What if the most truthful you only emerges when the curtain is drawn and the lights are turned off?

As soon as I stopped watching the show and began to recognize myself in it, something changed; it gave me some irritatingly specific flashbacks. When I was a kid, I was that kid, the one dragged from art class to art class like it was my runway, trying to pirouette in the hallway while covered in paint. I just thought it was fun at the time. I now understand that it was a formation. I was being built by beauty, melody by melody, brick by brick. With wildflower petals and watercolor dreams paving the path to who I am now.

And maybe that’s why last week, sitting in the velvet dark watching a musical about pre-Communist porcelain and ancient Chinese stories, I wasn’t just watching art. I was inside it. Or it was inside me.

People claim that we go to musicals to "get cultured," as though we're adding sophistication to ourselves. However, as I sat in that elaborate theater, I realized it had nothing to do with our lifestyle. Understanding is the key. Beneath all the noise, they remind you of who you are. The stage turns into a mirror. The melodies turn into a recall. And somewhere between the first spotlight and the last bow, we take off our rough edges and return home to something honest and unvarnished.

I recall my very first Broadway show. The actor's eyeshadow was visible to me up close. A broom-wielding girl with green skin sang about being misunderstood.

She was nothing like me and yet everything like me.

And when her eyes swept across the audience, they caught mine. I usually don't cry in public, I think that comes from my childhood. I wasn’t performing, and yet I felt seen, completely, terrifyingly seen. Like someone had ripped the mask off the version of me I present to the world. I didn't know what to do.

And that makes me wonder…

If we walk into a theater as one person and leave as another, which version is the real us?

Because maybe the most powerful thing about art isn’t how it moves us… but how it reveals us.