NaBloPoMo Day 17: Returning to Passion

I found my way into theater a little later than other colleagues, according to informal conversation. I had "theater" friends in middle and high school, but I was never intrigued enough to want to join them on stage.1

Until, that is, my local pro-am theater2 produced the Finn/Lapine musical Falsettos. Through a series of poor teenager life choices, I served community service time at the theater while the show was going on. Luckily. Fortunately. Serendipitous-ly. If you don't know the show, it's the story of a Jewish family and their friends, many of whom are gay. Themes include being true with yourself and loved ones, growing up and the pain of adulthood, loving someone through good times and bad, and the importance of family.

I'm not Jewish. I didn't know any gay people (out, anyway). But I was moved to tears by every single performance I saw (including returning on my night off to actually purchase a ticket). I saw a story on that stage that not only connected to my personal life's quest at that time but also showed me how small my own world really was and how much larger it could be.

Which is why we "do" theater, right? Why we participate or attend. For those with the "bug," it's a compulsion to understand ourselves and our world. It's not like escapist television or movies. It's about illumination.

I got into theater because I want others to feel the same way I felt during Falsettos. I want to be a part of something that could so move another person that something in them would change and be better. Comedy or drama, contemporary or period, life writ large or small, theater that compels is what I'm passionate about.

What's your theater passion? What is it about this field that keeps you being a part? What is your compulsion?

--------------------------------------------------------
Join the conversation and you could be the lucky recipient of something really super awesome. 13 days left!

1. Because I thought you had to be on stage to be a part of the theater. This is a gross injustice that should be corrected in lower schooling.

2. Can I coin that term? It wasn't community theater but it wasn't a professional-day job theater. Boom, done.

Comments

New Year, New You Vision Board

VISION BOARDS! Let's get a couple of things clear, right at the start. THERE IS NO WRONG WAY TO MAKE A VISION BOARD. THIS IS NOT SCIENCE. You believe that putting pieces of pretty paper on another piece of paper calls into your life your deepest hopes and dreams, then you believe it with all your heart and soul. These are inspirational devices, not architectural blueprints. Ok, now that we have some caveats taken care of, the briefest of background before we get to the supplies and instructions (OH MY GOD THIS IS WHY THE ONLINE RECIPE BLOGS ARE LIKE THIS) I've been making vision boards consistently every year for my birthday (ish, usually on the new moon closest to my actual natal day) for a decade and before that on and off since college. I've always considered paper art as my chosen visual artistic medium, so vision boards were right up my manifestation alley. At one point in my life I wanted to work in magazine publishing (scratch that, I still do) so buying and keeping...

High Art vs Low Art

“The masses seek distraction whereas art demands concentration from the spectator.” - -The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, Walter Benjamin, 1936 Is there any more contentious question in the art world than the concept of “high” versus “low” I like venn diagrams. And shouldn't art really be in the middle? art? Who gets to judge? What are the parameters in which to judge? There is no standard definition for either concept and personal explanations range from simple to incredibly complex. One common theory about how to explain the difference is high art is “popular” and low art is “unpopular”, that is, appealing (or not) to many people. This also links to another version of the difference: that high art fosters the widest connection between people while a smaller subsection enjoys low art. This is in direct contradiction, though, to the idea of low art being part of mass culture (raising yet another question of “is art culture” or merely a com...

Theater in the Age of Netflix

I read a great article in the December issue of Fast Company titled " Retail in the Age of Amazon. " Long-time readers know of my penchant for following retail conversations and seeing how they are applicable to the theater world and this article was no different. (New readers: hello! do you think retail and theater overlap, too?) I sat down to write notes on all the topics and details from the article that I wanted to flesh out on for theaters. I thought it would be 4 or 5, since the article itself had 4 sections to it. Instead, I had TWENTY-TWO points to hit. To flesh out each of those points, even a paragraph a piece, seems a tad much for a blog post. Some of them I've written about before, like defining success on your terms and using heretical ideas . A lot of them are about how going back to basics and focusing on differentiation rather than competing at the same game can help retail businesses survive and thrive in the age of click-and-buy. This is...

Perpetually Curious

Search This Blog