The Art That Made Me: A Look Inside the Playlist of My Creative Soul

I've been asked a lot of times where my performance style comes from. And honestly? It's not one thing. It's never one thing.

It's a Saturday morning when I was nine years old, watching a movie that made me cry for reasons I couldn't explain yet. It's a cast recording I wore out on repeat in high school. It's a concert where a performer did something so unexpected with a moment that I physically grabbed my friend's arm. It's accumulated, layered, constant.

So I thought I'd open up the vault a little. Here are the works — the songs, the performances, the films, the shows — that genuinely shaped how I tell stories and inhabit characters. This isn't a ranked list. It's more like a mixtape of my creative life.

The Song That Taught Me About Subtext: "Don't Rain on My Parade"

Okay, stay with me, because this might sound like an obvious choice. But hear me out.

I'm not talking about the bravado everyone focuses on. I'm talking about what lives underneath it. When I really sat with this song as a teenager — not just belting along, but actually listening — I started to hear how much longing is packed into all that confidence. Barbra Streisand's recording is technically stunning, but what always gets me is how much she makes you feel like Fanny Brice is convincing herself as much as anyone else.

That's the lesson I took: the most powerful performances aren't the ones where the character has it all figured out. They're the ones where the character is figuring it out in real time, right in front of you. I think about that constantly.

The Film That Rewired My Brain: All About Eve (1950)

I came to this film late — late twenties, maybe — and I genuinely had to sit quietly afterward for a while.

The way every character in that movie performs for each other, the way ambition and admiration and resentment all wear the same face — it completely changed how I think about motivation in character work. Bette Davis doing Margo Channing is a masterclass in playing someone who knows they're being watched and performs accordingly, while also cracking open just enough vulnerability to make you ache for her.

I think about Margo Channing whenever I'm playing a character who has something to protect. What does protecting yourself look like when you've built a whole life on being seen?

The Album I Return to Every Time I Need to Feel Something: Tapestry by Carole King

This one is pure gut.

There's a directness to Carole King's songwriting that I find myself chasing in my own work. She doesn't dress things up. She tells you exactly what she means, and somehow that plainness hits harder than anything ornate could. "It's Too Late," "So Far Away," "Will You Love Me Tomorrow" — every track on Tapestry sounds like someone sitting across from you at a kitchen table, just telling you the truth.

As a performer, I want to do that. I want people to feel like I'm not performing at them but talking to them. Carole King is the reason I care about that distinction.

The Stage Performance That Stopped My Heart: Fun Home (Original Broadway Cast)

I saw a recording of this before I saw it live, and I still wasn't prepared.

What Fun Home does — structurally, emotionally — is something I think about all the time. It asks you to hold multiple timelines simultaneously, to understand a character both as a child and as an adult looking back. The way the narrative layers grief and discovery and family complexity without ever becoming heavy-handed... it's a blueprint for how I want to approach emotionally dense material.

Jody Soto's performance in particular (in the production I saw) showed me what it looks like when a performer completely disappears into truth. No performance for the back row. Just absolute, terrifying honesty.

The Performer Who Made Me Want to Work Harder: Audra McDonald

This one needs no elaborate explanation. If you know, you know.

But what specifically inspires me about Audra McDonald isn't just the technical achievement — which is extraordinary — it's her relationship with stillness. She knows when to do less. She knows when a breath is the performance. In a field where we're often trained to fill every moment, watching someone so gifted choose not to push is a constant reminder that restraint is a skill, too.

Every time I think I'm doing too much in a scene, I ask myself: what would Audra do here? Usually the answer is: less.

The Movie Musical That Cracked Me Open: Dreamgirls (2006)

The moment Jennifer Hudson sings "And I Am Telling You I'm Not Going." You know the moment. The world knows the moment.

But what I took from it wasn't just the power of the vocal performance. It was the way the camera stays on her face — the way the direction trusts the performer to carry the entire weight of that scene without cutting away. That taught me something about stillness and presence that I've never forgotten. Sometimes the most cinematic thing you can do is just be there, completely, and let it land.

The Through Line

Looking at this list, I notice something. Every single one of these works is about someone navigating loss or longing or transformation — and doing it in front of other people. That's the thread.

I think that's what draws me to storytelling in the first place. The particular courage it takes to feel something out loud, with witnesses. All of these artists do that without flinching. They made me want to do the same.

If you haven't sat with some of these yet, I really hope you do. Not because they'll necessarily hit you the way they hit me — but because you might find your own thread running through them. And that thread is worth following.

That's what art is for.