'I Am Beautiful, I Am Powerful, I Am Enough, I Will Do My Best': Gavin Creel's Emotional Memorial Was a Tribute to His Inspiring Ethos

On December 2, family, friends, and fans of Gavin Creel gathered at the St. James Theatre on Broadway to honor the late Tony winner with a celebration of life. To say Creel was a beloved fixture of the Broadway community is a massive understatement. He was so beloved, in fact, that the line to get into the public memorial stretched far down the street. And online, thousands tuned in to live streams on YouTube.

Creel's loss was enormous, both in terms of his talent, and in terms of Creel as a person. We could all tell from interviews that Creel seemed like a friendly, caring guy. In the weeks since his passing, everyone who knew him has made it clear that wasn't just an act for the camera. That was actually Gavin.

As people entered in the St. James—the theatre where Creel made what would be his final Broadway performance, as Cinderella's Prince in Into the Woods—they were treated to a playlist of some of Creel's greatest performances, including tracks from his Tony-winning turn as Cornelius Hackl in Hello, Dolly! And then, the stage was blessed with remarks and performances from some of Creel's closest, often donning a feather boa or other fun costume pieces from a costume rack, a nod to Creel's love of theatrical whimsy. A projection screen in back of the stage was mostly displaying Joan Snyder's Smashed Strokes Hope, one of Creel's favorite works of art and one that featured heavily in his musical Walk on Through.

The event began with remarks from Creel's sisters, Heather and Allyson. "Writing and meditation were an integral part of Gavin's daily practice, and he passionately protected time in his day to do both of those things. They provided him with, among other things, time for introspection, self-reflection, calm, peace, acceptance, and a connection to something bigger," Allyson shared. She then invited the audience to take a cue from Creel, leading a group meditation and an Irish blessing by John O'Donohue. "On the day when the weight deadens on your shoulders and you stumble, may the clay dance to balance you. And when your eyes freeze behind a grey window and the ghost of loss gets into you, may a flock of colors—indigo, red, green, and azure blue—come to awaken in you a meadow of delight. When the canvas frays in the currach of thought, and a stain of ocean blackens beneath you, may there come across the waters a path of yellow moonlight to bring you safely home. May the nourishment of the earth be yours, may the clarity of light be yours, may the fluency of the ocean be yours, may the protection of the ancestors be yours. And so may a slow wind work these words of love around you, an invisible cloak to mind your life." The blessing was the perfect energy with which to begin an emotional event, a tribute both to Creel's ethos and his practice.

Flip through the Playbill from Creel's Broadway memorial below:

Creel's sisters were followed by a performance from Broadway Inspirational Voices, a Tony-winning choral ensemble that counted Creel among its members for more than 20 years. In a statement, read onstage by BIV Artistic Director Alan Renee Lewis, founder Michael McElroy shared, "So many in our community carry the hurt and harms of not being accepted in religious spaces. Gavin understood the importance of a spiritual space that was open to all. He knew an open door where all could come and be healed through the true message of gospel music, love, acceptance, and joy. We will miss Gavin's talent, commitment to the choir and community, but mostly his light. Gavin brought light into every space. We will hold his memory in our hearts and never forget the light he brought to us all." The ensemble then sang a stirring rendition of Stephen Sondheim's "Sunday," the last song Creel sang with the ensemble at a 2020 performance.

Next to speak was Creel's Broadway Into the Woods and Waitress co-star, Sara Bareilles, who took the stage visibly emotional from the BIV performance. "Well, that was fine," she said sarcastically to a big, cathartic laugh from the audience. "I, like the other 1,700 people here in this room, was Gavin's closest friend. ... It is impossible to imagine any scenario that we could create in Gavin's absence that could even come close to capturing the breadth and magnitude of his presence. That man did not fit inside this room when he was in a body, so no chance of it," she continued. "I grew up Catholic, which means I'm no longer a religious person. But I can't help but think of a short piece of scripture that says, 'For where two or three gather in my name, there am I with them.' I shared Gavin's complicated views on religion and spirituality, but as we gather in his name, I know Gavin is here, too. And I specifically asked him to haunt me, so if anything weird happens, it's mine."

