You don’t need to say much

 When we first did Regretting Almost Everything at Mr. Finn’s Cabaret at Barrington Stage in August of 2017, there was no libretto, and it fell on me to act as host and narrator. In my view, the narration is almost as important as the songs. It holds the evening together. It glues the songs together. It gives you a chance to charm the audience with your winning personality and delightful sense of humor. I spent a lot of time thinking about when to speak, and what to say. Also, because we had a lot of songs to do, I wanted to speak as little as necessary, and when I did speak, keep it brief.

And here’s what I learned: You don’t need to say much.

An example: Regretting begins with a couple songs from the early days of Anne and Clay’s relationship, and then it leaps ahead twenty years. I had to let the audience know. And it’s a big leap. I worried they might want to know something about what had happened during those 20 years. Then I realized that, for purpose of the story we were telling, they didn’t need to know.

All I said was: “Fast-forward 20 years, when the little idiosyncrasies that were once so endearing, are no longer so endearing.”

And the audience went with it.

It was a huge relief, and a great lesson. I learned I didn’t have to worry about filling in all the holes or connecting all the dots. If the material is strong, so long as they’re not lost, the audience will go with you.

Which brings to mind something Rick Rubin says in his book, The Creative Act: A Way of Being: “Perfection is finally obtained not when when there is no longer anything to add, but when there’s no longer anything to take away.”