I wrote the fol­low­ing as an “open-ish” let­ter to the cast of a high-school show I music-direct­ed back in 2014, and orig­i­nal­ly shared it with them as a post to the cast Face­book group, on the day of the “Apol­lo Awards,” a local fundrais­er event that mim­ics the Tony Awards, but for high-school musi­cals.  Seems like every year at this time (and some­times at oth­er times) I feel an urge to revis­it these words.  So, to any­one who’s found a call­ing in “show biz”:

Well, folks, today’s the day.  By the time you call it a night tonight you’ll know whether our work togeth­er is offi­cial­ly “Apol­lo-Award-win­ning,” or… or not.

It would be an over­state­ment of my noble indif­fer­ence for me to say I don’t care about tonight’s results.  I do care, though not by much, and not because I hope we “win.”  The “not by much” part is a symp­tom of the wis­dom that expe­ri­ence brings: I’ve “won” awards and com­pe­ti­tions with work I was dis­sat­is­fied with, and some of my best work has “lost” recog­ni­tion I felt sure it deserved.  (And I have a feel­ing I’m not alone in that.)  The “I do care” part is because I know how tempt­ing it is—not “espe­cial­ly,” but cer­tain­ly at your age—to base your sense of self-worth on the opin­ions oth­ers express.  And I’ve known peo­ple whose artis­tic souls have been crushed by oth­ers’ fail­ure to appre­ci­ate their gifts.

There’s noth­ing wrong, per se, with look­ing to oth­ers for affir­ma­tion.  A big part of grow­ing up is decid­ing whose opin­ion should mat­ter to you, and whose should­n’t.  (And the most impor­tant part of that process, IMHO, is real­iz­ing how much small­er that first group is than the sec­ond.)  We define those groups—and re-define them—slowly and care­ful­ly and often painful­ly, as we real­ize that seek­ing “this” per­son­’s approval has tend­ed to bring us exhaus­tion or frus­tra­tion or even pain, and that “that” per­son has con­tin­ued to offer us affir­ma­tion and encour­age­ment and lov­ing chal­lenge even when their opin­ions felt irrel­e­vant or out­dat­ed or unwant­ed.  Defin­ing those groups is some­thing you nev­er ever fin­ish with, and it’s a task only you can do for your­self.  So it might seem like only an arro­gant jerk would offer some­one else advice on that process.

But I, as you know, am just exact­ly that kind of arro­gant jerk, so here’s my take on it:

The “Apol­los” judges don’t belong in that first group.

If we take home “best in” every cat­e­go­ry tonight, it does­n’t mean our show was bet­ter than we thought it was.  It does­n’t mean we told the sto­ry bet­ter than we thought we had.  And it does­n’t mean we did­n’t make the mis­takes we thought we made, or that we could­n’t have done bet­ter.

And if our show isn’t named for a sin­gle award, it won’t mean that our pride in our work was mis­placed.  It won’t mean that we did­n’t over­come the chal­lenges of can­celled rehearsals and con­densed time­lines.  And it won’t mean that there weren’t moments—I saw them on your faces—when you could­n’t believe art that pow­er­ful could come out of your bod­ies and voic­es and souls.

So here’s my chal­lenge to you: decide NOW whether our pro­duc­tion was worth the time and heart you put into it.  Decide NOW whether you’re proud of the work you and your team­mates did.  Decide NOW whether we did good work togeth­er.  And then, before the judges even open their mouths, decide who else on the plan­et has a right to try to change your mind about any of that.

When you get the hang of that, you’ll be an artist.

Which is real­ly just anoth­er word for a whole human being.

Let it fly, my friends.

With grat­i­tude and respect,

David