Les Misérables, The Stars Didn’t Align.

As Les Misérables: The World Tour Spectacular rises tonight at The Theatre at Solaire, I send the whole team a heartfelt break a leg, with a quiet ache in my heart.

Some people have a favorite show.

I have a lifetime with Les Misérables.

I was there at the beginning - 1996 to 1997 - kicking out Fantine as the Foreman, blending into the ensemble, eventually stepping into the Master of the House as Thénardier. I didn’t know then that the music, the story, and the weight of it all would quietly stitch itself into my life.

Years later, in 2011- 2012, I returned not just as a performer but as a director, carrying Jean Valjean on my shoulders - onstage and off. By then, *Les Mis* wasn’t just a show. It was a language I spoke fluently. It shaped how I told stories, how I understood mercy, justice, and grace.

In 2013, my theatre family and I watched the film together.

In 2016, we sat together again for the international tour, letting the music pass between generations, letting it mean something different this time.

By 2019, my place had shifted again. I stood beside young artists, mentoring, cheering, believing in them as they carried *Les Misérables* forward in their own voices. I wasn't in the spotlight anymore. I was blessedly content watching the next generation find their way through the same songs that once carried me.

And this year - thirty years after it all began - the circle breaks.

For the first time, I won’t be part of it. I won’t be watching from the dark, or listening from the wings, or holding space for others to shine. The stars didn’t align, and some stories don’t grant us the ending we imagine for ourselves.

It’s a quiet kind of grief - the kind that only comes when something has walked with you for decades. Still, I’m grateful. Not every artist gets to live inside a story for thirty years. Not everyone gets to meet it again and again in so many forms.

Les Misérables gave me roles, purpose, family moments, students, and lessons I still carry. Even if I’m absent this time, the music hasn’t left me.

The circle may break - but the story remains.

Quietly Continuing

 I used to think New Year reflections had to be loud - big wins, bold declarations, dramatic reinventions. This year, mine is quieter. And maybe truer.

I enter this new year softer, but stronger in ways that don’t always show.

2025 didn’t teach me how to conquer the world.

It taught me how to stay.

Healing, I learned, isn’t cinematic. It doesn’t arrive with background music or a standing ovation. Most days, it looked like breathing through the hard moments, choosing not to disappear, and showing up -especially on days when retreat felt easier.

There were seasons I survived on autopilot.

Moments when faith wasn’t a proclamation but a whisper: Just get through today.

And that had to be enough.

After more than three decades in theatre - where everything is amplified, projected, performed - I had to relearn how to be human offstage. No script. No applause cue. Just truth. Just breath. Just one more day.

I’m still a work in progress.

Some days, peace visits briefly. Other days, it feels like an ongoing rehearsal with missed cues and awkward pauses. But I’ve learned not to rush the process. Even rehearsals matter. Especially rehearsals.

What grounded me this year wasn’t ambition - it was purpose.

And at the center of that purpose is my daughter.

She remains my reason for choosing life, hope, and tomorrow - even when the days felt unbearably long.

So when I say I’m praying for the next 525,600 minutes, it’s not poetic math. It’s survival math. It’s hope measured in minutes instead of milestones. And if I’m blessed to live through them, I hope to use those minutes to make someone else’s life a little lighter, a little kinder, a little more bearable.

As 2026 begins, I don’t carry grand resolutions.

I carry acceptance.

I release myself from the illusion of control and resign to whatever unfolds next. I am done demanding answers from the dark. If this is the road laid out before me, then I will walk it - worn down, quieter, and stripped of certainty. Still, I pray. Not with confidence, not with expectations, but with a tired hope that the days ahead will hurt less than the ones I’ve already survived.

This is not a comeback story.

This is a staying story.

And for now, staying is the bravest thing I know how to do.