The Accidental Break

I didn’t set out to break the fourth wall.

I was too busy trying not to sing too loud so someone might hear me — or have my dress fall off, which for some reason I’d decided would be my personal curse of embarrassment — or risk being the uncool mom to my daughters.

I’d built a different kind of wall anyway. A first wall. Not a theatrical crime — just my own little plexiglass shield, the one I’d spent years hiding behind without even realizing it. Close enough to be part of things, but never quite in them.

But right from the beginning of the show — and I swear I didn’t plan this — I started looking at the audience to calm my nerves. Really looking. Not at the vague sea of faces, but at actual people: the tilt of a head, the curve of a smile, eyes that twinkled like stars.

Anything that helped me stay connected.

Skylar was horrified.
“Mom. You can’t do that. That’s breaking the fourth wall.”

And apparently, even for a “virgin” — the cast’s affectionate nickname for me since it was my first community theater show — it was still considered a faux pas.

But the truth is, the plexiglass didn’t break here.
That happened later.

Still… it did teach me something:
some walls really are meant for breaking.

Backstage Glow

Our dressing room wasn’t a dressing room at all. It was an English classroom, the blinds pulled down so no one could see in while we changed. Sonnets on the walls. Desks pushed aside. Costumes piled on top of bookshelves that had probably only ever held paperbacks and forgotten homework.

Unglamorous, yes.

But it felt almost as natural as being in middle school again — standing there with my girls, getting ready for a disco musical in the least disco place imaginable.

We stood shoulder to shoulder, sequined and gold, framed by that classroom window. I’d told the cast I was a soprano (to be like my girls), but in reality I was singing alto — badly — and whenever the alto parts didn’t suit me, I inevitably drifted up to sing along with the leads.

Another serious theatrical crime.

Click.

The woman who took our picture had to sit out during one of the more difficult numbers. She didn’t mind. We were the last four in the dressing room, and she was happy to snap the photo and freeze that mother-daughter moment in time.

That backstage limbo before I came alive — back row, center stage.

The Steps That Bring You to the Edge

Super Trouper wasn’t the finale. It wasn’t even close — it appeared right after intermission, one of those numbers where the ensemble forgets we’re the ensemble and just gets swept up in the joy of it all. The lights came up, the music kicked in, and we were off.

I was so far in the back no one could see me.
Old habits.
Invisible by instinct.

And all of me preferred it that way. The dress felt a little too sexy for me — the prude in me never applied for this role — and hiding felt easier.
Until it felt so constrictive.

You can only be held captive for so long before suddenly you can’t take it anymore. A part of me was egging me on:

Admit it, you’re having fun.

And I was. For a moment I felt like a golden ball of fire — until it came time for the end pose. My friend up in the rafters snapped a photo of me right then, frozen mid-gesture, my hands lifted in that non-committed, halfway-up way — more like a shrug wrapped in a gesture.

Why couldn’t I put my hands fully in the air and own that moment in time?
I was so close, but still so far.

I got so close to joy, but still managed to push it away.

I think my brain knew my moment was coming… and my body hadn’t caught up with the idea yet.

Connection Collapses Everything

But that night, something switched. I went from back-row girl by default to forgetting I was even on that stage. And it had everything to do with breaking the fourth wall.

You can put a girl at the back of the line in middle school, but will she ever learn?
Yes. She does.

I’d built my own invisible plexiglass — safe enough to watch everything, even participate to a degree, but never fully belong. And that wall came crashing down the moment I looked out at the audience and saw a woman dancing to her heart’s content in the very back row.

We formed a back-row alliance in that instant — a sisterhood of not caring where we stand, only that we be.

The plexiglass came tumbling down, because suddenly I felt what she was feeling.
I belonged to that moment in time.

I came alive just as the confetti popped.

The Pop That Stayed With Me

Years after the final bows, the only lights that come up now are the rising sun — and whenever I don my white dancing boots and my own sparkly gold pants, my toned-down replacement for that too-sexy gold dress I no longer own, something in the air that night still hums within me.

I remember friends and family afterward giving me huge hugs and saying,
“You looked like you were having so much fun out there.”

I laughed — an old insider joke from my theater-watching days: when you don’t actually see someone onstage, you compliment the show, not them.

But I understood the message.

It didn’t matter if anyone saw me.
I saw myself.
Shoved into back rows (of my own doing), plexiglass and all.

And I’ll never forget the moment the confetti fell with me —
time suspended, joy rushing toward me —
and somewhere inside and outside everything came together… Pop.

For the first time in a long line of back-row years…
I was.