Tag: Longmont Theatre Company

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Living Upside-Down

Some things just have to be mentioned in the same breath. Like Beethoven and the Ninth Symphony. Or Sean Connery and James Bond. Or John Elway and “The Drive.”

So now that my friend Brie Timms has taken her final bows, it’s only right that someone brings up “Noises Off.”

If you don’t know the show, “Noises Off” takes every nightmare an actor’s ever had about the stage and blends it into a smoothie. It’s a comedy – no, an outright farce – where backstage jealousies lead to onstage chaos, with stalled entrances, sabotaged props, and an increasingly bedraggled cast. It’s also a notoriously difficult show to do, including a stretch where the story has NO dialogue for several minutes, relying on perfectly-timed action to get the laughs.

Brie came back to that show again. And again. And again.

No surprise. It fit her so well.

Let me back up: I’m not calling her a soap opera on wheels. Quite the opposite. Brie didn’t have time for unnecessary drama. Anything that distracted from the show didn’t belong. It’s the kind of focus that made her such a terrifying Nurse Ratched – a role quite opposite her real-life personality – and that built fantastic loyalty in her casts whenever she directed.

But she understood the paradox behind the best comedies. It’s an upside-down world where the golden rules are as follows:

  1. Silly is funniest when it’s taken seriously.
  2. It takes great acting to portray “bad acting.”
  3. Division onstage requires tight teamwork backstage.
  4. And most of all, if you want chaos, you have to plan for it.

Brie loved that. Especially the last one. And because of it, whenever she took on “Noises Off,” it ran like a Swiss watch. But a lot funnier.

And now that she’s gone, it feels like a gear in the watch is missing.

But even as the show goes on without her, I think there’s still something to be said for living an upside-down life.

Unlike comedies, life doesn’t give most of us the luxury of planning our chaos, which may explain why it’s often more tiring than funny. But it does tend to send us situations that work best when we flip the script. Where paradoxes make sense.

And the biggest one is that in a world ruled by isolation, we need each other more than ever.

Over nearly two years, we’ve all learned the pandemic litany. Cover your face. Wash your hands. Get your shots. And keep your distance. But we don’t always talk about the why. Maybe it just seems too obvious – in virus times, a person’s got to protect themselves, right?

But it’s not about each of us. It’s about each other. It’s about making ourselves living breakpoints so that the virus doesn’t wreak further havoc among all of us, especially among the old, the sick and the vulnerable.

When we think of our neighbors first, we win.

Teamwork matters. In comedy. In disasters. In life. And when it’s a teamwork born of compassion, one where we each give a little of our strength to help another, that makes all of us stronger.

I wish the team still had Brie in it. We need her. We need all our loving storytellers. But if we keep up that best paradox of all – to help yourself, help another – then I think we’ve kept one of the best parts of her, too.

And that’s a showstopper even “Noises Off” can’t beat.

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Behind the Spotlight

Only in Hollywood can someone be set on fire, charge through a major explosion, and fall 50 feet – and be completely invisible.

It’s Oscar season again. Which means that once again, we’re starting to hear folks make the case for the great missing piece of the Academy Awards. And I don’t mean the absent Best Director award for “Little Women,” or the lack of attention to “Rocketman,” or the alarm clock to wake up the audience after five and a half hours when it’s finally time to announce Best Picture.

No, this is an area where the film industry has long been stunted. Literally.

Hollywood has a complicated relationship with its stunt men and women. In an age where action movies of all sorts rule the box office, a good stunt performer is more necessary than ever, even in these days of computer-generated effects. But at the same time, the audience also needs to forget that they’re there. A too-obvious double for the actor is like a boom mic suddenly dropping into the frame – a bit of reality that suddenly takes you out of the story.

And so, the athletes and daredevils of the film world mostly work in obscurity. The only time a studio calls attention to the stunt work is when it wants to underline that an actor or actress “did their own stunts” in order to emphasize how incredible the film is … and even then, it’s likely there was a little quiet help behind the scenes.

No worries, right? After all, the audience also isn’t supposed to think about the cinematographer, the sound editor, or a dozen other specialists and teams who helped build the magical tale before their eyes – except that each of those get called out and honored, however briefly.

Stunt actors appear everywhere. They make the story work. And if you don’t know to look for them, you’d never realize how much they mean.

We all know people like that, don’t we?

