From The Top
What rehearsal can teach us about beginnings & endings.
If you’ve spent any time in a rehearsal room, or have seen A Chorus Line, you’ve likely heard someone shout, “let’s take it from the top.”
It’s what gets said when a scene stalls out, or the run of a number gets tangled, or something almost works. We don’t forget what just happened. We don’t pretend it didn’t count. The data doesn’t get erased. The notes, the muscle memory, the tiny fumbles, the massive mistakes, the small discoveries, the big “aha’s”—they all inform the next go-around.
Proof that practice doesn’t make perfect. It makes progress.
I’ve been thinking about that phrase a lot this week, mostly because of the timing. January has a way of showing up with instructions—new habits, new goals, new versions of ourselves—as if the calendar flips and everything is politely cleared out. But that’s never really how it feels.
One day rolls into the next, and we draw a line between them because it helps us keep track, not because anything actually resets. Which might be why the beginning of the year can feel strange instead of energizing.
That tension has been especially present for me because this week marks the end of not just the year, but another major chapter in my life.
This weekend, we’ll close the second run of BEAU Off-Broadway—a project that, in many ways, has exceeded my wildest dreams. A new musical. An original story. A “star vehicle” role shaped slowly and collaboratively. The kind of work you don’t even really let yourself imagine, because it feels almost impossible.
And it was also hard.
The demand on my body, especially my voice, meant my world got very small. My social life nearly disappeared. The emotional lift was heavier than I expected, too. There were moments—honestly—where I came close to throwing in the towel. Not because I wasn’t grateful. Not because I didn’t love being onstage. But because I didn’t yet know how to hold everything the experience was asking me to carry at once.
That’s why this particular ending feels…strange. Because I don’t have a clear takeaway.
We’re taught to expect endings to explain things—to clarify what it was all for, to hand us some neat emotional summary we can carry forward, a sense of resolution we can point to and say, there—that’s what it meant. But some experiences (projects, relationships, years) don’t offer that. They leave you with more texture instead of more certainty. More information, but fewer answers.
And maybe that’s the mistake: assuming that resolution is the point. That an ending owes us clarity. That meaning is something we’re supposed to be able to extract immediately, and package neatly. Especially right now, at the start of a new year, when everything around us is nudging us toward conclusions, decisions, and declarations. But I’m not sure that’s how learning, or life, actually works.
In rehearsal we don’t stop the moment something interesting happens. We keep going. We do it again. We take it from the top. Not to resolve it. Not to pin it down. But to see what else can emerge when we stay with it a little longer.
And when I recognize that truth, the absence of resolution starts to feel different.
What’s left in its place isn’t confusion. It’s capacity.
There’s more space to hold mixed feelings without needing to sort them. To let deep pride and complete exhaustion and holy joy and profound sadness all coexist. To stay present with something that feels unresolved.
Every part of theater trains us for this. We pour ourselves into something knowing it won’t last. We rehearse a thing for months that evaporates the second it’s over. Again and again, we practice committing fully to things that are designed to end.
Over time, that teaches us how to let meaning stay porous. How to hold a moment, a melody, a line, or a lyric lightly enough that it can change and grow as we change and grow. How to accept that not every experience—every pass—will give us a neat or tangible takeaway.
And strangely enough, as our grip softens, our north star brightens. Our ability to orient sharpens. We get better at noticing what’s drawing us in and what’s pushing us away. What lights us up. What turns us off. What we’re no longer willing to fight against. What we deem worth fighting for.
In that way, every experience—onstage or off—widens us. We go through something and then step back out into the world changed in ways we may never fully understand.
That’s the real gift of “taking it from the top”—not a reset or a resolution, but a chance to continue with more information. With a little more depth. With a sharper sense of what we’re orienting toward, and what we’re ready to let of of this time around.
Which feels like a humane—and very human—place to start the new year.
A little less resolved.
A little more awake.
See you next week ♥️
—Matt