INSIDE OUT

July 2, 2026
Drew
Thought

Whenever I’m doing a show, I try to remember what a Stage Manager once told me. I don’t remember what we were working on when she said it. (It might’ve been when I was in college, maybe West Side Story.) I do remember her advice about keeping our shit together, being patient and professional and forgiving, as we were going into Tech Week.

She said, “It’s not about you. It’s about the Light.”

Tech Week leads into dress rehearsals before Opening Night. It’s when all the technical elements are integrated into a production — adding sound effects and microphones, costumes and quick changes, props and final set pieces and lights. Typically, it’s an exhausting drag for actors. Even as it’s exciting to feel everything coming together, it can be disorienting, stressful, and tedious. Usually, what takes the most time is adjusting the lights while the actors stand there in places, trying not to burst into song, giggling, getting hollered at — “Quiet on stage, please!” I’ve been in technical rehearsals that took eight or ten hours.

It’s always a little frustrating because actors are at a point in the process where we’re raring to go, ready to give it our all. We’re full of adrenaline and eager for an audience. But Tech demands that we shut up and stand there.

Because it’s not about us as individual performers. It’s about the big picture, the entirety, the way all the elements fit together. “It’s not about you. It’s about the Light.”

This feels like a solid principle not just for theater or other creative collaborations. Maybe it’s good advice for Life, generally. When we’re taking something too personally, feeling criticized, or not getting the acknowledgment we feel we deserve. When we face circumstances that seem unnecessarily difficult or unfair. When things go sideways despite our best efforts. What if it’s not about me, but about the Light?

And then — here’s a paradox to gnaw on: It’s not about me. It’s about the Light. And I am the Light.

I’m thinking about the inner journey on which each of us has embarked — our soulful purposes and expressions, finding our own unique ways through these singular lifetimes.

And, at the same time, being parts of a collective adventure — our Great Becoming, Together — including each other and the world outside and the entire blooming Universe.

And how the inner and outer inform each other. All that’s going on inside our minds and hearts creating our experience of the world, and vice versa, the world shaping us in return. Back and forth, infinitely expansive.

Until, ultimately, perhaps, it is impossible to tell where one leaves off and the other begins.

Of course, it’s necessary at times to distinguish ourselves from each other and everything else. For practical, functional reasons, it serves us well to be clear and strong about our individual identities.

AND — these egos of ours can become very problematic when we forget that we’re still all part of the Whole.

It is a mistake — dare I say, a sin — to think of independence as contrary to inter-dependence. To confuse selfishness with liberty, to disconnect from each other in a vain grasp at freedom, forgetting that who and what we are is inextricable from the Totality.

We needn’t be miserly with our individuality; it is no paltry thing to be guarded or hoarded. Each of us is a friggin’ miracle, an infinite, essential, and beautiful expression of the Entire Enchilada. When we remember and allow this, we can share ourselves without losing a thing, we can celebrate each other without diminishing ourselves or anyone. As we commune, more and more deeply, we shine together as the Light — the Divine.

Happy 250, USA. Here we are. Let’s heal and do better.

I can’t wait to be with you this Sunday, July 5, with my exquisite friend, Patty Stephens. 10:00 am at q-Staff Theatre. XO, Drew