This last week, my friends and I at the Longmont Theatre Company lost one of those “vital invisibles.” Mind you, Tracy Cravens wasn’t a stunt woman. In fact, she would have laughed her head off at the mere suggestion of it, likely with a joke about catapulting out of the way of the set-building crew.

But from the background, Tracy made sure that the show would go on.

Tracy, who served on the LTC board, was frequently the producer of our shows. In Hollywood, producers are big deals with bigger headlines. In community theater, producers are usually one line in the program and the smiling person you met for 15 seconds in the lobby. They’re also the hubs that keep the wheels spinning so that there can be a show, the masters of logistics who make sure that everything turns up in the right place at the right time. And that often includes tirelessly promoting the show, so that the audience turns up as well to see the wonders that have been created.

Tracy did that. With humor. With energy. With occasional head-shakes of exasperation. And always, with success.

To its credit, LTC recognized her phenomenal efforts before she left us way too early at the age of 53. A while back, she was given the Brooks Hall Award, the annual honor given to the people who have gone above and beyond for the theatre company. She was clearly startled – and just as clearly honored.

That sort of recognition is important. For all the vital invisibles out there.

Take a moment. Remember your own. Think about the folks who get the work without the glory, and make it all happen. The ones who hold everything together. The ones who suddenly get missed when they’re gone.

Take the time to thank them. And if you ARE them, thank you. You’re the ones who make all of us better.

And that’s a pretty amazing stunt.

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Someone Like Him

Nicholas Lee would be delightfully embarrassed to find himself mentioned in my column.

A long-time friend and a fellow Longmont Theatre Company actor, Nicholas was also a regular reader of these weekly words. He always had a compliment and often a thoughtful comment or two on what I’d written, while his quiet smile radiated brilliantly over his Uncle Sam beard.

And yes, unfortunately,  the past tense is appropriate. Nicholas passed away on Thursday.

The thing is, like many actors, Nicholas was something of a quiet soul. Having an entire column to himself would likely bring on a blush, a shake of the head, and a self-deprecating chuckle about being hard up for material.

One hates to embarrass a friend. So I’m going to write about someone like him, instead.

Someone like Nicholas would be a gentleman and a gentle man, quietly courteous and welcoming to just about anyone in his path. He’d talk to long-established directors and developmentally disabled audience members with the same respect, warmth, and interest.

Someone like him would cultivate a few eccentricities, such as a decades-old Van Dyke beard and an elocution so carefully measured that it sounded English – the sort of touches that make the world a more colorful and interesting place. But he’d also be able to set them aside at need, such as by shaving every last hair on his head, beard and all, just because a friend wanted him to play a real-life figure known for being spear bald.

And someone would like him, by the way, would be the first to laugh at the resulting reflection in the mirror.

Someone like him would fit comfortably into a hundred different roles in the world you shared – say, a clumsy King Pellinore of Camelot, or a veteran British actor gone to seed, or a sharp-tongued and pushy agent – but would have so many more facets that you only got to glimpse briefly. Like fluency in Russian. Or a church choir he was especially proud of. Or the years and years of teaching that helped shape a delightful personality, firm but understanding, disciplined but sly.

We all know a “someone like him,” I think. The details may differ, but the overall picture is the same. The person who never forced themselves into the spotlight, but became part of the emotional undergirding of the entire group. The one who sometimes made you laugh and sometimes made you think, but who mostly made things work.

And when they’re suddenly not there, you feel it. Something has slipped. A piece of the puzzle has been lost, a line of the drawing is out of place.

You go on. You need to. After all, they’d be horrified to think that they were holding things up. But it isn’t the same.

Though if you’re lucky, they’ve passed on enough of themselves to keep some of that strength present, even in their absence.

They’re wonderful people, all of the someones. We need them. We need to appreciate them while they’re here. To enjoy them while we can. To learn from them while we’re able.

Because all too soon, we’ll be missing them when they’re gone.

Just like my friend Nicholas Lee. Whom, you will note,  I carefully did not write about today.

And who, wherever he is,  is probably laughing out loud at this reflection as well.

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A Dickens of a Tale

Standing in the dark on Friday night, I listened to the buzz of the audience.

A noisy crowd before the curtain is an actor’s favorite fuel, and this one kept building … and building … and building. The entire stage seemed to resonate, ready to light the cast up like a Christmas tree. One step, and the most unstoppable chain reaction since Trinity would be underway.

Not for a world premiere. Not for a screaming-hot “Hamilton” or a Disney-powered “Lion King.” But for the Longmont Theatre Company performing one of the most familiar stories in the Christmas canon.

