The four person musical Waiting for the Glaciers to Melt is finally over after only six performances. All in all, it was a very good run. Being involved with The Midtown International Theater Festival was interesting. We got one strong review after another. To be honest, I think I'm going to miss it: the strange twists and turns in the script/the music and the rehearsal process and the procedures. The creative upheavals. Stephen, nailing his lines and music before anyone else. Gorgeous Matt, dancing like Ann Reinking out of nowhere when there'd be a break in the action. Jessie, our Polish-American stage manager, with her Sailor Moon tatoo. The discipline of getting up and attacking something creatively each day. Seeing it through to the end, no matter what. Here's The $64,000 (Rhetorical) Question Of The Day: Why is the backstory always so much more interesting than the actual story itself?

When I auditioned for the show, I thought it would be a workshop or maybe even a staged reading. You know. All of us, sitting in a half circle in front of an attentive audience. Script in hand, music at the ready, I'd perch myself on a stool and emote on cue. Maybe a little choreography here and there. Anything but a full production. It came as a complete shock to me that I'd have to memorize everything, that it would be up on its legs with props and everything in a matter of days. I had to get magic toothpicks to prop my eyelids open at the end so I could cram it all in. I had no choice. I had to get the lead out.

I promised myself awhile back that I'd do as many workshops as possible because I want to originate roles. Then I realized the best way to give myself the part I know I deserve is to write it. Now it's time to write some more.

I'll miss working with everyone, mostly because I know I'll probably never see them again. Except for Eric. He's the one who looked me in the eye after we'd worked our way through a difficult section of music, smiled knowingly and said, " I just sang with Queen Esther." I am going to hear him singing harmony to the title song in my head forever. It was all I could do to keep from cracking up whenever he'd launch into it, in performance. There he was, bound to a wheelchair, crippled and unable to move, but singing passionately with this gigantic voice, like he was Julie Andrews in the opening scene of "The Sound of Music." He sounds like early Bowie or later Rufus Wainwright, with a tone that is so high, so effortless and sweet, it almost hurts to listen. Such a beautiful falsetta. Forget Broadway. He should be making records and sharing that voice with the world.

The glaciers have certainly melted in my artistic life. Doing the show has jumpstarted all kinds of projects that I'd shelved or discarded. How can a creative explosion not affect every part of you? Ideas are flying at me all the time. I can't seem to stop writing material and watching movies…