"What if they're not on our side?"

The Avenue Theatre's summer musical "The King and I" is over. Now is the time for reviewing what went right and wrong and for thinking about lessons learned. One personal observation, and I'm reminded of it every time I work with kids, is I'm glad I'm not a school teacher. It is not a profession I was ever tempted to try and every time I'm around groups of children, I know it's good, for everyone's sake, I did not go down that road. My friends who are educators: God bless you for it. Merely keeping kids corralled for a few minutes at a time is challenge enough for me. That you manage to get them to learn anything at all is fairly astounding, in my opinion.

As a director of community theatre plays and musicals, one of the things I tell my cast members is that the audience is "on their side." When people come to see a community theatre musical typically they either know someone in the cast, they want to enjoy an evening or afternoon of entertainment or perhaps they want to support the arts. In any case, they've spent a few dollars to come see a performance and they want to see the cast do well. If audience members can hear what's going on (something else I continually have to remind casts: project, speak up!) they will most generally leave the theatre happy with the experience.

One evening, I was giving one of my pre-show pep talks prior to a performance. "Remember what I've said before," I told them. "The audience is on your side." One little girl raised her hand. "Yes," I said.

"What if they're not on our side?" she asked. 

I have no idea why she asked it, but I was taken aback by the question. I assured her that, of course, the audience wanted everyone to succeed. But upon reflection I wondered if the sentiment behind it is an undercurrent in society these days. Is that what most of us secretly, or sometimes not so secretly, think? Do we believe individuals as well as whole groups of people are against us? Is that why several of my friends think it's perfectly fine for the federal government to have the capability to listen in on our phone conversations and otherwise invade our privacy? 

Have we been convinced the "whole audience" out there hopes some harm will befall us or that we'll fail? Have labels divided us to a degree so that now we are Americans, but also, somehow, enemies? Democrat/Republican...Christian/Muslim...gay/straight....male/female. Because we are different, we are against each other? No. That is not the case. Jesus did not promote labeling and neither should we. We might have different opinions, but let's not hope for failure for one another. When one of us falls, we are all dragged down a little. Let us find that which unites us and stop focusing on disagreement.