It’s Good To Be The King and I 

It had been 4 months since my fiancee had dumped me.  It had been almost a year since I had performed on stage and I was feeling…anxious when I found out I was going to get to stand on stage again.  I had all but forgotten that rush that you get 5 minutes before the curtain goes up.  Although it probably didn’t help that I was sitting in the pit, waiting to climb up a ladder in nothing but a long skirt, a skullcap, and a large piece of cold jewelry resting against my bare chest.  I remember when I first found out that I would have to be shirtless was during our read through, and the young man playing our Louis read his line “The Prime Minister is naked!”  My reaction was to stop the read through cold by saying “Excuse me…what?”  That was also the day that I started on a diet and started going to the gym 4 times a week.  I want to say there’s no correlation, but who are we kidding?

I have loved every single cast that I have ever worked with, but for me personally, this was special because it was the show that brought me back to life after a crushing year.  I felt…alive again.  These wonderful people, some of whom I’ve worked with and some I had just met, but I had never been so thankful for people welcoming me back.  Sure, I was anxious, wracked with doubt, I hadn’t slept in almost a week, and I was naked from the waist up.  But I relished every minute of it because it was the first real breath of air that I had taken in quite a while.