Mr. Scrooge, you’ve still got it.

***

If there’s anyone who doesn’t know “A Christmas Carol” by now, welcome to Earth, and I hope the trip from Alpha Centauri was pleasant. For the rest of us, the basic plot has become part of our cultural DNA. Even on TV sitcoms, if a character makes the mistake of falling asleep on Christmas Eve after a grouchy day, we know to expect three spirits, a moral lesson, and maybe even a chorus of “God bless us, everyone!” as hearts warm and the audience applauds.

It’s a reflex. A tradition. And after 175 years, it still has power.

Why?

It’d be easy to say it’s just one more stock story. Easy to turn it into predictable melodrama. Easy to just say the familiar words and go through the motions.

But when it’s at its best, “A Christmas Carol” goes through the emotions instead.

This is somewhere we’ve all been.

Scrooge is faced with missed opportunities. With old wounds that become fresh again. With the fear of leaving the world unnoticed and unmourned, having spent a lifetime pursuing the wrong things, until the things are all that remain.

Those regrets still hit home today.

More than that, Charles Dickens gave us a tale of reaching out and truly seeing the people around you. Scrooge’s nephew Fred is joyous because he can see people opening their hearts to each other as the holiday approaches, and he can’t wait to share it himself. The Cratchits overflow with warmth and love because they constantly reach out to each other, turning even the most meager situation into a chance to be a family. Scrooge himself begins as a lonely youth who reaches out for love – and then loses sight of it, and himself, and the rest of the human race.

It’s not about a man who hates Christmas. It’s about a man who’s become closed off and needs to be reminded that other people matter, and that he can matter to them. That the rest of the world isn’t just “surplus population,” but neighbors with faces and names and needs that can be met.

And most of all, it’s about hope. That what you’ve been doesn’t have to be who you are. That while there’s life, there’s a chance to become something new.

Not without effort. Not without pain and reflection. But the best presents are the ones you work for. And this is one that all of us have needed, then and now.

It doesn’t take three ghosts and a visit from Jacob Marley (though a good night’s sleep never hurts). But it does take empathy. Self-awareness. Self-transformation. And it all leads to a perspective that opens doors and tears down walls … not least, the walls within ourselves.

So we revisit the story. We relight the hope.

And maybe, just maybe, we awaken a Christmas spirit that’s all our own.

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Unfinished Tales

It’s barely even March and I am already looking ahead to summer.

This is not normal for me. I’m the person who, when given a choice between the blazing hot and the freezing cold, will take the weather that requires a coat, a scarf, and a chorus of “Walking In a Winter Wonderland.” After all, you can bundle up, but there’s only so far you can peel down. And when you’re looking at the chores ahead, snow melts, but grass grows. Right?

I’m not saying I’m a complete polar bear. Spring is when life wakes up, especially life that wears baseball gloves and purple uniforms and has one chance in a hundred of seeing the World Series this year. Fall is the time of great-smelling grills and gorgeous trees that no rake can ever keep up with.

But summer? Really?

As usual, you can blame my addiction to theater. On March 16, the Longmont Theatre Company opens a two-weekend run of “Leaving Iowa,” a show about the iconic Summer Vacation Family Road Trip. And this time around, I’m playing Dad, which means I get to invoke the Ritual Repeated Parental Warning: “Now settle down back there, or I’m pulling this car over!”

But it’s more than that, really. It’s also a story about family ties over the years. About how your perspective changes when you move from child to adult (and not just by moving into the driver’s seat). And especially about how you always think there’s more time to know someone until there suddenly isn’t.

That last one hits home. No matter what the time of year. But for me, maybe especially now.

***

A few weeks ago, many of you saw my column about the recent passing of our 21-year-old cousin Melanie. I know, because so many of you chose to respond and send your sympathies, whether through the mail, online, or in the newspaper itself. It was gratifying, healing, and even a little overwhelming to see how many people cared.

I appreciate it and I thank all of you. It brought a lot of love and warmth to a season that had suddenly become too cold even for me.

As much as I love winter, it’s become a little haunted for us. Mel left us in January. Last year, so did our long-time canine queen, Duchess the Wonder Dog. Four years ago in February, we said goodbye to Grandma Elsie. A few years before that, it was Melanie’s dad Andy – January again. Story upon story, soul upon soul.

Sometimes we had a lot of warning before the final chapter. Sometimes none at all. Always, afterward, there are the feelings of questions not asked, things not done, stories not told. It happens even when you’re close, and if there’s been any distance at all, it only magnifies the lost opportunities.

