Happy Friday đđŒ This week marks ten years since Hamilton opened on Broadway, and that anniversary got me thinking about the way we remember shows for what they becameânot for the long, uncertain road they took to get there.
This year, Iâve had the rare chance to travel that roadâtwice. Two brand-new musicals, each in the process of figuring out what they want to be. Right now, Iâm at Williamstown Theatre Festival, working on another new musical still in its infancy. Weâve spent the week going page by page and song by song, combing through the details to find its tone, its voice, the way it wants to sing.
From the outside, this stage can look romanticâblooper reels, âmaking ofâ documentaries, TikToks of quick changes and set renderings. But from the inside, itâs slow. Itâs uncertain. Thereâs no applause yet, no proof youâre on the right trackâjust the work, and the faith that the work will get you there. Somewhere. Eventually.
So this week, I wanted to look at that gap: the difference between how process appears and how itâs lived. And maybe, what that contrast can teach us.
Letâs get into it.
Process, Popularized
Admittedly, Iâm a documentary slut. Thereâs something deeply satisfying about learning how a story unfolded. Seeing the raw materials and how they fit together is oddly comforting. Itâs why Iâll binge YouTube videos on how albums were recorded one minute, and fall down a rabbit hole of Veep blooper reels the next.
And Iâm not alone. We are in the middle of a documentary boom. In the 2000s, theatrical releases of documentaries tripled. The past decade has been called a âgolden age,â fueled by streaming platforms that made them easy to find, binge, and share. Demand for documentaries grew 142% from 2018 to 2021âthe fastest-growing streaming genre. And with YouTube democratizing the format, thereâs now a documentary (or doc-adjacent deep dive) on nearly any topic you can imagine.
So why do we love them so much? Why are we willing to watch hours of the making instead of just the thing itself?
Part of the answer is curiosity. Part is connectionâreal stories about real people feel like higher stakes. But part of it is neurological. When we watch someone else in the act of making, our mirror neurons fire. Our brain doesnât just register what theyâre doingâit simulates it. We get a small dopamine hit from their breakthroughs, a micro-release of tension when they recover from a mistake. Our brains rehearse the motions, as if we were the ones doing them.
Thatâs the quiet magic of watching process: it lets us borrow the feeling of creation without the risk. It makes greatness feel more accessible, more possible. It whispers: you could do this too.
Process, Performed
From the outside, process can look like a playground. Highlight reels and satisfying arcs: the joy of creation. But inside, itâs often slow. Repetitive. Blinking cursors on blank pages. Repeating words until theyâre just jumbles of sounds. The big laugh in the rehearsal room and the heavy silence ten minutes later when you inevitably hit a roadblock. Tiny wins. Tiny deaths. Over and over.
The difference is that when we watch someone elseâs process, weâre only seeing the curated versionâthe edited sequence of breakthroughs and resolved problems. In our own process, we have to live through every moment in real time, without knowing which ones will lead anywhere. The stakes feel heavier, the uncertainty sharper.
And layered on top of that is a new kind of pressure: the commodification of process itself.
We live in a culture that rewards âbehind the scenesâ content. How can I prove Iâm working on something? And how can I do it in a way thatâs bite-sized, shareable, engaging enough to stop someoneâs scroll?
What begins as external pressureâfrom producers, managers, or the algorithmâquickly calcifies into something internal. A quiet, insidious belief: if I canât show people what Iâm making, am I really making anything at all?
Thatâs dangerous territory. Because the moment process becomes a performance for others, it stops being a space for real discovery. We start mistaking the performance of process for process itself. We turn the process into a productâforgetting the deeper truth that the process is the product.
Process, in Practice
Maybe the point isnât to romanticize process or to demonize it, but to recognize it for what it is: a space where both truths exist at once. Where exhilaration and doubt live side-by-side.
In nature, nothing blooms all at once. Seeds spend seasons underground, doing the quiet work of becoming. Rivers carve canyons grain by grain. Even a tree in full leaf is still in processâpulling water from the roots, sending sugar through its veins, adjusting to wind and weather in real time. Itâs beautifully endless.
We donât demand a flower show us proof itâs growing. We trust the process because we can see its place in the larger cycle. And maybe thatâs the invitation for us as artists and creativesâto remember that our work is part of a longer arc than whatever deadline or deliverable is in front of us.
In practice, that might mean carving out pocketsâwhether in a rehearsal room, a blank Google Doc, or a 30-minute window of the dayâwhere the work can be messy and private, unfolding in ways that canât be translated to a camera roll. It might mean learning to see (and celebrate) the small signals of progress.
Because in the end, the seed doesnât know the shape of the tree. The river doesnât know the canyon itâs carving. We donât always know what weâre making while weâre making it.
So maybe the work is to keep tending anywayâto water, to shape, to listenâtrusting that something is taking root, even if we donât know how or when or if it will bloom.
One Last ThingâŠ
This year has been one long lesson in living inside unfinished things.
All The Worldâs a Stage was fresh, delicate. We were a small circle of people in a small room, trying to tell an intimate story. There was no road map, only the fragile trust that if we showed up with enough Love and curiosity, the piece would tell us what it wanted to be.
BEAU was the opposite in some ways. Iâve been working on it for nearly eight years, and even this past run was still deep in processâsanding its edges, stripping away what wasnât essential. Not to reinvent it, but to help it sing in the clearest, truest voice. That kind of process teaches patience, loyalty, and the strange satisfaction of realizing that âfinishedâ will never really mean âdone.â
And now, at Williamstown, Iâm watching the birth of something completely new. In a way, itâs like weâre collecting sticks and branches for a future fire. Weâre not even touching Act Two. Just page by page through Act One. Itâs slow. Itâs meticulous. Sometimes to the point of frustration. But itâs also miraculousâthe spark of creation.
When I was younger, admittedly, I wanted the lights, the stage, the moment of being seen. Now I just want to be in the room where it happens. Contributing to the quiet alchemy of people trying to make something together. The privilege of being one little flash in a constellation of a process that, if youâre lucky, you get to witness from the inside.
Maybe thatâs all any of us are doingâweaving mess with magic. And arriving is less of a landing some place and more a recognition of where we already are.
See you next week â„ïž
âMatt