Good Night, North Country

A Love Letter

Illustration: Aidan Wharton

I was 16 when I first saw a thin, white candle flickering in a darkened window. Growing up in Hawaii, it wasn't something we did, but in rural Ohio, just after Christmas, they were everywhere. The tradition, rooted in Colonial America, offers a beacon to weary travelers, welcoming them to rest. And who is more familiar with the deep relief at a warm bed than a traveling actor? Actors have been roaming from town to town, city to city, since the Medieval Ages, spreading art and stories however they could. So it's no surprise that these images have lived with me as our company of Girl From The North Country has traveled far and wide this year, joining a tradition hundreds of years old. We've traveled from the blisteringly cold of the North to the scorching heat of the Southwest, from the humidity of the South to the balmy West Coast. And now it is time for our show to lay down its weary head.  

It's a strange thing, walking up to an ending. So many times in life, we are unaware of the last time we'll experience something. We don't know when the last time we pick up a child will be, or the last time we'll see someone. But for an actor, our lives are full of scheduled endings, and we walk up to and through them, sometimes alone and sometimes as a company. And here we are, walking up to our ending now. Along the way, we've learned so many lessons in resilience and fortitude and what it means to build a family. Our cast, company, and even our tour route have changed (or rather extended), but the spirit and core of our show has stayed true from the start.

The Gift of Touring

My journey with North Country started back in 2021. I joined the Broadway company, closed it once, reopened it, and closed it again in June 2022. Then, in the summer of 2023, an offer to tour rolled around, and I knew there was no other show I'd want to travel with. It has been an absolute gift to be able to do the show in both settings. They've been such vastly different experiences, and doing both allowed each experience to be beautifully unique. I had a frame of reference as the touring company began to inhabit these vibrant characters in their own ways. No one tried to emulate those who came before, and the creative team allowed everyone to make the roles their own. I was wowed by how the same characters could be so different, and the show was so much richer because of it.

Our show followed a group of wayward souls in 1930s Minnesota, and our audiences across the country had more in common with our characters than our Broadway clientele. Tourists and New Yorkers are excellent audience members. Still, there's something special about pretending to be in a snowy Duluth when you've literally walked through a blizzard to get to work in Buffalo. And, of course, being able to do the show in Minnesota, too, was a gift. Tim Walz even came to our opening night long before he was thrust into the national spotlight. While yes, we may have had audiences that connected with our shows more than in New York, that also came with a certain downside.

Our American Audiences

When touring presenters decided to place our show in their seasons, they knew we wouldn't be a best-seller, but they believed in the beauty and power of our show to give audiences something unique and unexpected. And we didn't need to sell out their theatres because of one thing: subscribers. Tour presenters build a package of shows they can market as an enticing bundle. The headliners are the Wicked's and Hamilton's, there are comedies and showstopping spectaculars, and then tucked away are the indie pieces. It was easy to tell the difference between cities where we were a part of their subscription season and cities where we were not. The subscribers came to our show because they wanted to see other shows, and ours came along with that. This format is such a gift to small, less commercial theatre. Imagine, for a moment, if Wicked offered a bundled deal with a small play that shared its message. You want to see Wicked and have a mild interest in the other, but you love a deal, so you buy the bundle and end up seeing something you would never have otherwise. Or, take it one step further; you get a subscription to all the Jujamycyn or Shubert theatres and get to fill out your roster of shows. You'd end up seeing more art you're unfamiliar with, and we all would be supporting smaller theatre simultaneously. It's a beautiful symbiotic relationship that works on tour, and I hope one day it will work on commercial Broadway, too.

But as with most things, there's a flip side to subscribers. The package deal means they didn't choose our show specifically, and the lump payment in advance means they have less incentive to stick around. And a lot of people didn't stick around for our show. We learned fast that if touring audiences arrived expecting something fun, like Mrs. Doubtfire, they'd have no qualms about leaving at intermission for something darker, like our show, which they did. Often. And while this weighed on us all, it also taught us a valuable lesson about storytelling and resilience.

