Look at them. Amber and Judy. First ones on the Roble Theater stage (now the Harry J. Elam Jr. Theater) in this space that still smells like fresh paint and possibility. You know what that means? That means there’s no roadmap. No one’s fucked it up here yet. No one’s nailed it yet either. Just empty space and two people willing to step into it.
Aleta’s there, pushing them. “Go further,” you can almost hear her saying. “Push the boundaries.” Because that’s the thing about being first, you have to push. There’s no trail to follow, no safe path worn smooth by a thousand feet before yours. You’re making the path. You’re the path.
Here’s what they don’t tell you about being first: history matters. Not the kind in textbooks, the kind that seeps into the walls, into the floorboards, into the fucking air of a place. Every theater, every stage, every performance space has a memory. And these two? They’re writing the first line of this one’s story.
Maybe nobody remembers their names in a few years. Maybe there’s no plaque, no mention in the program notes. Maybe Aleta, Amber and Judy become a footnote, if that. But that mark they’re leaving right now? It doesn’t give a shit about being remembered. It’s already there. In the marlay floor, the wood grain. In the way the light hits at this angle. In the molecules of sweat and fear and ambition that are settling into this space right fucking now.
That’s the thing about places, they remember even when the assholes who hold the keys to the place don’t. Every performer who comes after, whether they know it or not, they’re walking on ground these two broke. Breathing air these two charged with something. Standing in the gravity well of this first moment.
There’s a kind of terror in that, if you think about it. But also a kind of freedom that most people never get to taste. Everything that happens after, every performance, every stumble, every triumph on this stage, it all comes back to this moment. To these two. To the first marks made on an unmarked canvas.