The Joy of the Season

Last night, as I watched our small but intrepid audience experience the first act of Mistletoe Musings I was struck by all the different expressions on their faces. It was extraordinarily satisfying to see the wash of emotions playing in their gaze; heads in sync with the rhythm of the music and the mood, eyes locked on the performers and literally sparkling in the light and warmth of the moment. I was again reminded why we do this business that we sometimes call art. There is a joy in the communal experience of live performance that is hard to match.

Earlier this fall, when we started the rehearsals for The Glass Menagerie, I began the script discussions with a conversation about the joy and beauty I find in Tennessee Williams' extraordinary script. Zach Williams, who played Tom and is a diligent analyst of text, made observation of the dark and hopeless reality of the story and challenged the notion that the play is about joy. It was the beginning of lengthy and rewarding discussions of the play, but this too reminded me of why we do this work. For in the presentation of even the darkest night of the soul, there is joy.

The winter holiday has in its deepest roots the need to seek out joy. As the days shorten, the temperatures drop, and the natural world sheds its outward signs of life to focus on sheer survival, the human urge to find light and celebrate it is almost overwhelming. While we have managed to trivialize this urge in a cultural celebration of commercial gluttony, its primal nature is powerful and inexorable. 

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Our current production, Mistletoe Musings, rather explicitly celebrates that primal urge...and also leverages some of the sentimentality of modern times, but what are you gonna do? It's hard not to like the old holiday favorites like Jingle Bells. Most satisfying, though, is the joy at the center.

So, as we move past our weekend of Thankfulness and into our month of Consumerism, I'm thankful that my days are spent pursuing the experience of joy. The collective, communal, life affirming experience of gathering around the fire pit to tell the stories that remind us that after the dark, there is light, and joy.

Happy Holidays!
             -- Michael