I write musicals I couldn't find when I needed them most. As a Mixed Race (Black) man who came up performing, I kept bumping into a narrow lane for what Black stories in musical theater were supposed to be about. I wanted to write toward something different: characters whose Blackness is present and real, but whose stories are built around the universal, messy work of becoming. The In-Between is my first full-length musical, and it came directly out of that search, following a young Black man, his father, and the community of people holding him up as they all navigate the space between who they were and who life is asking them to be. I believe specificity is how you reach universality, and I am still figuring out what that means for me, but I know it starts with honoring the full humanity of everyone I put on stage.