Everything I’ve been working on lately became beautifully and fully realized over the last 36 amazing hours.  Thursday started and ended with performances of PETER PAN at The New School, consisting of 2nd and 3rd graders in ridiculously cute costumes singing catchy tunes and pretending to fly around the stage for their parents and loved ones. This is my new job as Assistant Director which means I get paid to play all day with new friends Amy, Andrea, Mary and Darcy.  Last week one of the pirates was sad because he kept missing recess due to the rehearsal schedule, and his complaint was met with these powerful words from Captain Hook: “It’s okay!  It all works out! Because we get to go to Braum’s after the show!” And it was right then and there that I decided the promise of ice cream with friends after a few weeks of hard work can solve any problem.

And if it means I must prepare to shoulder burdens with a worried air

I’ll never grow up, never grow up, never grow up!

A few hours later we had our “Stories from the Inside Out” performance at the Northwest Arkansas Community Correctional Center followed by the public performance Friday night at our church.  I began volunteering with the Prison Stories Project last fall, and this time around I’m serving as the Theatre Director with friends Kathy, Katie, Suzanne and Shannon. This means I spent every Monday evening for the last four months at the prison with the women, taking their beautiful writings and creating a staged reading with five phenomenal actors and friends Laura, Sabrina, Jules, Jocelyn and Whitney. Both the inside and outside performances are incredible experiences, but there’s nothing in the entire world like hearing beautiful, often painful stories sitting alongside the twelve women who wrote them.  And while these heartbreakers are missing every recess and ice cream celebration, there is this …

Broken hearts and broken dreams
Don’t question my words
One too many, too many never enough
To forgive is to forget
What’s forgotten is repeated
Memories are like songs
Notes flow in one ear and out the other
Can you see them?  Shh … listen.

I don’t think there could be any two experiences more different than a private school musical performance and a reading in a women’s prison, but I do know that I am thankful for both.  I’m also thankful for the I.M. Spa massage that happened in the middle of all of it. Thanks, babe.