13. Her Art Breaks My Heart (And I Just Want to Frame It)

Caroline Daniels (Johanna) - 2025 LIU

Johanna was the hardest character to write for. She is the reason you know who Vincent van Gogh the painter is. Full stop. Her life is staggering. She is staggering. She could…and probably should…have an entire show written about her. There was a stretch where I seriously considered making Act II solely about Johanna and letting the rest of Vincent’s life refract through her perspective. That idea didn’t last long once I realized it would be its own kind of injustice.

This isn’t her show. But without her, the story collapses.

I was determined she wouldn’t just drift in and out as a functional side character. Johanna needed autonomy. She needed a point of view. She needed to exist beyond her proximity to some men.

(If you don’t know much about her, I can’t recommend Jo van Gogh-Bonger by Hans Luijten enough.)

I’d written a lot of material for Johanna starting back in 2021. Songs all over the emotional map, chasing different versions of who she might be. Some with a Hayley Williams attitude…some sounding more like a cool anime rocker…don’t know what I was thinking there… Most of them were eventually abandoned once I realized I no longer believed what they were trying to say.

Even by the LIU workshop, she still didn’t have a song. But I said out loud…to the cast, publicly…that she would have one in the spring production. Partly faith. Partly panic. Mostly accountability.

Our Johanna in the workshop was Kaira Gula, who would later step into Vincent in the spring production and on this album. In the spring we cast Caroline Daniels, who I’d worked with before on The Death of the Living Club. We had wanted them in the show in the workshop but we lost them to another show the school was putting on at the same time.  It IS a college program…so fair enough.  Anyway…I knew the voice. I trusted their instincts. That’s what unlocked it.

Johanna needed to speak plainly. She needed a moment that belonged only to her. Unattached to Theo, unattached to Vincent. Where does she see herself in this impossible situation? What does she truly think of Vincent? And why? Is she okay with the role she’s been given? What power does she have to reshape it?

Camille Larson, Allie George - 2025 LIU

The song doesn’t answer these questions. And it shouldn’t. No one walks away from a crisis with clarity neatly tied in a bow. Instead, Johanna does what she’s always done: she lays out the facts. Calmly. Intelligently. She acknowledges the strain Vincent puts on Theo…and on her. She addresses Vincent in her own mind, knowing these words can’t be spoken aloud. Not like this. There has to be another way through.

And then she lands on a truth:
“Our lives are now drastically intertwined.”

And a question she offers in the abstract to Vincent, not as an accusation but as an invitation:
“Will you let me remind you, like a warming sun, that what’s done in love is well done?”

That was it. That was the Johanna I’d been looking for.

Knowing Caroline’s ability to live in quiet warmth and then suddenly burn the room down, I leaned into a Jeff Buckley-style dynamic range: fragility to full-throated release. I added a moment of pure vocalization, giving Johanna space to sit in the weight of it all, and giving Caroline room to really let go.

They nailed it.