Today, I get to sit in on a dress rehearsal for the first time in over 18 months.

I’m thrilled, of course, to see live performance; I’m even more thrilled, arguably, to see bustling technicians finishing up the final details of a changeover and hear a grating drill securing loose screws. Eavesdropping on the preparations is almost like a tacit invitation to pretend I also belong in this space today. Almost.

I’m sitting in the balcony, front row center. I am alone in the section, and I’ve chosen one of the best seats in the house. The minutes tick by as I wait, through flickered lights and muttered checklists, for the show to begin. It’s a working rehearsal, so of course it won’t be perfect–but that’s exactly why I came to see this one, to compare the changes I’ll notice when opening night comes in a few days. The process is more magical–to my biased view–than the end result alone.

Sitting here, I find I can’t quite muster appropriate excitement for the performance… instead, I can only think about how dearly I want to be more than just a spectator.

I think about sitting in the house to observe shows I’ve designed, shows I’ve understudied—hours and hours of observing, marking scripts, laughing to give the actors just a hint of audible encouragement. Then, afterwards, popping backstage for notes, or to gather some props for tweaking. How I’d love just to do that.

Then I think, oh, but to be backstage, that would be enough. Wearing black clothes, strapped with tie line and gaff tape and hairpins, invisible except when backlit by electric blue lights… it would be a step toward enough, it would be way more enough than sitting here, an outsider.

Clarity hits: no, I don’t want to be backstage… I want to be backstage, and then onstage, traversing the carefully crafted barriers between real and myth, living two lives and two stories simultaneously, emerging from a glow-taped labyrinth into the blinding stage lights only to whirl around and exit through a forest of curtains and drops once more. I want to be that chameleonite whose hide changes based on her surroundings: one character in the spotlight, and another in the blackout. I want to be an agent of transition, hopping the stepping stones of a story, reaching out my hand for an audience to grasp, calling “come with me!”

Today, however, all I can do is sit, and watch, and try to enjoy the show. It’s more enough than not being here at all. It’s a step toward enough.

And I’ll be sure to applaud, loudly.