I once wrote about a folk song called “Kilkelly, Ireland,” where an Irish father and an immigrant son exchange letters across the Atlantic for 30 years. The father is always asking the son to come home to visit, the son never seems to – and by the time he finally is ready to, Dad has already passed on.

There will always be a Kilkelly moment. There will always be one last thing you meant to do or say, because as people, we never go into moments thinking they’ll be the last one. There will always be something more you wanted them to experience, whether it’s to see a great-grandchild arrive or to enter college and begin life.

Living stories don’t end neatly.

At the same time, as a kind person reminded me, they also don’t truly end.

We are all more than just ourselves. We carry pieces of every person we’ve ever loved, every story that ever intersected with our own. They shaped us, influenced us, colored the way we see the world.

And when they leave, that touch remains. We carry a little of their flame.

Their story goes on.

And so, when I mount the stage in a couple of weeks, I won’t do so alone. In fact, I’ll be carrying quite a crowd.

I just hope there’s room for all of us in the station wagon.

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Dress Rehearsal

One of the best parts of being married to an actor, Heather sometimes says, is that both of us know what it’s like to endure makeup and hose.

Now we can add heels to the list, too.

No, this isn’t a “coming out” column. It’s just fair warning that I’m in another farce with the Longmont Theatre Company and that the show, “Leading Ladies,” requires me to disguise myself as a woman for at least half my time on stage.  What could be more normal than that?

Mind you, “normal” and “farce” don’t exactly belong in the same sentence. After all, this is the comedy of decisions made with high speed and little judgment, where gags fly fast and the actors fly faster, and where everything ultimately descends into complete madness … only to somehow rebuild itself into some semblance of order and justice with five minutes to go.

Compared to that, rocketing across the stage in a wig and heels IS perfectly normal – at least, by the laws of the comic universe.

If I sound a little too familiar with all this – well, yes and no. It’s been about 25 years since I played a man playing a woman, rendering a deliberately clumsy rendition of Thisbe in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, with tresses like a windblown haystack and a voice like an off-key piccolo.  (How high? Let’s just say that the applause probably included commentary from every dog within three blocks.)

Farce, on the other hand, is an old friend. From Neil Simon to Woody Allen, and from “Noises Off” to the offerings of the Reduced Shakespeare Company, something in me seems to respond to a riotous state of utter chaos and confusion.

Yes, yes, I used to be a newspaper reporter. Besides that.

Actually, the more I think about it (and thinking about farce is dangerous), the more sense it makes. In many ways, this sort of high-powered ridiculousness is the best life lesson of all.

Farce always has a layer of pretense. The motives are straightforward, but the methods never are. Need to impress a girl even though you’re bottom rung at the embassy? Make like you’re the top dog, despite a complete lack of diplomatic skill. The host of your party has keeled over five minutes before the other guests arrive? Weave together a “reasonable explanation” that changes every time someone new comes over.

Gee, this already sounds like the last election, doesn’t it?

Why pretend? Fear, mostly. Fear of getting embarrassed, fear of getting arrested, fear of getting booed off the stage. The personal stakes are high, and the fear of what might happen, could happen, surely will happen, terrifies people into becoming something they’re not.

And then something happens. Actually, a lot of somethings happen. Excuses start to be torn away. Disguises start to fall apart. And in the process of it all, the pretender usually discovers something true in himself or herself – something that will let them get what they really want, if they can just get past all the fantasies they’ve created.

Fear. Self-discovery. Overcoming past mistakes of our own making, and growing from it.  If that’s not relevant to most of us today, what is?  (The fact that it’s bundled into a package of slamming doors and hilariously awkward situations is just a bonus.)

Intrigued? Come on down to the theatre on the weekend of Jan. 13 or Jan. 20 and we’ll give you a crash course. (Details of “Leading Ladies” are online at www.longmonttheatre.org.) If nothing else, you’ll get the chance to see if Scott can really run in high heels without twisting his ankle.

It’ll be a riot. And a total drag.

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Exit, Left

There’s been a Marian-sized hole in my heart this week.

Those of you who read this paper regularly understand. Not long ago, the Longmont Theatre Company lost one of its stalwarts, Marian Bennett. On and offstage, she touched more lives than a workaholic chiropractor. She could communicate volumes about a character with one perfectly timed gleam in her eye and make you breathless with suspense or helpless with laughter.

