore purple ribbons; at intermission I saw audience members wearing them as well. The small circle, it turns out, was Maren’s photo. With this small gesture, she was on stage with her castmates throughout the performance. Purple was her favorite color, as I had read in news reports; many members of the audience were wearing purple shirts, and even the crew wore purple show t-shirts, presumably not a coincidence. The memorial at street side, with balloons, lit candles and stuffed animals, was dominated by purple; trees along the town’s green carried purple ribbons as well.

As I said, the performance went without a hint of the tragedy that pervaded it, save for the ribbons. The only glitches were those that could happen to any show; one zipper got stuck mid-scene, to the frustration of the young performer, but he powered through like a pro. The only overt acknowledgment of Maren came at the very end.

The cast came out for its curtain call as so many casts do: ensemble, supporting players, leading actors taking bows in succession. Then a company bow, a gesture to the band, to the back of the house where light and sound were being run and where Mr. Mele sat, an acknowledgment of the audience. They joined hands and bowed once again. Then they did something extraordinary that I shall never forget.

The company separated at the middle, each half moving a few steps toward the stage left and stage right wings, leaving an empty space center stage. As they moved their upstage arms towards the gap, which was filled by a purple circle of light, the final strains of The Beatles’ “In My Life” came over the sound system. And then the lights went out. They gave Maren the final bow.

*   *   *

Sadly, I have no doubt that other high school shows are touched by tragedy every year; the passing of family members, even the untimely passing of a cast member or fellow student. I hope that few experience the wrenching, inexplicable loss that happened at Jonathan Law.

I write not to record my own tiny role, but to recognize everyone who came together to put on Little Shop of Horrors, which included students from Sacred Heart, West Haven, Westbrook, Trumbull and Amity High Schools, the last being my alma mater. No doubt there were members of the media there at one of the evening performances, since they had certainly followed the events of the past week; I saw none on Saturday afternoon. I wish I could say that the show had sold to the rafters, but the houses were not all full. Despite the press attention every aspect of Maren’s death had received, it did not generate ticket sales, and I think I understand why: in some ways, as an outsider, I felt like I was intruding on something special and private. I went because I had caused someone else to do great service to the show, but I went with mixed emotions. I suspect others felt similarly about buying a ticket. Sadness and loss do not drive people to the theatre, I fear.

So I finish with two thoughts in this fragmentary account.

The first, to audiences everywhere, with no chastisement to my southern Connecticut neighbors intended: when a show proceeds in the wake of tragedy, I hope you will flock to it. Performers who undertake a tribute through the stage want you to join with them, as they commingle the exuberance of a production with their private tears of loss. Live performance requires us to come together always, and there is never a greater time to come together than to celebrate a life even indirectly, as with Little Shop – even of someone we never knew – and to comfort, support, appreciate and applaud those who would celebrate it in whatever manner they choose, should they choose to invite us in.

More importantly, I say to everyone who had a hand in Little Shop of Horrors this weekend: you honored your friend and I was honored to bear witness to that. It makes me deeply sad that you had to perform such a rite so early in your young lives, but please know that I saw much more than one of my favorite musicals, and that with your loving tribute, you helped to insure that Maren is, to paraphrase the show, somewhere that’s purple.