It's the Journey that Counts

On Thursday, January 24, Raise Your Spirits takes to the road and brings its latest production, "ESTHER and the Secrets in the King's Court" to the stage of the new Cultural Center in Kiryat Arba, south of Gush Etzion.
It's the first time this production of ESTHER has left its home stage of the Gush Etzion Community Center. It's an exciting journey that everyone is looking forward to.
But this isn't really the journey that will make ESTHER an unforgettable experience for its cast of more than 60 women and girls. The journey that has been unforgettable has been the one we have taken together since the beginning of the summer, the one that changed each of us from individual talented people :) to a family of performers.
The journey that really counts for our Raise Your Spirits cast is the journey from me to us. Most people think that actors are a bunch of selfish hams (well, hams maybe, but selfish doesn't have a place in Raise Your Spirits dialogue).
The journey that counts has had its milestones - the first time we saw the benefits of harmonizing correctly, the first time we understood that our dance looked best when we pulled together, the first time we each rooted for someone else more than ourselves, the first time we cheered when a cast member "got it right", the first time we saw the shine in the eyes of our little Shushan children, the first time an understudy got on stage and made us proud.
Our journey from a cast of an excellent show to a tight united family has been the one that counts, the one we will always remember. Our cast will always remember it, and so will our audiences.
We've been together on a regular basis for more than seven months now. That's a long time. We've gotten to know one another pretty well, and the familiarity breeds quite a lot of love and laughter. 
To the "Cast of the Queen" as ESTHER's director Toby Klein Greenwald says, or "Queenies" in the words of production manager Eudice Spitz, you will light up the stage in Kiryat Arba and bring tremendous pride to everyone involved in ESTHER, to our audience and even to our Forefathers in the City of Hebron.
Enjoy the journey.
If you'd like to join us on Thursday night, contact 02-996-1666, then dial "0" for the secretary. Tickets are 58 NIS.