Bare It All on Stage

For as long as I can remember, the arts have been my sanctuary—but theater has always been my truest home. I had dabbled in school productions and loved the thrill of being on stage, but the moment I fell in love with theater lives forever etched in my memory.

It was my junior year of high school, on a choir trip to San Francisco. Our teacher had surprised us with tickets to a Broadway production I had never heard of: Wicked. I’ll never forget sitting in the mezzanine, heart pounding, as Elphaba rose into the sky, defying gravity with a voice that shook the air itself. The lights dropped, Act I ended, and in that instant—I was changed. Theater had claimed me.

Since then, musicals have not only shaped who I am, they have become a form of therapy. Behind every soaring note, every carefully crafted lyric, every moment of silence before the orchestra swells, lies raw, unfiltered emotion. The vulnerability of the performers—their ability to embody characters so deeply that an audience feels their joy, their pain, their struggle—has always left me in awe.

Certain shows have carved themselves into my heart forever: Beetlejuice carried me through the grief of losing my grandmother; Dear Evan Hansen helped me face my own suicidality and mental health struggles; Next to Normal gave language and validation to the weight of my diagnosis. But nothing has pierced my soul quite like bare: a pop opera.

I discovered bare through Bright Heart Stages, and though it was described to me as a creative rock musical, nothing could have prepared me for the truth. Set in a 1990s Catholic boarding school, bare tells the story of seniors wrestling with love, identity, and faith—anchored in the forbidden romance of Jason and Peter. I have seen it four times, and each time, I have cried harder, shaken deeper, and left more undone.

As a gay man raised in a strict religious environment, bare was not just a show—it was a mirror. It held up to me the wounds I had long buried, the shame I carried, and the faith I once clung to with trembling hands. It triggered me, yes—but in the most healing of ways. Therapy is not linear, and sitting in that theater at 33 years old, I was reminded that I still have pieces of myself left to heal. And sometimes, musicals are the very thing that carry me toward that healing.

The brilliance of bare lies not just in its lyrics or its contemporary rock edge, but in the courage of its performers. Watching Bright Heart Stages’ cast, I found myself asking again and again: How do they do it? How do they strip themselves bare night after night, tapping into reservoirs of vulnerability to deliver such raw performances? The truth is, I don’t know—and maybe that mystery is part of the magic.

But what I do know is this: they bare themselves. They share the deepest parts of their souls, sustained not only by their own strength, but by the safety of their castmates, directors, producers, and crew—a collective trust that transforms the stage into sacred ground.

And that is what makes the title so perfect. Bare is not just a story. It is an act of courage. It asks its performers, and its audience, to open themselves to vulnerability, to look at their pain, their faith, their identity, and lay it out in the open. To walk into the theater feeling alone and leave knowing you are not.

Because in the end, bare reminds us that sometimes the most healing thing we can do is stand on a stage, or sit in a seat, and bare it all.