It's Major Production time in area schools, two High Schools and one Association of Homeschooled Children are mounting musicals these days. Quality is…not terrific, but effort and enthusiasm are sky-high. Coming home from the our High School production of Peter Pan, I began reflecting on the surprising number of small rural communities who organize and mount some kind of dramatic production every winter. If the community has the musical resources, it's a musical. If music talent is lacking, it's a one-act play, or perhaps two or three one-act plays. I was (as the Brits say) gob-smacked when I discovered this. As long as the venue is local, all kinds of folks come out of the woodwor to 'tread the boards' and become thespians for a few weeks.
It's quite amazingto see bank managers as clowns, cowhands as love-sick college students, matrons as dancing girls, and shy teens as 'the-bad-guy-from-the-next-town-over.' The productions are usually fairly bland family-type entertainment - these are largely family efforts after all. No new or avant-garde dramas here. But everyone has a huge time, and the audiences eat it up.
I vvidly recall that, as a young and newly settled minister in a tough northern minng town, I participated in a drama-variety show. Along with the school principal, I was the comic duo who introduced all the acts. Lame jokes abounded: "Ladies, drop in to Sobey's bakery this week to get bread…" Ta Dah! One of the mine executive's wives had been a Powers model (Oooooooo!), and she did the makeup. Miners, teachers, housewives, engineers - all sorts and conditions of human beings kicked up their heels for a couple weekends, and we all became famous for our requisite fifteen minutes. At the after-paty, I did such a convincing imitation of Foster Brooks (famous TV drunk guy from the 60's and 70's), that he was offended that his minister would be so drunk at a public party!
Putting these rambling thoughts together with my current theological reading, I began to see the ways in which these amateur exercises fulfill Jesus' desire and hope for all human being, that they (we) "have life, and have it abundantly." Gathering and sharing one's talents on stage, however meagre those talents are, gives every ordinary person an opportunity to live out a dream, or pretend to be really important, or feel appreciated for a change.Watching people applaud and cheer for you is both a humbling experience and a gratifying one. I think Jesus was about those things a lot more than he was about "getting religious" in an formal sense. When you do something, participate in something, that lifts your spirit, you are really living!
I don't recall this sort of thing happening much in larger urban areas. People attend theatre, they watch plays and musicals, they don't participate in them. So, whatever negatives can be mustered about small rural communities, supposedly on their last legs, this one thing can me held up in their defence, and as a huge benefit from living near them: you have the opportunuty to live large from time to time, to be locally 'famous' for a moment or two, to experience 'the abundant life' no matter how ordinary you are.
It's quite amazingto see bank managers as clowns, cowhands as love-sick college students, matrons as dancing girls, and shy teens as 'the-bad-guy-from-the-next-town-over.' The productions are usually fairly bland family-type entertainment - these are largely family efforts after all. No new or avant-garde dramas here. But everyone has a huge time, and the audiences eat it up.
I vvidly recall that, as a young and newly settled minister in a tough northern minng town, I participated in a drama-variety show. Along with the school principal, I was the comic duo who introduced all the acts. Lame jokes abounded: "Ladies, drop in to Sobey's bakery this week to get bread…" Ta Dah! One of the mine executive's wives had been a Powers model (Oooooooo!), and she did the makeup. Miners, teachers, housewives, engineers - all sorts and conditions of human beings kicked up their heels for a couple weekends, and we all became famous for our requisite fifteen minutes. At the after-paty, I did such a convincing imitation of Foster Brooks (famous TV drunk guy from the 60's and 70's), that he was offended that his minister would be so drunk at a public party!
Putting these rambling thoughts together with my current theological reading, I began to see the ways in which these amateur exercises fulfill Jesus' desire and hope for all human being, that they (we) "have life, and have it abundantly." Gathering and sharing one's talents on stage, however meagre those talents are, gives every ordinary person an opportunity to live out a dream, or pretend to be really important, or feel appreciated for a change.Watching people applaud and cheer for you is both a humbling experience and a gratifying one. I think Jesus was about those things a lot more than he was about "getting religious" in an formal sense. When you do something, participate in something, that lifts your spirit, you are really living!
I don't recall this sort of thing happening much in larger urban areas. People attend theatre, they watch plays and musicals, they don't participate in them. So, whatever negatives can be mustered about small rural communities, supposedly on their last legs, this one thing can me held up in their defence, and as a huge benefit from living near them: you have the opportunuty to live large from time to time, to be locally 'famous' for a moment or two, to experience 'the abundant life' no matter how ordinary you are.
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