As many of you know, art was not my first career choice. Wasn't even my second or third or fifth, if I'm going to be honest about it. My first career choice, for a long time, was theater, and I spent many years studying, interning, and working in theaters.

Almost seven years ago, I worked at a small community theater. Our end of season play that year was 1776. I'd seen the movie in school before, and I remembered that I'd really liked some of the music, but I didn't recollect much of it beyond that.

For a musical, 1776 is a bit of an oddity. It's based on historical events, namely the events in the Continental Congress leading up to the signing of the Declaration of Independence. It varies from history in many ways, but sticks close enough to it that you get a good sense of what our forefathers must have gone through (only with less singing, probably). The play doesn't glorify these men. They wear frock coats and stockings and wigs, and sit around complaining about the heat and the flies. They argue over EVERYTHING imaginable. They fight and bicker and scheme and bargain and plead and miss their wives and yet... you still get the sense that those among them who lobbied the hardest for American Independence knew that what they were doing was making history and they took that responsibility very seriously.

Stories and plays when done well, allow us to get a sense for times, places, and events we'd be unable to understand or experience otherwise. They put us there in the room with these incredibly brave, intelligent, hardworking men who fought on pen and paper for what others would later bleed for, and what today we struggle to uphold. Their time was not our time, their era would have been unable to comprehend the enormity of our country today, and the multitude of topics and struggles we face. Or maybe they could have done. But they recognized that tyranny was no way to live, and that freedom came at the cost of compromise.

That play remains one of my favorite that I've ever worked on. I have very fond memories of building the deceptively simple set during long, sixteen hour days with few breaks. Even the day of the dress rehearsal when I sliced my index finger open with a utility knife in a moment of stupidity, then passed out at the sight of my own blood on the workroom floor is made fonder by remembering the concerned faces of twenty-odd mostly gay men in white wigs, stockings, buckle shoes and boxers standing over me when I came to and asking if I were diabetic. Even my college director who was playing the gouty Ben Franklin, and who couldn't remember his lines most of the time, made me smile when doing a kick line and singing about sexual combustibility.

But my favorite memory of that play, the one that sticks in my mind, is the ending. When they've finally resolved the issue of Independence and have agreed to sign the Declaration. When they approach, one by one to the desk, presided over by John Hancock, to put their names on that single, closely written piece of parchment. When they freeze there, as a scrim descends over the stage to the ringing tones of the Liberty Bell marking a moment in history, and the words of Thomas Jefferson stand for a moment alone, spotlighted on the stage.

"We hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal..."

No matter how often I saw that play, night after night, the moment that bell began to toll I felt an almost overwhelming pride in my country and gratitude for the men who made it possible it to exist. Whatever our differences, when it comes down to it, we're all Americans and we all owe those men a debt of gratitude that can only be repaid by struggling to uphold those ideals that they fought for. Freedom, liberty, equality among men.

Happy Independence Day, my fellow Americans.