She went on to share a beautiful story, at turns both heartbreaking and filled with Bareilles' trademark wit, about turning to a tarot reading in the days following Creel's death. Looking to Creel's spirit for messages, she found the first two cards comforting, but was baffled when her third and fourth draws kept turning up disturbing imagery. "I felt scared like something bad was coming, and the worst possible thing had already happened," she shared. Bareilles says she called Celia Keenan-Bolger for help. "I've never once been let down by her wisdom, her ability to synthesize the world and make sense of it. So she wasn't going to be stumped by a fucking tarot card deck I got at Urban Outfitters. ... She listened thoughtfully as I told her the story of pulling the cards, and then she said so plainly, 'I think he wants you to remember his darkness.' And it clicked, of course. It is so easy to canonize this man, Saint Gavin, so tempting to only remember and bathe in his fluorescent colored joy and buzzing neon spirit, his wandering child-like wonder, his optimism, his hope, his humor, his giant arms, ready to wrap around you and lift you up and love you into your best and happiest self. He is deserving of being remembered that way. He is all of those things, but Gavin, like the rest of us, was also his demons. He had a tremendous capacity for joy and pleasure, which meant he had a tremendous capacity for despair and anguish, for anxiety, for depression, for fear. His darkness is one of the reasons I loved him so much. I bet everyone who felt close to Gavin—which is probably all of you, aside from the few that think this is still a Sunset Boulevard matinee. It is not. She's not coming. If you were close to him, you know that Gavin was not afraid of your darkness or your sadness or your jealousy or your pettiness or your ugliness or your fear. He would pick up pints of ice cream and put up Christmas lights and sit in the muck with you. This is when he was still eating sugar. ... In his absence, in his name, we might remember to just keep showing up again and again, bearing witness to the darkest parts of each other and ourselves, and just love them. Because most of the time, that's more than enough. I love you, Gavin."

And as became the trend at this event, an emotional speech was followed by an emotional performance, this time from Creel himself, singing "Hallelujah" and "Unfinished World" from his musical Walk On Through, accompanied by a slide show of pictures of Creel throughout his life. Next up was a performance Creel's "Unspoken Heart," performed by an ensemble of Creel's musical and artistic collaborators, including Jonathan Bernstein, Susan Misner, Chris Peters, Robbie Roth, Madeline Benson, Randy Castillo, Troy Oglivie, and Kyle Robinson. An interlude featured a dance performance set to a recording of Creel explaining some of his personal ethos. A transcript of that follows:

"In my meditation practice, there's this technique called 'noting,'" Creel is recorded saying. "I'm trying to notice, to note, when thinking, 'I am thinking,' to bring yourself back to the breath. And when you veer away—which I veer away 16 times a minute—shame has arrived. Shame is here. I am not shaming myself, but that shame has arrived. Fear has arrived, anxiety. The way that shame wins is if it gets to call me what has arrived—You were embarrassed. You're an embarrassed person—that it gets to name me the thing that I'm feeling. Another one of the noting things is, oh I'm feeling. It's okay. Try to get back to the breath. You're feeling again. This is just a feeling, and it's for me, it's just that practice. Suffering is a part of life which connects me instantly to every other being in the world. The only thing I want to do is demystify the distance between you and me. Everyone else brings a suffering, so I am not alone. I am suffering. It is here. And eventually, if you sit with it, if I sit with it, 90 seconds later, I'm, breathing. I'm like, 'OK, I'm ready for an ice cream pop."

Next to speak was Melody Racine, one of Creel's professors from his time studying musical theatre at the University of Michigan. Racine paid tribute to Creel's unique talents, apparent to her from their very first moments together. "Thirty years ago, something incredible happened to me. A young man of 18 years old walked in the room with a smile that lit up the space," Racine shared. "And then he suddenly said, 'Hi, I'm Gavin Creel.' He stopped for a moment, and then he began to sing. I knew in but a phrase I was bearing witness to a talent so rare, so extraordinary. There was an uncanny connection between this voice of spun gold and his beautiful heart. Indeed, there was no doubt this voice, this essence, was going to impact our world in a profound way." Years later, after Creel had graduated and had become a lifelong friend of Racine's, she says he called her with four statements he'd decided to say to himself in the mirror every day, and that he wanted her to join him. Racine invited the audience to join the practice as well. Creel's morning mantra? "I am beautiful. I am powerful. I am enough. I will do my best."

After remarks from the children of one of Creel's best friends—Gus, Charlie, and Beatrice Peterson, who said they counted Creel their honorary uncle—Joshua Henry, Creel's Into the Woods co-star, took the stage with Phillipa Soo, Ryan Vasquez, and Shoshana Bean to perform "Neverland" and "Children Will Listen," two of Creel's favorite songs. With Henry accompanying the group on guitar, the soulful medley was inspired by performances posted to social media throughout the run of Into the Woods, with Henry, Creel, and other cast mates singing in the backstage stairwells of the St. James Theatre.

