- So I am a retired theater kid.

Is anyone here a grownup theater kid?

I did it professionally.

That was my dedication.

So theater friendships, they're kind of funny.

I know it's not the only industry where you make friends very quick, but I like to think that we're a little bit more open to friendship, we're a little bit more creative, so we're open to how people shape us.

So I studied theater, technical theater.

I actually normally don't get on stage.

I work professionally in all types of theater and I kind of forget how many shows I've done and how many people I've met.

In 2008, during my freshman to sophomore summer, I was at VCU.

I took a job doing Summer Stock and now some people might know Summer Stock from the 1950 Judy Garland movie, one of my favorites.

And yes, that is exactly how it is.

You're putting on shows nonstop, you're overcoming the odds through it all.

Everyone is larger than life and everything is a bit more dramatic.

I was hired by the managing artistic director, Matthew.

Honestly, he wasn't much older than me and he had been an actor turned director, most charismatic person I'd ever met.

His claim to fame as an actor is he played Tony and West Side Story.

One night, all the girls got locked in the dressing room, so he had to refuse to die for a while while they all figured out how to get back on stage.

Anyway, so I'm 19 years old.

I'm the production stage manager, which means I'm in charge.

I am in charge of the schedule for 50 actors, all about my age, a little bit older, a little bit younger.

I'm in charge of the rehearsal schedule, the production schedule, and the show schedule.

And the buck stopped with me unless they wanted to go above my head and Matthew did not like that.

Matthew's the type of boss where if he's going to ask you to do something, he also would do it.

I watched him plunge a toilet.

I watched him paint sets.

And this was in Ohio, so I even found me and him outside a bunker during an active tornado and we were arguing about who was going to be the last one to go in after we'd evacuated the audience and crew.

And the sky does turn green during a tornado.

I learned that too.

So the way Summer Stock works, and the reason we all became friends so quickly is we all live together.

We live together in an empty dorm for the summer.

We call it kind of theater camp to be honest, but we're getting paid.

We rehearse shows during the day and then at night we're doing a different show and we're building sets and costumes in between.

We do five shows a summer.

So here's how the schedule works.

10:00 to 5:00 rehearsal show, then we're doing a show at night.

And then we're up to about 4:00 AM playing sand volleyball or making other bad choices because again, we're all very young.

So for 12 weeks, these people transcend the idea of friend and become your family.

I learned to play volleyball, do Shakespeare grammar walks, see me after if you want to know, cook mushrooms, throw theme parties, put on award-winning shows, create a community vocabulary and create emergency evacuation plans.

Help a stray cat give birth to kittens with these people.

I know this is not a unique experience to theater.

Building a community of friends like this, we all do it in different ways, but when you know the end point and you're in it, it feels unique and it feels special.

So we're doing five shows a summer.

We all become such good friends that most of us come back the next summer and we come back the next summer.

The time in between summers becomes another place, another version of ourselves.

We share with other people and other friends, but the Summerstock friends are like home.

Now remember, Matthew, still the boss.

He hired every single one of us from the veterans to the new crew members and actors, but we all still lived cheek to cheek sharing bathrooms, midnight friendship confessions, and unfortunately a smoking habit.

But it was theater and we all smoked even the Sopranos.

They just lied.

I never though those friendship bonds would need to be tested by anything, especially anything large or serious because we were just so young.

On June 13th, 2010, after we had rehearsed, done a show, then struck the set and stayed up Way Too Late the Theater, Matthew was hit by a drunk driver on the way home and killed.

That morning, I and the leadership team gathered the crew to tell them they had just seen him maybe four hours before and we told them we were going to do what Matthew wanted us to do.

We all know in theater, the show must go on.

The love, discipline, respect, responsibility, and honestly the call outs that we all needed as young professionals that he gave us and the bonds we built over the years, they were tested.

We held a funeral and as a musical theater nerd, I'd like to think he would approved of the song Choices and we continued this season in his honor.

After that summer, I graduated college.

Summer stock was over for me.

I still stayed in contact with friends.

I would travel to visit them, but honestly some friends sunset and that's okay.

There's kind of a season for everything.

But I finally stopped smoking because Matthew had been trying to quit and he never got the chance.

I still count dance steps in my head in funny noises because that's how Erica did it.

I still love to wear glitter on Halloween because Bryce said it went well with my hair.

I remember that Ant's dance before the rain.

I don't know if it's true because Derek said so.

And I remember that song in the secret garden that has the best duet for men's voices because of Kyle.

And I know I sit in people's memories just as they sit in mine.

Loved, crystallized and perfect for the season.

Thank you.