I felt Lin-Manuel and Jonathan clarifying the point that, while we have no control over inspiration or the creative impulse, we must endure the bootcamp of survival, preparing ourselves with craft so when opportunity does come, when the stars align, when the muse whispers, we are able to receive her caress and let it flow through us.Īnd if the alchemy of all that doesn’t deliver? “You start writing the next one. Maybe for the first time since Jon’s passing, his work was infused with joy, hope, a lightness of being that was saying everything is still possible in this moment. I was afraid it was going to hurt, as it so often has.īut this was not to be. I dreaded reliving the recreated apartment and the Moondance Diner-going back to the literal physical spaces of a personal trauma. Then came the film adaptation of Tick, Tick.Boom! I braced myself at the Los Angeles premiere of Lin-Manuel Miranda’s freshman directing effort about my friend, sitting near Jon’s sister, Julie, and her now grown sons. We were supposed to raise children and bury our parents together, create, collaborate, argue.go to Mets games and grow old hating the Yankees, while always, always remaining the bodyguards of each other’s dreams, trusted critics of our separate works, and in the end, be no more or less to each other than we all were in the beginning-those wistful days when everything was possible, when we found our people, each other, ourselves, and forged a collective mission and unbreakable bond.

We all had plans to move forward together, those of us in our geek theater “tribe,” our “Island of Misfit Toys.” To endure having that scab ripped open again and again for 26 years has been difficult. In spite of the joy and excitement of these triumphs, there is a lingering sadness. Since his death, we who loved him attend openings in solidarity with the creators, in memoriam of our friend, to share with each performer some intimacy, a personal anecdote or two so they too might feel closer to the man whose art they are about to inhabit.

Julie larson rent