“….but we’ve said enough is enough, haven’t we, and here we are! And all of a sudden? Today? Tonight? I want… I want to buy it!  I want to bite into it and chew it and swallow it, like everybody else. By god, it’s like he said, the torch has been passed!  It has!  Born in this century.  Tempered by war.  Disciplined by a…a hard and bitter peace? Boy wouldn’t it be great …to be… someone.  Who can believe in that again.”
- Phil Granger, Six Years
 
Sharr White’s haunted hero was speaking not about our current President-Elect, but about another president elected almost 50 years ago – another brave young politician who dared to change the face of America as he knew it.  On Tuesday, our nation again said Yes – yes, we want to buy it, to bite into it.  Yes, we want to believe in this, in ourselves, again.  Yes, we choose Hope over Fear.  Yes.  Yes We Can.

I was in Chicago’s Grant Park last night and I watched America respond to the question this company is asking this season.  How do we build a future from a present we didn’t expect?  We elect Barack Obama, that’s how – a man of whom I am unabashedly proud.  A man who has allowed me – a proud Air Force brat with a Veteran father - for the first time in my life, to feel patriotism deeply, honestly, viscerally.  A man who will represent the United States I love with courage and compassion and conscience at home and abroad.  I am so full of pride and joy and anticipation about what’s next – about what is possible - with him at the helm of this country. 

I’m not a pundit.  I don’t pretend to have vast political knowledge.  I have not digested every bit of commentary, every scrap of analysis, I cannot tell you to the penny how much anyone has spent on anything in connection with this now-ended action.  And New Leaf is not a political theatre – we’re not out to make you vote Democrat or Republican or Green or Independent (although I do think I can speak for the whole company in saying that we hope you did VOTE, whatever choices you may have made).  We do not espouse a litany of certain political views.  We’re not trying to change yours.

But we are a theatre about renewal – about the possibility of a new beginning – about travelling through the darkness and coming into the light.  And speaking just for myself, I can think of very few times in my life that I have felt those things more acutely than I did last night.  In a field.  With 239,999 of like-minded individuals raising their voices together in an afirmation that will continue to sound through the life of our great nation – Yes We Can.

I stood in that field and cried with joy and the best kind of disbelief – disbelief that was soothed by the overwhelming embrace of a woman I have never seen before.  First she hugged Marsha – with whom I am so glad to have been yesterday, and who wrote about the night so eloquently here - then when I turned around she hugged both of us.  Then she hugged me – tightly and truly – we were both sobbing.  We stood together in that field, in that disbelief and cried and held on to each other and that’s how I knew that this was real.  That he will be our President.  That in this country, anything is possible.  That we have an opportunity to be renewed – to begin again. 

I’m also reminded that we’re travelling in spirals, we human animals.  This is like something that has happened before – it’s similar, but different.  There has been – thank goodness – progess made.  There is still so, so, so much more to do, but I feel we have taken an inspired step into a future that is brigther for this man and all he has already brought us.  And I love that we have been given the gift of memory – that maybe we can learn something from where we’ve been.  I feel like that’s what Six Years is about in a lot of ways for me.  About taking a moment to let where we’ve been shine light on where we might be going.  I think now is a good time for us to do that.  We have been given the gift of hope again.  I hope we make the most of it.