I want to say she’s irreplaceable. She’d laugh at that and deflate the notion with her familiar Texas twang. And maybe she’d be right. All of us are … and none of us are. We all bring something unique that goes quiet when we leave. And barring a dramatic change in the history of the world, all of us are going to leave. Life is hazardous to your health, and the rest of us have to be ready to carry on when time brings another of us into the majority.

Easy to say. Hard to feel, to acknowledge, to own.

Especially when it’s someone close.

Doubly so when it’s someone who so undeniably lived.

 

Fill  to me the parting glass,

And drink a health whate’er befalls,

Then gently rise and softly call,

Goodnight and joy be to you all.

– The Parting Glass, traditional

 

The phrase “grande dame” can be easily misconstrued. It can suggest someone on a pedestal at best, a prima donna at the worst. But it literally means the great lady. Marian herself was charmed by the title until she looked it up in a dictionary and found that one of the definitions was “a highly respected elderly or middle-aged woman.”

“That (title) made me feel pretty good until I realized they were saying I was old,” she told me with one of her stage grimaces.

But Marian really did fill a room. Some of it was physical – she was a tall woman who naturally drew attention. A lot of it was that she did her best to reach out to everyone nearby. She wanted to talk, to chat, to hug – but you didn’t feel smothered. You kind of felt like your next-door neighbor had just come over to catch up.

On stage, that translated into the most perfect sense of timing I’ve seen in an actress. She could discard her dignity entirely to cross the stage in roller skates, or gather it around her to become King Lear himself, but she was always who she needed to be, where she needed to be.

Part of that was because backstage she worked like a fiend. (She and I often drilled lines on opening night, just to be absolutely sure.) Part of it was confidence, the same confidence that led her to travel, to speak her mind, to welcome a friend on one meeting. A lot of it may have been her willingness to look cockeyed at the world, and enjoy it when others did, too.

She could be nervous or anxious, like any actor. But I never saw her afraid. You can’t be if you go on stage. You have to be able to look inside yourself and then share it with the world.

Come to think of it, that’s true off stage, too. Life is more fun, more alive, if you can live it without fear. Not without common sense (Mar had plenty of that) but without drawing back from what you might find.

Even that makes her sound like a lesson. Granted, we all are to each other. But we’re all so much more, too. We’re friends and family and teachers and neighbors, connected by more than we can see.

And when that connection is broken, it hurts. For a long time. It never quite heals the same way … and it shouldn’t. You’ve loved them, cared for them, taken on some of their memories. Of course, they’re not going to vanish from your mind and soul like an overdue library book.

They’ve touched you – and you bear their fingerprints.

Goodbye, my friend. It was a pleasure to know you, an honor to work with you.

Take your bow with pride.

I’ll see you after the show.

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Belly Up to the Bard

After 20 years, my dream has come true.

No, not the one where I come to school for a test I never studied for and then realize I’m in flagrant violation of the dress code. Different dream.

This one began with a chance purchase of an oddly-titled script in a college bookstore. Now it’s coming to fruition amidst a torrent of sight gags, word play and utter ridiculousness. A tribute, really, to a master of the hilarious and bizarre.

Right, Master Shakespeare?

OK, OK, I know. “The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (abridged),” our newest comedy at the Longmont Theatre Company, bears about as much resemblance to the stagecraft of Laurence Olivier as I do to the physique of Arnold Schwarzenegger. That’s the beauty of it, really. This is Shakespeare as it might have been done by Monty Python and the Marx Brothers, with a little Saturday Night Live thrown in for good measure.

It’s irreverent. It’s absurd. It’s three men blasting through the canon with a buzz saw like the hero in a zombie flick, and leaving about as much standing.

And somehow, I think the Bard of Avon would have laughed his head off. Once the migraine cleared up, anyway.

That’s not because the show’s true to the text. (Heavens, no.) But it’s true to the life.

Maybe I should explain.

A lot of times, Shakespeare’s plays get treated like museum pieces: Dust off the icons, admire the filigree and keep everything on a nice, safe pedestal. They’re works to be studied, venerated, stuffed and mounted.

Now mind you, I admire the man’s work. I consider his writing some of the most beautiful in the English language. And the details certainly bear study, if only to discover what “fardels” actually are.

But Shakespeare wasn’t writing for textbooks. Shakespeare was writing for people. Rich people, poor people, anyone who could pay for a seat (or a patronage). And he played to that audience as surely as any modern-day Hollywood schlockmeister.

