As you can tell from the title, I've had to continually redraft this post as I get deeper into the series. Also: spoilers.

One. It seems so innocuous. Maura is at her new apartment; one of the other residents of the community (who we have never met) dies. When the ambulance arrives to take them away, the community gathers to watch/figure out what's going on/bear witness. The extras are queer. Like, so queer. Extremely. All of them. And I'm crying, because for the first time, we're in the background and the foreground. We are not just window dressing, nor just 'the issue.' We are everywhere.

Two. Maura, in a flashback, is surreptitiously trying to return a trans-related magazine to a shelf in a bookstore. There's another customer near the stand; it's deeply uncomfortable. Then the other customer murmurs, "that's last month's issue," and my heart breaks as Maura realizes that she isn't alone. I am so fortunate. I am so goddamn fortunate to live in the decade that I do.

Three. Maura performs in a talent show. All three of her children have come to support her; all three of her children leave during her song. She sees; she knows; she keeps on going. Because that's how strong she is. That is how resilient she is. She holds it together. I want to be as strong as Maura. And the real beauty of this story is really coming together for me. This is a 'trans story' that isn't about how much it sucks to be trans, this is a story about how much it sucks when your family doesn't support and love you. Maura is not tragic; tragedy is done to her.

Four. Maura is listening to her ex-wife talk about the past. Her ex-wife refers to her as "he" a few times. She gently but firmly corrects her. Her ex-wife continues, switching to the appropriate pronouns. Their marriage broke up over this (and other things), and now she is able to make the change that the children are still struggling with. Because she still cares about Maura, enough to make a wry joke about having a gay marriage before it was cool. And I cry because Maura deserves this and so much more, and because I know that this isn't a linear "It Gets Better" story. This is not a floodgates moment. This is just a moment, one of many, and in this family, with these people, not all of those moments are going to be good.

Bonuses. Syd confessing that she's kind of in love with her best friend. Josh trying to decide how fucked up his relationship with Rita was. Maura at camp. Ali coming back for family dinner, in the end. I wasn't crying, I just had something in my eye, I swear.

Oh, and I've cried laughing at this show too (Maura's reaction to her first pill! and so much more), but that's another post.

In directing The Long Way Around I've begun to articulate emotions in terms of depth vs. intensity. These are two scales on which I see emotions operate. Some emotions run very deep, but may not be intense. Some emotions are very intense, but don't run very deep. The strongest emotions are those that are both deep and intense, while weak emotions are neither.

The easiest topic to explain this concept (as per usual) is sex.

It has always seemed intuitive to me that love is a generative process--fundamentally it is a creative force. Love can become toxic and destructive, but only through contamination with negative emotions--jealousy, envy, insecurity. Love in its purest forms builds on itself endlessly, growing and spreading to tinge all aspects of our lives. Love is not to be hoarded, nor to be given, but rather is to be nurtured and allowed to flourish.

Stage management is the art of making sure that every decision gets made, without ever having to make a decision yourself.

This is a simplified, idealized version of reality, but it's a basic principle I try to follow. My job as a stage manager is to make sure that the artists of the production--whether that's the actors, the director, the designers--are able to do their art to the best of their ability without having to get caught up with logistics or technicalities. Bringing together talented people doesn't count for very much if too much time is spent trying to find pencils, exchanging contact information, and hole-punching scripts. Front-loading that work onto the stage manager alleviates this and allows the creative team to simply be creative.

Obviously in the real world, a stage manager does do more than simply wrangle and coordinate, and does often have some degree of creative input. One of my favorite director's process involved blocking a scene as normal during rehearsal, and at the end, they would turn to me and ask, "Do you believe this scene?" There's something about the sheer practicality of the stage manager mindset that grants just enough separation to maintain perspective, and just enough immersion to help guide and nurture the process.

Theater excites me when it offers us new perspectives, when it challenges our understanding of whose stories are worthy of being told on the stage, when it accepts as a matter of course that non-normative identities are valid and do not need to be justified. While I can and do appreciate well-told stories of conventional romance, conventional strife, conventional growth, it is the well-told stories that feel truly new that make me lean forward in my seat.

Shows excite me when they throw me a twist that I didn't see coming and yet feel perfectly obvious in hindsight-- "I should have seen that coming!" Characters excite me when I think I have everything figured out and then the characters surprise me by showing new sides to themselves, when they push themselves or bare themselves or reveal themselves. Plays excite me when they 'go there,' when they don't shy away from the truth of the stories with which they engage.

Different is never synonymous with defective.

Everything I write derives from this principle.