“Just This Once” is the Devil’s tagline. We steer our own souls. And if we trim slices of it in exchange for The Devil’s Offering—usually some form of power—then that’s entirely on us.

I recently decided to re-read William Golding’s Lord of the Flies. The book was written in 1954, two years before I was born. I wanted to see if it lasted, if it was, in any way, dated. It read, unnervingly, like a contemporary novel.

The great equalizer for all of us is that we each have twenty four hours in the day. We spend it or it spends us. Tick, tick, tick. It passes reliably, unrelentingly, and irretrievably for every one of us.

Your heart didn’t get the best of you, Dad. Your heart is the best of you.

Terror clattered my bones and muted my voice and tasted like metal in my mouth. Terror roared in my ears as if threatening that one false move and it would blow my soul to kingdom come.

I'll be performing on September 4 & 10 at the Yellow Bicycle Theatre during the Philadelphia Fringe Festival.

I crammed my day with shows, literally running from one venue to the next with only 20 minutes between performances.

I finally arrived in Edinburgh after a flight so delayed in Manchester, NH that I missed my flight to Scotland.

Your evolving clarity about what your values require of you is a very hot fire to hold your feet to.

I’m traveling to Edinburgh at the end of July for a full, three week run of Buen Camino. I expect I will learn plenty playing back-to-back shows for an international audience at the world’s largest and oldest Fringe Festival.

Of course winning awards and receiving good reviews are useful. And you can also pull a fancy sentence about how terrific the show is from even the worst review. That’s useful, too. But when a young man looks you in the face and tells you that what you just did on stage changed his life, that’s far more than useful. That actually matters.

When I moved to Vermont in 1986 one of the most astonishing discoveries for me was the White River Theatre Festival. I couldn’t believe my luck that in this rural part of the country, a professional theater company was doing work by Shakespeare, Brecht, Voltaire, Chekov, and Tennessee Williams.

Buen Camino is everything I love about solo theatre. Susan’s command of character work is masterful; immersive and completely captivating. Watching her weave in and out of roles with such precision and heart feels like a true privilege. This is a masterclass in solo performance, filled with humor, depth, and joy. –Rheagan Wallace

Beauty matters. Creating matters. I mean it matters like clean water matters. It is essential to our survival. It keeps our hearts soft and open. It focuses our minds on the truth. It makes us cry—for reasons much different and more noble than why the news makes us cry.

My show touches each person differently. My great pleasure is when people snag me after the performance and tell me a story, or show me a photograph, or hug me. All I care about is that they are touched. They take it from there. Art is, at its best, collaboration.

The downside I fear the most is one I don’t hear talked about much, perhaps because it’s small and personal and can’t be easily monetized: the value of wondering.

Mom rarely dared to disagree—the cost was too high.

Being curious about someone’s story isn’t all that can be done, but it’s some of what can be done.

I’m scared unlike I’ve ever been scared in my life. That’s simply true. What helps me is to remember my one job: Keep flying the plane.

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