What a night in the theater?

Friday night I had an experience that I have only had one other time. Bev and I went to a reading of a play in Muncie. This play was the product of an immersive learning experience that blended students from the sociology department and the theater department. On paper the evening was an amalgam of writing a play that wove in the results of the recreation of a sociology study that was first conducted by Robert and Helen Lynd. The first study occurred in 1929 and because of its iconic status among sociologists, it has been repeated six times in the intervening years. The culminating homage resulted in a PBS documentary in 2000.

That is on paper. However, in the alchemy of placing young people in a high pressure situation with high expectations and dedication to a high standard of performance what you get is a group of young people who are transformed and do something that is beyond their previous capabilities and talents.

As I mentioned, this is the second time that I have had the opportunity to witness such a moment. The first time was six years ago when we went to see Pendleton Height High School drum corps present their national contest winning performance. I was amazed. The thing that amazed me most was how much they enjoyed playing together. They knew they were good. They were confident that all of the work that they had put in towards their goal would not abandon them during their performance. They could let loose and let the music flow from them. I was moved.

The catalyst for this amazing group of kids was a band director that had taken a group of kids that had never successfully competed for anything and turned them into one of the best high school bands in the nation. The great thing about this was that he found a way to inspire the kids so that they truly enjoyed the hard work. Thankfully cooler heads intervened and insisted that the band skip a competition so that it could play during half time of the school’s football game in the RCA Dome. The director finished out the year and took his talents to a school that had different set of values. Predictably, the band has reached the same level of mediocrity as the football team during the intervening time.

It strikes me that there was more to this group of Ball State students transformation. The teachers were active and involved but at the end the play while listening to plans and dreams for the future of their creation, it seemed that the youth's drive and determination were still on the up swing. The adults, however, had counted the cost and had delivered all that they could deliver. Igniting and extending a passion in some twenty students will not a full professor make. There are grants to write and papers to publish and careers to establish.

No I think what happened here was that 20 young people in the prime of their idealistic, I'm going to change the world passions, rubbed shoulders with a group of people who had had many of their ideals worn out of them by the realities of life. Rather than finding them wanting and in need of saving, they found people taking stock of their lives and making decisions that were indeed the best for them, their families, and their communities. They found simple people, who have no great desire to change the world, acting in such a way to make it a better place.

Being kind to others, humbling making changes in areas where their lives are lacking, staying in a place because the place is home, are the ideals of the unimaginative and the limited. They thought.

Actually, they found people whose lives were full, robust and truly worthy of celebration, and their own lives changing from the example.

Take care,

Roger