My mother took me to see Before Sunset at my local movie theater when I was eleven. Who knew a film about two people just walking and talking through Paris would be life-altering for a preteen? It was like watching a foreign film in another language - I didn’t really understand anything the characters were talking about, but I saw what was happening. In the many two-shots of Celine and Jesse splitting the frame, there was always a gap of space between them. Some viewers were probably itching for them to close that gap with their hands, arms, or lips. But I saw the raw, intoxicating electricity in that space and thought, “Oh, that’s what true love looks like.”

When I got older, I started looking for my own true love and was… disillusioned. My dates never wanted introspective walk-and-talks; they’d use our rendezvous as an interview to confirm height, income, maturity, life goals, etc, or as a preamble to ‘go back to my place’ (for something I had no desire for). No wish for the fireworks of a good conversation - just transaction. When I came out as asexual in my late 20s, I thought that explained it. Only people uninterested in sex like me would want my version of love. So I just needed to learn what other people wanted! 

I sought help from my friends, asking them to recall their most romantic memories. I expected stories of grand gestures, candlelit dinners, sexual escapades - things I could replicate. Instead, every one of them told me of a time they met someone and spent the entire night just… talking. When the texture of someone’s words, the melody of someone’s vulnerability, the touching of hearts rather than hands, played on their soul in a way that forever taught them what love was.

Only then did I appreciate the universality of my cherished (and worn-out from rewatches) Before Trilogy DVDs on my shelf. Richard Linklater and his colleagues had painted a connection between two people built not on traditional physical or sexual attraction, but on the intoxicating possibility in another’s sounds and silences. And in a society starting to pull itself apart, I desperately wanted people to remember those lifechanging connections they once had or imagine the ones they might have, in hopes of reclaiming their humanity. 

So I dedicated eight years to reinterpreting those three Before stories into a single-night experience using my own language of musical theatre. What the stage lacks in the closeness of film, it makes up for with feeling the air palpably change as an actor’s heart reaches out to another. Perfectly framed vistas are relayed through tapestries of music. Imperceptible glances are translated to the vibrations of a humming cello. The thrill of quick-changing shots is replaced by the slow drip of minutes, forcing us to feel our own life ticking away as we hang on every word. With an audience trapped in the dim magic that is live theatre, a musical time machine through three days could remind us of what we could be when we dare to feel that space between, or “God” as Celine might call it. So why don’t you “come to Vienna with me…?”