What's the musical that you have the biggest personal connection to?

What are some musicals that can really just hit you where it hurts and stir your emotions like nothing else? Those ones that you can burst into tears listening to because you know exactly what they're talking about. Or those ones that just have such a special place in your heart because of your own reasons?

My top one is definitely Next to Normal. My sister deals with depression and my other sister and I both struggle with anxiety issues and seeing and hearing these issues being sung about is such a painful yet healing experience. I've shed many a tear while listening to Light.

I'll probably get hate for this one, but another one of mine is Rent. I had my first lead ever in RENT last summer (I played Mark) and it was one of my favorite experiences. Yes, it's flawed, but it will always have a place in my heart. Another show that might just be in that same spot is Avenue Q (which I'm currently in if anyone's interested in seeing it in the Nyack/Rockland area this August 9th, 10th, and 11th [I play Princeton]. If anyone is, you can message me for details...). We blocked "For Now" tonight and I realized just how true that song is.

Well now that I've rambled on incessantly, what are some of yours?

PIPPIN - I actually had reaffirmed one of the greatest life lessons I've ever learned when I saw this show last night - The demand for something without flaw or compromise is not just self-defeating but ultimately self-destructive.

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Updated On: 7/26/13 at 01:15 AM

Wicked. I know what it's like to be green, so I can really relate to the show on a personal level.

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As far as all time is concerned, Sunday in the Park with George. When I need to find focus in my life, I always remember I must "finish the hat". Plus...dat score.
Recently, however, Kinky boots. At the end when both Lola and Charlie come to terms with their fathers and their past selves, I bawled. I can relate so badly to it.

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I suppose it would be Dear World, since its themes resonate the most to me.

Next to Normal - hands down

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Wicked ive seen it a bunch and it gets me everytime

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Thanks for asking this question. For me, it's American Idiot. Though my experiences weren't nearly as dramatic (thankfully), I went through the same kinds of things Johnny went through around the middle of the last decade: the anomie, the drugs, the "running away" to someplace more exciting only to find that it's actually more confusing and more miserable, and the return home to a less exciting but more promising life.

I realize that American Idiot isn't as great a work as some of my other favorites (such as The Most Happy Fella or The Light in the Piazza), but it just grips me in a special way.

Les Miserables - My father saw a special on 20/20 about the show when it was opening on Broadway and became obsessed. That summer, he sat us down to watch the Tony awards and that started my love of musical theatre. The next year, for my high school graduation present, he sent my mother and I to Broadway for 24 hours just to see the show while he was in the hospital. It was his favorite show (and mine) and he saw it 13 times before his death in 2011.

Falsettos - I took my dad to see the show on Broadway. I had only been out for a few years, so I wasn't sure about his comfort level on the subject. He dubbed it the best musical since Les Miserables. We took my mother to see the tour the following year and she led the standing ovation from the second row of the orchestra.

Rent - It was the right show at the right time. I was in my 20s and I spent the summer in Manhattan studying at Circle in the Square when it won its Tonys. I saw the show three times with standing room tickets just to cement the show and the score in my brain as the recording wouldn't be released for a few more months after I would return to Texas.

The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee - We took my mother to the Chicago production for Mother's Day and my dad was chosen to be one of the spellers. It was such a joy to watch him on stage smiling and giggling and performing that choreography. Then he started spelling words correctly that he was supposed to get wrong (like "denghi" because my parents lived several years in South America) so they kept calling him up until they made up a word he couldn't possibly know. I still have his participant button.

Next to Normal - When my world exploded in 2011, that show brought me some clarity. I saw it twice on Broadway to see both principal casts. The second time I saw it was shortly before the first of several grenades started bombing my life. I kept returning to You Don't Know/I Am the One thinking I felt just like Diana. Later, when the dust first started to settle, I saw the tour in Chicago. It was that performance I realized I was never Diana in that number. I was Dan. And that revelation was HUGE.

Billy Elliot - That show was my mother's safe haven during my father's illness. When the depression started to creep in, she would go see Billy Elliot again and again.

American Idiot - A show that I never expected to be as profoundly moving as it was to me.

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Fiddler. It and Funny Girl were the first obc records I ever heard (at a very impressionable age); and of course like many Eastern European Jews, it's my "Roots".

Second would be Promises, Promises because it was the first Broadway show I ever saw and I'll never shake how exciting it was for me.

Third would be She Loves Me, because it gets to me emotionally like no other show.

Fourth would be A Chorus Line because when the curtain came down I felt like I had just gotten back on land after being pulled out by a riptide.

Billy Elliot but not so sure why.

At this time, I have a strong connection to the message of Kinky Boots - and how changing one person's mind is so important. That must be the teacher in me..

I am also connected to Ms. Saigon. My daughter (the cellist) went on one of the tours and I must have seen it 20 times over a couple of years. I never got tired of seeing it.

That said, I am emotionally most connected to 1776 because I saw it when my mother was ill with cancer. I actually saw it three times because the first two times we had tickets, my mother didn't make it because she was too sick to go. But she really wanted to go so we just kept getting tickets and I kept going. When she finally saw it, it made it even more special because she loved it. I believe it was the last Broadway show she ever saw.

Thanks for taking me to the theater, mom and dad.