Wednesday, December 12, 2001

If you're like me, you're a tall 31-year-old white Midwesterner with a penchant for Star Trek and community theater. Most folks won't match up exactly with me on all that (thank the Maker), but one only needs to love the very last item in that description, or wish to understand those who do, to get something out of the book I'm currently reading.

It's called The Stuff of Dreams by Leah Hager Cohen, and it chronicles a production, from casting to closing, of David Henry Hwang's M. Butterfly at the Arlington Friends of the Drama in Arlington, Massachusetts.

While reading this book, I've been struck by how exceedingly familiar the situations, people and problems of this troupe are to me. Things I had assumed were generally universal appear more and more to be specifically so. Some of this could have come straight from my own experiences doing amateur shows. Phrases I've heard and said ad nauseum over the years are uttered by these folks verbatim. The exact same glories and indignities I've experienced time and time again are spelled out in astonishing detail.

Because of these extremely close parallels, Stuff of Dreams is helping me work out some the questions I've been wrestling with for the last year or so: what's the place and purpose of community theater in a media-saturated age? Why are some people willing to put so much time and energy into behind-the-scenes duties, rarely if ever getting the kudos they deserve? Are the pains and political quagmires that serving on a theater's board of directors bring offset by the potential good a person can do there? Is it better to bounce around from group to group looking for the most fulfilling shows or to set down roots and stick with one playhouse regardless of the slate of plays?

I am, quite frankly, shocked at the direction in which my emerging answers to these questions, most importantly the last two, are leading me. After years of proudly flitting among many different theaters, more than a bit arrogantly declaring that I never do more than two shows in a row with any one group in order to avoid getting caught up in "the real work" (and openly urging others to follow my example), I suddenly find myself growing attracted to the idea of finding a home base and staying put for a while.

I'm not entirely sure how my new motivation correlates with this ongoing internal Q&A session, but the connection definitely exists. Perhaps I like the idea of influencing a group over the long term, helping it be a place for both artistic expression and communal growth. Maybe I've simply been reminded of the many joys I lost when going off to college forced me to leave the one group I'd worked with almost exclusively for the first three years of this now fourteen-year-old hobby. Whatever the cause, the urge is undeniably there.

Finding the right group, the one that both feels like home and has need of the energy and outlook I could bring, will take time, possibly a very long time. There's no guarantee I'll ever find a place that fits well enough. Until and unless that happens, I'll continue on as I have, trying out for the most appealing shows wherever they may be. But while I do so, I'll be keeping my eyes open for that particular spot where I can both spread my wings creatively and be more fully involved in the life of the group.

Posted @ 10:42 AM

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