And then we got to hear from Keenan-Bolger, sharing perhaps some of the most rawly emotional remarks from the event. The two met as classmates at University of Michigan, forging an intimate bond that would continue forever after, as both became beloved Broadway stars and Tony winners. She began with a story about a time in 2022 when Keenan-Bolger went through a program training to be an end-of-life doula, helping people with that transition. Creel, she said, was incredibly interested, as he was in all things. The training, she shared, was mostly personal, asking the participants to all start processing their own mortality so that they could help others do the same. They taught them to think about what Keenan-Bolger called R.U.G.s: regrets, unfinished business, guilt or shame, which tend to come up near the end of life. It felt like a full-circle moment to Keenan-Bolger, because Creel had been helping her live her own life with as few regrets and unfinished business as possible. She remembered Creel being the first person at University of Michigan to take her seriously, in a Creel-directed production of Pippin. She described their early NYC days as roommates, sharing joys and traumas, the latter including the death of Keenan-Bolger's mother. "I tell him that I'm scared that she's gone, dust, to which he says, 'No way. She's everywhere,'" Keenan-Bolger said. "'I don't believe that,' I reply. 'Well,' he says, 'I believe it enough for both of us.'"

Creel, Keenan-Bolger shares, was there through it all, from vacationing throughout Europe to see the world to becoming a mother and forging cherished relationships with her son. By the time Creel's health was declining, Keenan-Bolger bravely tasked herself with both being Creel's best friend and his end-of-life doula. "I ask him what he feels the most proud of," she remembered. "He talks about his love for his family—Jim, Nancy, Allyson, Heather, and Jen. He reflects on his amazing friendships. He says he can imagine leaving performing and teaching for the rest of his life. He is so proud of Walk On Through that was produced at MCC [Theater] earlier this year, and wants it to have a life after he's gone. He is so brave amidst so much pain, and he's also scared and anxious and tired. I start to ask him about R.U.G.s, but before I get the words out, he gets quiet and closes his eyes. 'Ceels, I have no regrets. I did everything I wanted to do. It was a pretty amazing life. I just wish I had more time.'" Keenan-Bolger had a mantra for us too, which she says they learned from Creel's hospice nurse, Bianca, that comes from an ancient Hawaiian practice. "It's meant to improve our relationship to ourselves and remind us that we're all connected," Keenan-Bolger explained. "It goes like this: 'I'm sorry. Please forgive me. Thank you. I love you.' I said this over and over to myself and to him in the last days of his life, sitting vigil by his bed. And I think we should say it, too. ... What if we love ourselves with the magnitude that Gavin Creel loved the world? ... If we want to honor Gavin, I think that we can work to believe that there will probably be some days when we won't believe it. But on those days, we can just summon him in the parts of ourselves where he still lives. Or we can look at the way that the sun casts its light on the building, or the shape of the moon, because he is everywhere. And I believe that enough for all of us."

And if that didn't have the audience choked up enough, Keenan-Bolger's speech was followed by a performance of "How Glory Goes," Adam Guettel's soaring meditation on mortality and what comes after dying. A visibly and audibly emotional Kelli O'Hara infused the song with a love and grief that was as healing as it was devastating.

The event's final speaker was Creel's partner, fellow actor Alex Temple Ward. The two were a relatively new couple, but Ward says the bond was immediately deep. "Everyone around us seemed to know that our relationship was something more significant before we did," he said onstage. "We found home in each other. We shared a love for cooking, baking, and hosting gatherings. Gav could whip around a kitchen like no one you've ever seen, whether he knew what he was doing or not." Ward shared Creel's daydreams of working in a diner, specifically one that served elevated breakfast food at night. He shared the story of Creel finding Nina, a rescue dog the couple adopted via Broadway animal trainer icon Bill Berloni.

But like many of the speakers, Ward focused most on Creel's spirit. "He was able to not only see people for their greatest essence, but to make them feel valued in the time they shared with him, whether that was a moment, a weekend, a run of a show, or a lifetime," Ward said. "Gav, I'm talking directly to you because I know that you're here right now. You are the strongest, bravest person I have ever met. I will continue falling in love with you every day for the rest of my life, and I promise you, I'm not going to miss any of it. I love you forever."

To close on a hopeful note, the event ended with some brief remarks and a performance from Hair. Creel starred in the musical's 2009 Broadway revival, and his castmates Will Swenson, Caissie Levy, Nadia DiGiallonardo, and more took the stage to sing "Let the Sunshine In." Appropriately, Creel himself led the number via a recording, with the rest of the cast joining live from onstage at the St. James. It was probably the most tear-filled performance the song has ever seen, but that only made it more cathartic. The lyrics so clearly evoked Creel's wishes for his own legacy, a special legacy that is not likely to ever be forgotten.