I was new to the city and just out of college. Young and enthusiastic, but also green in the field and lonely in the community. I poured myself into my work and that theater every day because I felt the value in what I was doing, but also because I didn't have a lot else to do while I built relationships in a new place.

I would work late often. There was always something to do. One of those nights happened to coincide with an evening rehearsal of this Tom Stoppard play that we were premiering on the East Coast. I knew nothing about Sir Tom at the time, or his illustrious history in the theater. Honestly, I didn't know much about theater or the process at all. I didn't study theater, didn't attend an art school, didn't do anything that gave me deeper behind-the-scenes knowledge beyond a few high school musicals.

For some reason, that night I decided to slip into the back of the house for the rehearsal. The set had already been installed and the stage was lit, but the house was dark. I remember feeling invisible in that back row, like a silent witness to something I wasn't quite meant to see.

Blanka Zizka was directing, and she was on stage with the performers working through a specific scene. I know now that Stoppard's writing is beautiful but demanding, and that it asks a great deal of its performers. That night, the artists were fully dedicated to finding the voice of the show. I watched take after take, actors exploring different variations of a phrasing, while Blanka deftly guided them toward something truer. Everyone was so locked into the moment, so committed to making the scene work. And there I was, silently watching it unfold. I got to see where it started and how it took shape. And not only the how. I got to hear the why. Actors and directors talked through the motivations of each beat, what they believed their character was feeling in that exact moment.

That was my first real awakening to the power of process. I slipped out just before they finished, back onto Broad Street, energized by what I had just witnessed. Newly addicted to this company and this show.

As I look at the field now, I long to share that feeling with our audiences. That specific, electric experience of being a silent observer.

It could be as simple as opening our rehearsals and letting audiences be exactly that, a silent observer. Give them a chance to truly experience the work that goes into a production. To see firsthand how much an artist wrestles with a single phrase. How much attention goes into a monologue, how much deliberation goes into a single lighting cue.

I have been part of plenty of initial table reads, where designers share their visions and actors explore the script for the first time. Those are fun events, and they have their place. But they always felt a little staged to me. I want people to see more than that. I want them to see the rawness of creation, the nakedness of a process that is unaware, or unconcerned, that it's being observed. Because that is the sacred thing, the part we tend to hoard. Watching people make something while they are not performing the making of it.

If that is the start, imagine going further. Audiences watching artists labor over a single scene for two hours, seeing where they begin and where they arrive by the end. Then, imagine those same people in the seats on opening night and watching to see what survived or what changed. To witness the journey and then the destination. I can't think of a more powerful way to turn someone into a true believer.

I want this because I remember how exciting it felt to me. I want others to feel that same pull. To slip into the dark, feel invisible, and walk back out onto the street changed.

In 1994 I fell in love with soccer because the World Cup was in the United States for the first time. It served as a distraction for me while other things in my life were not going well. I dove fully into the teams and the players. Back then there were preview magazines you could buy, and I had every one of them. I memorized as many details about the people and countries involved as I could before a single game was played. I got to know the personalities: colorful Mexican goalie Jorge Campos, Italian striker Roberto Baggio, Bulgarian star Hristo Stoichkov, and of course the American team filled with players I vividly remember today. I also remember watching the final between Brazil and Italy (I had settled on the Azzurri as my favorite by then) and feeling like it was such a terrible game, like it didn’t live up to everything that led us there. It didn’t matter. I was hooked.

With the World Cup back in the United States now, I can’t help but think back on those days and on how impactful that experience was for me, both personally and professionally. When I got to college, I started house managing at the performing arts center on campus and fell in love with meeting all the artists we brought in. The arts felt like sports to me. I got to experience them from behind the scenes, and I felt the inescapable draw of these artists and their stories.

I started my career as a publicist for The Wilma Theatre in Philadelphia. Since it was my job to pitch news stories, I began to see a hole in how the arts presented themselves, one that the sports world had figured out brilliantly: focusing less on the final product and more on the process.

It’s safe to say that sports teams have dedicated fans. They tune into every game, travel to support their team, and talk about every aspect of it with friends and colleagues. But if you were to look objectively at the quality of each individual game or contest, I suspect you’d find that the vast majority of them are not of the highest quality, like that 1994 final. Sure, there are moments and exceptions, but not every game can be a barn burner with high stakes and endless action.

