Notes On… Lessons from the Stage

What Musical Theatre Taught Me About Being a Therapist

Before I became a therapist, I trained in musical theatre. I spent years studying story, voice, movement, and presence. And while I no longer perform for an audience, the stage is still with me. It shaped how I listen, how I attune, and how I sit with another person’s truth.

Acting taught me to ask: What does this person want? What are they protecting? What are they not saying? These questions didn’t disappear when I left the theater. They became central in the therapy room.

Onstage, you study subtext. You track timing. You feel the emotional current underneath the lines. Therapy is no different. Our work is often about what’s not being said and about the silence between the words.

Musical theatre taught me rhythm. How to slow down. How to build. How to let a moment land. These are the same instincts I use in sessions. When to speak. When to pause. When to breathe. I learned timing onstage, listening not just with my ears but with my whole body. And long before I knew what therapy was, I had Sondheim. His lyrics understood my inner world before I had words for it. I often say he was my first therapist. More on that later;)

Theater also trained my body to listen. To notice when energy shifts. To sense tension, openness, and withdrawal. The body is an instrument in both crafts, and presence is everything.

What surprised me most is how the vulnerability required in acting prepared me for the intimacy of therapy. You rehearse being fully seen. You walk into a scene with your whole heart. That’s the work we ask of our clients every day.

And of course, the voice; its tone, cadence, softness, or strength, all carry deep emotional weight. Sometimes the quietest line in the gentlest voice opens the greatest door.

The stage taught me to trust the moment. That unpredictable, unguarded flash where something real breaks through. As Brené Brown writes, vulnerability means risk, uncertainty, and emotional exposure. And yet, that is where truth lives. Whether in a scene or a session, I wait for that unscripted instant. That is the magic I live for.

So yes, I trained in performance. But really, I was always studying humanity. Today, I simply do it from the chair instead of the wings.