Richard E. Henrich, Jr. – 50th Reunion Essay

Richard E. Henrich, Jr.

7305 Takoma Ave

Takoma Park, MD 20912

rhenrich@erols.com

202-441-0832

Child(ren): Evan (1985), Caden (2003)

Education: NYU, MA 1971

Career: Contractor/Real Estate Developer (New York) 10 years; International Herald Tribune Distributor (Bangladesh) 3 years; Actor, Director, Artistic Director (Washington DC) 27 years.

College: Ezra Stiles

I want to tell you an interesting story. If my story resonates with yours, it may spark a feeling of empathy and shared experience. If my story is different from yours, it may demonstrate the variety and scope of life, providing, hopefully, a little entertainment. My problem is that I have, and always have had, two life stories running side by side that don’t quite match up. One is the story of what I think, feel, dream and imagine I am doing. The other is the objective facts.

We left Yale in a moment of political and social change. I felt we were the vanguard, with the responsibility to lead the charge. Not long after, I found myself enthusiastically engaged as a contractor and real estate developer transforming downtown Manhattan lofts into a new residential community for artists and young professionals. But after 10 years of stress, success and disappointment, I took the opportunity to rethink my life and move overseas, following a marriage and my wife’s career in public health. Living three years in Bangladesh, I concluded I could not change the world—but I could change how people see the world. Change the people who change the world.

From high school through college, theater was always the language I knew for changing how people think and feel. So, returning to the US and landing eventually in Washington, DC, my dream was changing my life and the lives of the movers and shakers around me through a career on the stage. My wife wanted none of it, so I embarked solo on the voyage of change. Another 10 years down the road I felt the roles I played were not adventurous, not transformative enough. So with the encouragement of wife #2, I started a theater of my own.

Running a nonprofit theater turns out to be a lot like running a business. Except the financial model is broken. Sales of the product (tickets to plays) fall far short of the cost of production. As a result, I am constantly begging for help from donors, foundations, sponsors and local government who (bless them!) value the arts. Hardly less stressful than real estate development. I no longer feel I need to change the world, or change the people who change the world. I need to change myself.

Wife #2 moved on, saying I was not married to her but to the theater instead. I guess that’s true. Yet I obstinately persevere in the project to make my instinctive dreams, my prime emotions, unconscious thought revealed in flashes of imagination, somehow coincide with the mechanics of getting through the day, a story that is read in e-mails, phone calls and meetings on the calendar. The moments when the two stories become one, when the play I have envisioned steps forward in production on the stage and in the mind of the audience, those moments show what is possible. No need to change the world, when you discover the two stories are one.