Changed by Hedwig

Tonight marks the most profound experience in a theater that I've had thus far. Hedwig and the Angry Inch is a musical about a transgender German woman performing a show with her band of foreigners. Throughout the show, she tells her story. Her story is one of desire, lust, desperation, love, anger and disappointment. The cast is onstage the entire show, and songs are paired with stories of her life leading up to that moment. This show starts with witty jokes and dirty punchlines, but soon tethers in loss and tragedy then hope and excitement then anger and desperation. The show itself is a roller-coaster and would have me crying at the end regardless, but something felt very particularly for me,
Hedwig reached me all the way up in the mezzanine and pulled me fiercely into her world.

There is a moment in the show when Hedwig's imagination gets the best of her and paints a vivid picture of closure. When she is ejected from the moment after an extremely powerful song, there is a silence. The piercingly electric vocals are met with no applause, but something much more important: silence. 2,703 people joined in a deeply honest moment where we are there with her. We are one with Hedwig's desperation and anguish. We find ourselves empathizing with a character who we seemingly have nothing in common with. This was, for me, the most astounding moment of the show.

As an audience, we search for something within these characters to cling to so that we may be immersed in their stories.  People we walk into the theater feeling subconsciously apathetic or even reserved about are humanized for us by way of the theatre. Rifts are formed when one party does not understand the other. When we are forced to sit back and listen, in a dark theater where we cannot escape the other party's point of view, and seeing it from an omniscient perspective, it is inevitable, if we really listen, to not leave with a new found respect, sympathy or understanding for the character's circumstance. I believe this rings true with travel as well, not touring, but traveling and experiencing another culture. When you cannot escape the world of someone or something you do not initially understand, unable to speak your instinctual reservations, you are forced to listen and observe and eventually gain understanding.This is why the most influential moments of my life have been experienced in the theater and in foreign countries. These moments have all been moments of new found empathy and connectedness.

Tonight solidified my desire to perform in theatre. When Hedwig's moment silenced all of those voices and stopped our breathing, I was sold. If I can do that, force someone to stop and think and CARE about someone they never thought they could understand, I need to do it. Empathy is one of the most important things in the world, and if I can create that, I need to do it, I feel a fierce hunger to educate by way of art, and that is exactly what acting is. I want to tell stories.