So who are we and why should you listen to what we have to say?

Well…we are two people from different backgrounds, with different ways of expressing ourselves creatively, and different career trajectories that have very successfully lived our dreams. Between us, we have a wealth of lived experience and the joys and scars to prove it! Have other people had bigger careers? Undoubtedly. But measuring success in terms of quality of life rather than just the profile level of one’s accomplishments, we’ve each done extremely well.

When we finally worked together a decade ago in a production of Jake Heggie’s opera Dead Man Walking—Johnathon as director, Kirstin in the leading role of Sister Helen Prejean—we recognized what kindred spirits we are. We also found that our approaches to Living the Dream are quite similar. Since then, we’ve become fast friends, collaborated on other creative projects, and explored our passion for passing along what we’ve learned to the next generation of artists.