Last year while doing ¡VOS! at
@tworivertheater the marketing team had
@christinapumariega and I do a Q&A with each other. This question didn’t make it to the final vid, but I wanted to share it here. The Q was
“Who was the first actor you ever looked up to?”
And my answer is:
@michelepawk
Not an international household name. But from the millisecond she stepped onstage, something in me lit up and totally rearranged.
Michele embodied a possibility I didn’t yet have language for at 14-years-old from the cheap seats: what am actor could bring, not just how well they delivered a performance but how much of a real person they could become.
She also has, over time, been a beacon of what a woman in the theatre could be across a *lifetime.* Endurance, resilience, cavernous depth, ferocity, humor, contradiction, reinvention. Michele Pawk feels like proof and permission.
Every profession needs role models.
But in a life as volatile, intimate, and uncertain as a life in the #theatre, we don’t just need examples of success—we need examples of resilience. We also need witnesses: living, breathing evidence that a rich, vibrant life can be built inside the career of this precious art. That meaning can be made here.
I am grateful to Michele and just as grateful to the universe for giving me the chance, years later, at the
@transportgroup revival of #HelloAgain (and then again months ago at
@justintimebway where I DID get to tell her “enough”) to stand in front of her and say:
“You may not know this but while you were busy being yourself, you helped me imagine MYself…”
So this is a little reminder:
• you never know who is watching quietly, building courage from the way you simply exist.
• your role models what they mean to you. You have no idea when they might be doubting the reach and impact of their own life.
• let this be proof that we are not meant to weather a creative life—or any life—alone. We need one another. We always have. 💜
“O wie wunderbar,
Nichts ist so wie-es-war…”