And here’s the thing: it doesn’t matter. Fans stay rabid through the mediocre games because their investment was never only in the game itself. Sports figured out long ago that opening the doors to the stories and the players behind the scenes is what builds the bond. Fans develop emotional ties to players and franchises through a deeper understanding of process. It shows up everywhere. Who is showing up to training camp? Will they make the team, or get cut? Is that draft pick going to pan out? That player went to my college and I loved him there. Did you see what the coach said in that press conference? There are countless moments we get to experience with our favorite teams, and every one of them deepens our investment.

Like many in the arts field, I have been lucky to experience our shows from the inside. I got to meet the casts, sit in on rehearsals, and witness all the work that led to putting a show on stage.

But our audiences rarely got to experience those intimate and illuminating moments. And often, the closest look inside was reserved for our most significant donors.

Collectively, we are hyper focused on the final product, on what the audience sees after they buy a ticket and attend a performance. That focus matters, and magical artistic experiences are happening every single night.

But this approach may have made more sense in an earlier era, when society did more to teach us about the art forms themselves. People grew up with some understanding of what ballet was, or why a piece of classical music was so layered. We don’t have that shared baseline anymore. Our audiences no longer arrive at the same starting place we do as artists, and without that common ground, the whole thing starts to feel transactional. Buy a ticket, and the show had better be great. Don’t take a chance on something you’ve never heard of, because you don’t know what it’s about. We have lost the on-ramp that used to bring people into the work, and we haven’t built a new one.

I think we are missing an opportunity to develop rabid fans of our art, and the fix is to open up our process a great deal more. To bring our followers behind the scenes far more often, and to let them be part of the act of creation. To let them truly understand who the players are, why they are taking the risk, and what they are trying to achieve with this particular work of art.

I’ll dive into how we might actually do this, alongside everything else the field is juggling, in future posts. But for now, while we get absorbed in the world’s game being played in our own backyard, I want to posit that the sports world may have already solved how we expand our dedicated audience base. We just need to open ourselves up to the examples they have been giving us all along.

It’s good to be back. Not that I went anywhere. I’ve been here all along, supporting artistic creation, sometimes from the sidelines and sometimes more directly, cheering it on and getting out to see as many shows as life’s constraints allowed. But it’s good to be back in the DC arts community in the way that matters, with my whole heart.

For the last year I’ve been the Director of Development at The National Theatre. I feel lucky to be part of such a historic organization at such a pivotal moment. I played a role in helping the theatre’s Foundation purchase its iconic building. For the first time in its 190-year history, the second-oldest theatre in the country is safely in the hands of the nonprofit dedicated to its preservation and care.

It’s the third time I’ve been part of a key moment in a theatre’s physical history. When I first came to DC from Philadelphia, I helped Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company move into its home at 7th and D. Literally, by driving a rental truck of office furniture down 7th Street, and figuratively, by building the audiences for the opening and beyond. I was at Arena Stage when it moved out of its old offices to make way for the expansion that transformed it.

This is my community, and it calls to me consistently. I’ve worked outside the arts and done good things in those roles, but the arts sing to my soul.

A few weeks ago, Dito Van Reigersberg passed away. I worked with him, and like countless others, I felt his impact. The artists at Pig Iron and that whole singular community left a lasting impression on me, personally and professionally. I won’t eulogize Dito. Others have done that, and better than I could. But his passing stirred something in me, a pull to bring the artists and the art I love back to the forefront of my life.

Because the truth is, lately I’ve noticed how much of it I talk about in the past tense. I miss sitting in the auditorium at The Wilma watching Blanka direct The Invention of Love. I miss watching the Oscars with Tom Stoppard. I think about the nomadic seasons at Woolly Mammoth, performances leaping from the Kennedy Center to the DCJCC. My heart fills when I remember the artists I supported at Capital Fringe, with aerialists in the rafters, dance at the Building Museum, and twenty-four hours of Dana and Matt painting the Warehouse Theatre.

Philadelphia, DC, even Annapolis. Every one of those places formed memories that brought me to this moment. And I don’t want to keep missing them. I want to be present. I want to be an active part of this world that has given me so much joy.

So I’m going to get out even more. See shows, go to openings, connect with artists and friends and colleagues. But I know I can’t physically be everywhere, and I don’t have the time or the energy I once did. So I’m also going to write here, turning my thoughts toward the local and national arts community to scratch that itch when I can’t be there in person.

I want to write about my passion for works in process, something that’s been a through-line from the very start of my career. And I want to share my philosophies about fundraising for the arts, in the hope of helping our community build more of the work I love to be in the room for.

I look forward to making new friends and new memories. Don’t hesitate to reach out and tell me what you’re working on. And thank you, in advance, for welcoming me back.

It’s good to be in the room again, watching a show take shape.