I fight so vehemently to keep arts education available for everyone because I know what it feels like to have something exciting to get out of bed every morning for.

I know what it feels like to not want to go to school, but to be like, "Right, but we have a choir concert, or we have rehearsal after school."

Not every kid is built for math and science.

Some of us just want to create.

♪♪♪ Hi.

I'm Shoshana Bean.

And this is how art changed me.

I was born at home, and the legend has it that my father carried me out, after they made sure I was breathing and healthy and -- that he carried me out into the living room, and he put on Stevie Wonder's "Songs in the Key of Life," and he played "Isn't She Lovely?"

So I can very quite literally say that music has been in my life since the moment I virtually opened my eyes.

There's another one that my parents love to tell.

I was like 2 or 3 years old.

And we went to see my cousins in their tap recital, and apparently, I couldn't stay in my seat.

And I got out of my seat, and I ran up on the stage, because I wanted to be performing with them.

Why my parents allowed me to get up and out my seat and all the way down the aisle to the stage... [Chuckles] ...I still don't understand.

However, it was, I think, in that moment that my mom was like, "We have to do something with this child.

She, like, desperately wants to be up there."

I mean, I think really, ultimately when I was finishing high school, even though I had taken extensive dance and voice lessons and had been in all the school shows, really, my plan was to go to a state school and major in business so that I could take over my dad's business.

But it was my mom who was like, "Don't you want to at least give this a shot?"

So between her and my voice teacher, they were definitely like, "You can go to college and major in musical theater.

You can actually, like, get an education to pursue a career in musical theater."

What I really wanted to do was be Mariah Carey.

I really wanted to major in pop star and, you know, just immediately start making records.

But I think that was probably the big turning point in my life, to have my mother say, "Why don't you take a crack at this, and let's go full bore?"

I never looked back.

I never, ever had a plan B.

A month after I moved here, I got the off-Broadway revival of "Godspell."

That was just sort of, like, my introduction.

I don't know that it was my break.

I just think there are a lot of little fractures that ultimately create a break.

[ Laughs ] And that was a really big fracture, "Hairspray" being another.

And then of course, "Wicked" being really where the whole branch broke, I suppose.

It was life-changing.

If "Hairspray" was the foundation, then "Wicked" was sort of the house, I guess.

You know, I really always was straddling the fence between wanting to be a pop star and be a Broadway performer.

So once theater took me to the point of finishing my run in "Wicked," I was like, "Now it's time for me to move to Los Angeles and give my songwriting and my recording career as much time and attention as I've given theater."

So, that's when I sort of hunkered down and really stopped waiting for other people to do it for me.

And I just wrote a record, figured out how to get the money together, and -- and recorded it.

I had so much going on in my head and heart and life at the time.

It was more important to me to get it out of me, and the way to do that was to write and sing.

It just felt very urgent at the time.

I think that songwriting started as a way to -- sort of like my own form of therapy for myself, to sort of, like, work through situations by being able to write the story.

Was the first album I wrote after a man that I was dating just tragically died in a car accident, and that -- I think that's why that first album was so vital and so urgent.

I had so much to feel and say and move through.

And I absolutely credit that album with helping me to do so.

My second album was largely about a relationship.

So, again, I just think they really help me move through.

And sometimes when you don't get to say -- when you don't get to have the last word, or you don't get the luxury of being able to say the things you'd like to say to a person, I just think it's such a gift to be able to have that final forever word in a song.

The fact that I have this sort of like snapshot of moments, this photo album of my life and experiences -- And that was a snapshot, a very accurate snapshot of a moment in time.

That is where I was, and that is how I felt, and it exists forever.

If I had never gone into dance class, if I weren't raised in a house with music, if I weren't encouraged to be in theater troupes, and if I didn't have that community and those little groups of weirdos that I would find everywhere, I can't even imagine.

It wouldn't be cute.

It would not be pretty.

♪♪♪