Defining Our Story

For better and worse, audiences were never quite prepared for the mystery and atmosphere of our little folk musical (dare I say even a play with music). But we found a strength and fortitude that I will carry with me for the rest of my life. We learned how to do our jobs in the most unforgiving conditions for no reason other than to tell a story that each of us thought was vitally important. (We also learned very quickly never to look up our show on local Reddits.) And we learned how hard it is to do a show that isn't popular, but it really honed in on why we did it.

We knew that people wouldn't like the show, but we also knew that somewhere out there in the dark, someone would. Someone would walk into our theatre, expecting a flashy Broadway musical, and be touched and moved by the art that we got to put on display. And that is the soul of the piece. Conor McPherson, our incredible writer, director, and guide, made it very clear that this was not a piece for everyone and that he didn't need it to be. He wanted it to be a piece that lived with people long after they walked out of the doors, good or bad. The show is unapologetic in its anti-musical theatreness. We don't break for applause; we drive through our scene work, barely stopping to breathe, and we never let the audience get their footing. I've never been part of a show where I could answer every critique with, "Actually, that's exactly what Conor intended." But that didn't make it easier to see the holes in the audience at the top of Act Two, but it did bring our cast closer together in a way I've never quite experienced before.

A Resilient Family  

In conditions as tough as ours have been, you have no choice but to bond together. Why did a group of 40 strangers decide to leave our lives for a year for a modest amount of money and travel the country performing a dark, melancholy show nightly? Because we believed in the story that we got to tell every night, and we built around that. I have so much respect for every single member of this company. Every person led with grace when they didn't have to and taught me the meaning of hard work and soft kindness. We always came back together to take care of each other because this job and this lifestyle are hard.

You see each other in the best of times and the worst of times. You see each other at hotel breakfasts before anyone's had a cup of coffee. You see each other hungover on the bus, maybe even opening a bottle of rosé to help ease the headaches. You see each other (or smell them) after cooking fish in a hotel room, which is a mistake I'll never make again. You see each other on field trips to see the amazing sights that this country has to offer. You see each other through heartbreaks and grief. You see each other through triumphs and joys. All with people that you had no hand in choosing, but you make a family all the same.

In many ways, this journey has echoed that of the characters we brought to life on stage. We're all wayward travelers in different parts of our lives, with different hopes and dreams and different obstacles thrust into our paths. And somehow, against astronomical odds, this group of forty or so was thrust together by fate to take on this particular task. It wasn't often glamorous, and there wasn't always a discernable direction or plot to our days, but we pressed on simply for the sake of pressing on. We lifted each other out of the darkness and into the catharsis of art, bringing a few more people with us each day.

The Company of Girl From The North Country.

A Grateful Goodbye

At the end of it all, I sit here with nothing but gratitude. Between Broadway and Tour, I took a temporary retirement from acting to work at a nonprofit and found that I loved the 9 to 5 lifestyle. Two months into tour, when people asked how things were going, I would confidently say, "This is the last show I'll ever do." But now, after almost 350 performances of our dear show, something has changed, and I can't wait to return to New York as an actor. I can't place exactly what changed within me, but I know that a large part of it has to do with the incredible folks I got to spend this year with.

Some of these faces I'll see in New York again, and some I won't. We're scattering across the country to return to our lives before tour. And no matter what our relationships were like on tour or what they will be in the future, we're all forever bonded by this experience, an experience that's woven through the country and through time. From Tour to Broadway to The Public, Girl From The North Country is concluding an almost decade-long life here in America.

The New York Times review of the Broadway production said, "McPherson hears America singing in the dark. And [the cast's] voices light up the night with the radiance of divine grace." Those words were not written about us, but little did anyone know then how this particular cast would take those lines and inhabit them on a level beyond art. With each passing show, we became experts at lighting up the dark. Every time we walked up to our microphones, we sang for ourselves, our cast, our crew, and our audiences. For an entire year, we have been Americans singing across America in the dark. Our microphones, our voices, and our relationships have been our candles in the windows, guiding us weary travelers home to each other every single night.

May those candles always burn bright.

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