Despite illness, artist keeps N.Y. dream alive

A year ago, Sam Wessels' dream was pretty much the same as it is now. He's an actor, a writer of plays and a composer for musical theater, and his dream is to live in New York City.

His art is so important to him, he says, "I just want to live there for a few months and start showing people my musicals. I just really love the city. I would be thrilled to live there." Even in a really bad apartment. Just being a waiter. "Or walking dogs for a living."

Wessels has all but graduated from the University of Utah. He fulfilled the requirements for his theater degree in December. He has friends, actors who graduated last year, who are living in New York already.

Wessels would be in New York City now, actually, except for two major events.

In October, the students in the Theater Department at the University of Utah voted on which student's play they wanted to perform, and they chose his. So Wessels had to be in Utah for that event.

Then in December, he was diagnosed with leukemia. Wessels is on chemotherapy at Primary Children's Medical Center. He can't think about moving yet.

Wessels says he looks so forward to getting his life back. He hopes to go to New York City this summer, when his chemo series is over and all he has to do is take a pill every day. Meanwhile, he says, this disease has helped him realize what's most important in life.

He talks about being grateful to his roommate, who moved out quickly so that Wessels' mom could come down from Logan and stay with him to help him through his illness. He talks about not having the energy he once had.

He appreciates his professors, who were willing to work with him when he was diagnosed just as finals week was about to start. He is thankful he has felt well enough to make it to most of the rehearsals for his play, "Notes on a Sunday."

If you had dropped in on rehearsals, you would have seen five young actors as well as a student director, Devon Carter, hard at work on a sweet but dark love story. You would have seen Wessels playing the piano while his fellow students sang the words he'd written:

In the cool, cool dawn, before the coffee's done, I sit and think about tomorrow. How life goes on and on ... That you've never had your chance, And you'll never get your way. ... "

"Notes on a Sunday" is the story of a young woman who is obsessive-compulsive and who has not come out of her bedroom for seven years. Her dream is to own a Vroom Vroom vacuum. So, when a Vroom Vroom salesman stops by the house, well, the courtship begins.