In a Room Full of Creators: Time, Totoro, and the Truths We Flip

What watching theatre and writing musicals taught me about collaboration, perspective, and the power of storytelling.

The Room Where It Happens

There’s a quiet sort of electricity that buzzes in a room full of writers. It’s not loud. It doesn’t demand attention. But it pulses—an invisible current that moves between people, sparking as stories are shared, challenged, shaped.

This week I was leading a musical writing development for a musical in London—an extraordinary gathering led by book writer Ivan Menchell and musical arranger/orchestrator Jason Howland. It was the kind of room you dream of being in: deeply collaborative, beautifully international, with creatives from Japan, the US, and the UK all working together to craft something brand new for the stage.

And not just any stories—new ones. Ones still shifting, still alive.

Stories on Stage: Totoro and Time in Reverse

In the same week, I saw stage adaptations of My Neighbour Totoro and The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. Two wildly different productions—but in their own ways, both echoed what was happening in our workshop: a shared desire to reframe the world, to look again, to imagine differently.

My Neighbour Totoro

Totoro on stage is a masterclass in imagination. It’s a children’s story, yes—but not a simple one. Beneath the puppets and whimsy lies a profound exploration of grief, waiting, and the emotional depth of childhood. It’s storytelling through silence and movement, memory and myth. And it doesn’t tell you how to feel—it invites you to remember how to see.

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

Then there’s Benjamin Button, where time runs backwards. A man ages in reverse, growing younger as everyone else grows old. On stage, this concept becomes more than just narrative trickery—it becomes a lens on empathy. What do we learn when we live time in the opposite direction? What truths become clear when we flip a universal experience on its head?

The night I saw it, Matthew Burns, the cover for Benjamin, was on for the first time. His performance was nothing short of extraordinary—deeply felt, nuanced, and completely rooted in the emotional landscape of the role. Opposite him, Clare Foster brought an exquisite blend of fire and vulnerability to Elowen. Their connection was palpable and tender, full of moments where silence said more than dialogue ever could.

And it wasn’t just them. The entire company radiated a kind of quiet unity—a sense that they were not just performing together, but feeling together. It was deeply moving, a reminder of what ensemble storytelling can do when trust and truth are at the core.

Flipping the Narrative

That idea—flipping the familiar—was central to our workshop, too.

Writing a musical means wrestling with structure, yes. But it also means asking harder questions:

What haven’t we seen yet? What if we told this story another way?

What happens if we slow down time—or reverse it completely?

When you’re surrounded by people from different cultural and creative backgrounds, those questions get even richer. A Japanese producer hears a lyric differently. A British performer feels a beat with different timing. An American composer adds a new layer of emotion with a single chord.

Slowly, the work deepens. Not because we’re compromising, but because we’re expanding. There’s an artistry to that kind of listening—an intentionality in making space for someone else’s truth to live inside your story.

Why Diversity Isn’t Optional

In live theatre, the audience is part of the equation. The act of performance is inherently communal. The same is true of writing—especially in a room like ours, where the musical we were building didn’t belong to one voice, but to many.

Diversity of opinion, experience, culture, and perspective isn’t just valuable—it’s essential. It’s what allows us to stretch familiar narratives, complicate simple stories, and tell the truth in more interesting ways. The stories that move us most are the ones that allow contradiction. That hold joy and sorrow in the same hand. That make room for more than one kind of truth.

Theatre That Bends Time—and Us

Maybe that’s what Totoro and Benjamin Button are really doing. Maybe that’s what any good piece of theatre does.

It reimagines time.

It reimagines rules.

And it reimagines us—just enough to see the world from someone else’s point of view.

Whether it’s through the eyes of a child waiting for her mother, or a man moving backward through life, or a workshop room full of creators learning from one another, these moments expand what we think stories can be.

And in that reimagining, we find something close to truth.