I spent a wonderful evening with family earlier this month. Not blood relations, but a group of theater friends, a gaggle of adopted brothers and sisters I’ve known since high school. We met in the late 1960’s at the Indianapolis Civic Theater’s Junior Civic program for children. We took drama classes, attended summer workshops and put on children’s plays, either acting or working behind the scenes, during the school year.
We attended many different high schools and came from diverse economic and cultural backgrounds. We learned to surmount our differences and work together.
Most of us dreamt of seeing our names in lights, but few went on to pursue careers in professional theater. Several of the most talented ones did wind up in California, New York and Chicago finding success in careers in screenwriting and acting. Others stayed involved in community theater, wherever their life journeys took them. Several pursued careers in arts education. A few gravitated to work behind the scenes: building sets, running sound and lights and managing special effects…the backstage magicians.
But the majority of us went in different directions and settled into lives and careers outside the enchantment of stage right, stage left and backstage antics. In our tight-knit group, there are at least a couple of nurses, a psychiatrist, a financial advisor, an insurance salesperson, a hospital chaplain, a professor, more than one attorney, an architect and even a professional astrologist.
No matter where we ended up, we all carried some of what we learned at Junior Civic with us, finding ways to use those skills throughout our lives.
We learned to take direction, developing into good listeners. We acquired self-confidence through performing. We learned to think on our feet when we were called on to improvise. Equality came naturally: leading roles are written for both sexes.
At our reunion this month, I was struck by how many of us came to the theater as a place of refuge. Teens yearn for acceptance by their peers, and suffice it to say, few in our group in the 60’s were high school jocks or popular girls. We bonded through creativity, and as we bonded through art, we developed lasting friendships.
Earlier this year, Indiana Governor Mike Braun supported removing more than 400 college major programs from our state universities. Many degrees on the chopping block are arts related. Our Governor comes from a business background, and no doubt feels practical majors do more to prepare Hoosiers for “real” life. Yes, Finance and Engineering degrees are worthy, but where would our lives be without art and artists? Great novels and plays help us become critical thinkers. Paintings from the Caves of Lascaux to the drips of Jackson Pollock expand our imaginations. Music from Beethoven to the Beatles enriches our lives. The magic of The Nutcracker Ballet has been mesmerizing children since 1892. Movies like The Godfather mine deep emotions.
My favorite class in high school was History of Art, and the freshman courses I took at IU-Bloomington in Comparative Literature and Religion still stand as the most enlightening classes I’ve ever taken.
But the art that’s most enriched my life was my theater experience at Junior Civic. As a depressed teen living in a new community, the friends I met there saved me. The majority of us are retired now and have lived long enough to mourn the loss of several from our close-knit group. We even love each other enough to maintain friendships across today’s fractious political divide. That’s the power of art. I hope our world will always be filled with creativity and enduring friendships. Never doubt that art saves lives.
