The Power of Live Theater

Tonight once again I had the joy of experiencing the power of live theater. It was absolutely breathtaking!

Man of La Mancha is playing at The Engeman Theater in Northport, Long Island until August 3rd. I'm not going to write a review because, unless you live on Long Island, you probably won't be able to see it. Which is a pity, because I haven't been so moved by a performance in a very long, long time!! Everyone in the audience gave the show a well-deserved standing ovation!

I'm glad I didn't take my younger sons to see it. There were some scenes containing choreographed violence and sexual innuendo. The script places us in a veritable den of thieves and murderers. But then along comes our white knight, our poet Cervantes, with his character of Don Quixote, and things begin to change. People begin to change.

The audience begins to change. They cry. They feel. They ponder.

One criteria of really good theater is that the audience collectively feels like they are being swept away by an experience that is at the same time both personal and universal. A bleak dungeon set comes alive through the magic created by professional actors, brilliant directing, powerful singing and music, and an inspired script, and a powerful message is sent. I am still left shaking my head in amazement. What a show! Hours later, I am still ruminating the ideas over and over again in my mind.

The production values were top notch; as an Actor's Equity (the professional stage actor's union)theatre it was Broadway quality. But it was more than that. The overriding theme throughout the entire musical is about the power of the poet to transform reality through his words and ideas. When the Duke, the most learned man assembled in this motley crew, demands of Cervantes why he doesn't "see things as they really are", Cervantes sighs and explains that poets simply pick and choose their own reality. One couldn't deny that they are captive in a prison during the Spanish Inquisition and their existence looks bleak indeed; yet the poet, through "Don Quixote" the bumbling knight, continues on in his "impossible dream" where he sees nobility in a desperate woman, good in all people, and virtue triumphing over evil. By showing kindness and respect to the vilest of people, people are transformed. Because Don Quixote believes in this, by the end of the show we all believe in it. We, the audience, are challenged to continue on in this "quest" in our own life, to continue to believe in each other and in ourselves. To see not only the facts or the prognostications of what the secular media, scientists or Wall Street gurus tell us; but instead, to have faith in our God, to have hope, and to transform our own lives. That basic Christian message can be communicated in many different ways.

Isn't that the purpose of the arts, to force us to confront the really big questions and to come face to face with ourselves? To confront reality as it is, but yet also to change it as St. Paul commands us, by allowing the Holy Spirit to change our minds?

Therefore, I urge you, brothers, in view of God's mercy, to offer your bodies
as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God—this is your spiritual act of
worship. Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be
transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and
approve what God's will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will. (Romans 12:1-2
NIV)

Once again I am humbled by the power of the arts to encounter the soul.

Near the end of the play, when Aldonza asks Don Quixote why he continues to persist in chasing his foolish "dream", the quest of the knight errant in the triumph of virtue over evil, he simply answers, "Why, to bring more grace into the world, of course."

I love it. Wow. And that's why we teach our children: to bring more grace into the world, of course.