To my fellow cast and crew —
Designers, directors, performers, shape-shifters,
Noise-makers, ticket-takers, hat-passers,
Artisans, actors, activists, and ancestors,

Places.

Places, please, for the top of Twenty Seventeen.

All you
Who seek and speak and study the living languages of spirit,
You, who listen to the Muses and twist the twelvefold tongues of music,
We need you in the wings, now.

Now.

We need you standing by.
All you
Who know how to break walls down with a slight side-eye,
And thoughts unspoken
You, who know the dying art of being broken-open,
All you
Who know how to
HOLD

And then how to shift focus,
How to draw the crowds’ attention to matters of importance,
You
Who craft tactual
Magic

Just by being
In The Moment,

And to all who can hear me,
All
Who know how to breathe…

Places, please.

I repeat,

Places!
PLEASE.

You
Who reach deep for motivation,
Who strip your Selves stark naked,
YOU who
Say
What needs saying
When (and because) it needs saying,
You who cause by-heart lines to ignite as revelations,
And who have the guts to trust
The trickster-god, “Improvisation”

And all you
Who paint with light, and render reality from dreams, and
You, who stitch miracles together when shit unravels at the seams,
To all you who make mountains
And move them on a cue,

To all
Who do
What We Do:

The time has come

To transport. To transform.
To turn the streets into our stages,
To pull the right words off their pages,
Or out of thin air,
Or out of old wounds,
Or from ANYWHERE
To flesh out the barest bones
And call down the ancient ones,
With sacred poems,

To make something

REAL.

Now,
NOW,
The curtain
Rises,

Let us commit
To our choices
(and to each other.)
Let us support
Our voices
(And one another.)
Let us
Now allow our hearts to lead,
and get this show on the road!

Places, PLEASE.
PLACES!
NOW!

And
Break.
A Fucking. 
LEG.