[MUSIC PLAYING] SPEAKER 1: Welcome, to the Towson University College of Fine Arts and Communications, What's Your Story podcast. In today's story, Professor Mathew Bainbridge from the Department of Electronic Media in Film tells us about a dramatic turning point in his life that might surprise you. 

MATHEW BAINBRIDGE: Most people when they tell a story about a dramatic turning point in their life involves something that happened to them, or that they did. Mine does not. Mine was something I bore witness to from a distance and more of an observation I made about someone else's tragedy. 

In 1995, I moved to Baltimore straight out of college, and I ended up working in television. But I wasn't making enough money so I supplemented my income by working in children's theater. That was a great way to introduce myself to the city because I'm hanging out with weird artists and going to strange places and becoming acquainted with parts of the city that only locals knew about and having a really good time in my '20s. 

At a rap party from one of our shows, I was introduced to this actor. We got to talking and he was telling me about how he was singing in the chorus of a production of Jesus Christ Superstar in Toronto, and they were on break and he was back. I had a great time with him and we had a few drinks and a couple hours passed and I forgot about it. 

Flash forward about six months, I'm working on another show, and when I turned to a friend of mine who introduced me to this gentleman and I said, do you know whatever happened to that actor, the guy who was in Jesus Christ Superstar? And he goes, oh, my god, you didn't hear? I go, no, why would I hear? He goes, he was insane. I said, what do you mean? He goes, none of it was real. I said, he wasn't in Jesus Christ Superstar? He goes, nothing was real. He was schizophrenic. He's totally insane. I said, what? 

He said, well, basically for the last six months, he had written a three-act play. I said, what kind of play? He goes, a dark comedy, a three-act play, and he cast it with a cast of roughly 20 people, all of whom were rehearsing in this gentleman's apartment for four months with the expectation that this play was going to open. I said that's interesting. 

And he goes, the thing was, nothing was real. He made flyers for the show, but there was no play and the whole thing fell apart about a week before the show was about to happen. I said, oh, my god. And he goes, so everybody else was like amazed by the power of schizophrenia, or they felt bad for these 20 actors who were laying their soul out to be in the show that wasn't going to happen. But that wasn't what I got away from it. 

What I was amazed by was the power of force of will. This guy almost manufactured his dream simply by having enthusiasm for it, by simply just willing it to happen. I wrote a play, therefore, a play will happen, and people went along with it. The only thing that stopped him was that he was insane. 

I realized that if I knew what I was doing, if I understood how to make something but could manage that same level of enthusiasm, that I couldn't make anything happen, that enthusiasm trumped even talent and money. Will was everything. You have to have enough faith to see it through. 

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