Bad puns? Check. Blood and gore? Check. Soap operas, mistaken identities and jokes about bodily functions? Check, check, and most definitely check. (Take a fresh read through Macbeth if you don’t believe me on that last one, where a porter hilariously laments how too much wine “provokes the desire but takes away the performance.”)

Yes, he wanted people to think. And part of the way he did that was by also making them laugh, wince, and shudder. Many of his tales had been told before; by adding his own twists, touches, and jokes, he could make his audience really hear them and consider them as something new.

That kind of re-transformation can be vital and not just in Shakespeare. Any time we give something a set-apart status – the Founding Fathers, a sacred work, a loved one, the 1927 New York Yankees – we risk taking them for granted. We memorize a headline, or quote the words without the music. As a minister of mine used to say about the Easter story, we already know the end, and so we lose the fear and apprehension shared by those who didn’t know how all this was going to come out.

We stop understanding and see only what we expect to see.

By shaking up those expectations, we wake up our minds. And maybe even laugh ourselves silly in the process.

Let go. Have fun. And if I’ve got you curious, come on down and see what our warped minds have come up with. ( Show details can be seen at www.longmonttheatre.org.) As Master Shakespeare used to say, the play’s the thing.

What kind of thing? Thereby hangs a tale …

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The Impossible Dreams

It’s been rabbit season for a while now. And I’m loving it.

More specifically, it’s been “Harvey” season. And after a year’s break from theatre, I’m very fortunate to have been caught by the world’s kindest man and his giant invisible friend with the pointy ears. A friend of mine was once in a similar state of theatre withdrawal and wound up agreeing, sight unseen, to direct the first show that came his way – which happened to be “Oliver!”

“Oliver,” he said in a daze after hanging up the phone. “That’s the one with 50 kids in it, isn’t it?”

Theatre withdrawal. It’s a terrible and awesome thing.

Truth to tell, this is a show I’ve been wanting to do for a long time. (And a good thing, too, considering it involved two months of rehearsal with a little time off for Christmas.) There is a short list of scripts that I consider “drop everything” plays, where nothing short of blizzard, flood or alien invasion could keep me from trying out. At the top of that list are “Harvey” and “Man of La Mancha,” the musical about Don Quixote.

That’s not an accident.

In a way, both plays are the same story viewed from a slightly different angle. Both are about a man who walked away from mundane reality and embraced a dream. His world doesn’t understand. His family thinks he’s crazy. But his own life is an infinitely richer, more appealing place because of it – so appealing that it even threatens to draw others in despite themselves.

“I’ve wrestled with reality for over 40 years,” Elwood P. Dowd tells a bewildered doctor, “and I’m happy to state that I finally won out over it.”

“Too much sanity may be madness,” Don Quixote’s alter ego muses at one point. “And maddest of all, to see life as it is, and not as it should be!”

That’s something that’s inherently appealing to an actor. After all, we spend a fair amount of time walking in dreams ourselves, treating fiction as true and living with people who never were. We create entire families – cast, crew, audience – from the sheer power of that dream. And if we’re lucky, we carry a piece of it with us long after the curtain goes down.

Crazy? I’m sure many of our friends and family think so, especially after weeks of late nights and hastily grabbed dinners. But essential, too.

To paraphrase another “Harvey” character, it’s our dreams that make us who we are.

Oh, it’s possible to live without dreams. Look around. The daily news seems filled with the consequences of the oh-so-practical people more concerned with being right than doing right, where winning justifies anything, where grand visions matter less than seizing a small advantage today. Politics, sports, business – in some ways, it’s a world more hostile to the Elwoods and Quixotes of society than ever.

But once in a while, something lifts us higher.

Once in a while, we gape as a spacecraft lands on a comet or a rover explores Mars. Or we marvel together at the adventures of a boy wizard with the power to make children read 800 pages without stopping. Or we … well, do anything that lifts us beyond survival and self, and into the imagination.

Beyond that line is where hope is born. The power to dream of something better. The desire to make it be.

The madness that can transform all of mundane reality in its wake.

OK, that’s heady stuff from a crazy knight and a guy with a six-foot rabbit. But when you find joy in the middle of an angry world, it can be a little overpowering. Mad? Maybe. It’s the end of a withdrawal from dreams, and that always has powerful consequences.

Though if those consequences involve 50 singing children, you’ve got no one to blame but yourself.

See you on stage.

 

(PS – Want to join the madness? Show times and tickets are at www.longmonttheatre.org. Tell ’em Harvey sent you. )