Performed Well

I remember when I was in 6th grade and I told my older brother Robbie “I want to learn chess.  I don’t know how the pieces move or who can kill who.”  His response was “Anyone can kill anyone in chess!” For whatever reason, that seemed fascinating to me.  After learning the game, I was a casual [i.e. occasional] player (never particularly good of course) until the age of 21 when my younger brother bought an Onyx chess board in Mexico while we were on a short-term mission trip together, and I was reacquainted with the game. Coming back from the trip, I was interested enough to read my first chess book (cover-to-cover in one sitting at a Barnes & Noble), and that led to a dozen or more other books, coaching a chess club, and 4 years of being a private chess coach for elementary school kids. But overall, chess and I have had kind of an off-and-on relationship through the years.  I’m either never playing/thinking about chess… or I find myself thinking about and playing it

For the last 5 years, I've directed a musical during the week between Christmas and New Year's Day.  This is always a fun, rewarding, and exhausting experience for me with my company Immeasurable Productions. This year, we produced Disney's High School Musical: On Stage.  My sister Mindy (my choreographer) and I chose this musical because it would be a lot of fun and would hopefully encourage a few more light-hearted, fun-loving auditionees to come out for the show.  We're very glad we went with this choice as this was one of the most fun, up-beat, positive casts I've ever directed. Another new thing that we did this year was ask my wife Christine to be the music director.  Christine did a marvelous job.  Plus, it was pretty cool (for me) to have the core artistic team be all Moritzes.  I was excited to see such a high quality product come from a program we built from scratch. I'm now trying to think of musicals to consider for next year.  There are severa