In Praise of Community Arts

Cast photo from Kearney Community Theatre's production of Our Town.
That's me, center back, in the black porkpie hat. Photo by Judy Rozema.

I spent much of the Kearney Community Theatre’s recent production of Thornton Wilder’s Our Town staring at David Rozema’s backside. Because the character I played, Simon Stimson, is dead throughout Act III, I spent the entire act frozen, head forward, doing all my acting from the neck up. While David, as the Stage Manager, explained the scene to the audience with choric ineluctability, I had literally nothing to see except his dark-suited back and posterior.

My family has a long history of getting involved in local and community-based arts. Moving around throughout my childhood as a military household, we never stayed in any one place long enough to put down roots. However, my family’s commitment to the arts always made them leaders, even if only temporarily. My parents would join the church choir, and a year later, would be directing it. I’d join church theatre; they’d be directing that, too.

Yet even as they took point in local (usually church-based) art, my parents gave me, let’s say, conflicting values. As important as song was in worship, for instance, they pooh-poohed the value of concerts. Why pay exorbitant prices and travel across town for somebody’s curtain time, they asked, when we already have the CD? Same for theatre: movies are cheaper and more convenient. And by “movies,” I mean we waited for the VHS to drop.

Thus I reached adulthood with lopsided information: I’d learned the rudiments of art, music, and theatre as actions, but remained blissfully unaware of processes. That is, I could act and write relatively well, and showed promise at drawing or painting, but I didn’t understand how skillful people with bure promise translated those skills into careers. A vast gulf existed in my head between practicing the pure skills, and getting that lucrative publishing or recording contract.

Don’t misunderstand me: my parents didn’t deliberately mislead me about art. As an adult, I realize that attending concerts, gallery shows, and theatre, involved the logistics of finding our way around cities that they didn’t know very well, because we moved so often. Because neighborhood congregations are small and intimate, there’s a level of personal closeness that one can’t match in a massive midtown proscenium. My folks did art, essentially, for their friends and neighbors.

Your humble blogger as Simon Stimson in Our Town. Photo by Corbey Dorsey.

I’ve long considered myself an introvert, given my preference for solitude, and my tendency to gather information before I speak. But recently, I’ve come to doubt that. My parents remember me as a gregarious child, quick-witted, eager to entertain others. Somewhere around third grade, though, I shifted. My clearest memory of third grade is getting discouraged trying to fit into my Cub Scout troop. I think that’s maybe about the age when I burned out.

The realization that I’m maybe not an introvert, but rather a discouraged extrovert, an affable team player who simply got tired of trying, explains why I’ve always joined community arts organizations. I’ve done theatre through churches, schools, and community theatre companies. Despite my limited musical ability, I’ve joined ensembles and given my best. Even my writing, the least intimate art since you’re seldom there when the audience reads it, was written to share with others.

The least productive times throughout my life have been when I’ve had no artistic outlet. When I can’t share with an audience, when I can’t have that creative intimacy with others, everything else in life suffers. My job tends to stagnate, I have difficulty building and sustaining relationships. Without art, and the exchange between performers and audience, I’m not me. Art remains the tool I use to feel close to others when other tools fail.

In Our Town, my character, Simon Stimson, is a self-hating drunk. The script says he’s had “a peck of trouble,” but doesn’t state why. To justify this, I played him as deeply closeted. Yet church music remains deeply valuable to him. He desperately wants to conduct a choir that the community can take pride in. Partway through rehearsals, I realized: like me, Simon feels fully human only when art lets him connect with his community.

Recent personal upheavals mean this might be the last time I perform with this company. I may have to relocate before year’s end. The relationships I’ve cultivated, not only with other amateur actors, but also with the audience, won’t travel with me; I’ll have to forge new ones somewhere. Yet looking back, I can say, no matter how tired community theatre often leaves me, no matter how discouraged, this is when I’ve felt most human.