An Intangible Secret

There’s something that professional producers, musical directors and actors don’t realise when audiences watch in awe.

Today I went to see Putting it Together at the Foundry Theatre at Star City. It featured Caroline O’Connor and Michael Cormick, who were brilliant. There were several other brilliant singers, two awesome musicians and a lead pianist who was also the Musical Director. It was phenomenal. And not just in a ‘professional theatre is amazing, particularly if you’re from the South Coast’ kind of way, but for a reason they may not ever know. 

As a committed and dedicated member of my local community theatre group, there was something more at play. Not simply an appreciation of their art, which was well trained, well rehearsed and well earned. But watching the young MD occasionally look out at the audience, scanning our faces, our laughter, our tears for reception, recognition, resolution, and knowing that these ‘famous’ actors performed ‘no matter what’ yet held our every breath and nod of understanding in their watery eyes, I could feel something intangible. Something that an ordinary Sondheim listening and loving audience member coming along for an arty afternoon would not know.

Despite the lack of financial burden on having a ‘hit’ and the need to somehow pay the bills on ‘this gig’, we amateurs feel it. The pull. The desire to reach into the hearts of others and tap into arteries, allowing the slow dripping of life and love and music and theatre out onto the pavement of one’s community. And the necessity for it to be perfect. It’s not about getting it right though. It’s about possessing that brief month of truly living in art. Breathing it daily. Going to our real jobs in the day and having it dwell in the back of our mind like a heckler, always pursuing. 

It’s mutual. And those professionals are probably not aware. They smile in the lights and do what they do and hope the sentiment is clear. 

It is. But not Sondheim’s lyrics and fabulous harmonies. It’s the effort. It’s the time. It’s the gruel of it all. 

Us community theatre folk ‘get it’. Yes, we come to see their ‘profession’, but we also come to share in their passion. 

I looked in their eyes today, sitting in the front row, grinning, nodding, hoping they could feel my thoughts, hear my heart beat. It wasn’t in time with the tunes, it was in keeping with THEM. Because the secret is, we know. They may get to live the dream, but we know the reality. And we love it. We live it despite our day jobs, our families, and even sometimes our marriages. We do it for love.

So when we watch in awe, we really watch. We pay good money to watch and learn and listen and feel alike and alive and allowed.