Final Thoughts of Geauga Lyric Theater Guild
I had the fortunate experience of being chosen as an actor in various plays for the GLTG, dating back to my first performance as Detective Sergeant Trotter in the Mouse Trap back in 1998.
I subsequently auditioned and received roles in various productions, and it was a truly gratifying experience for me. The most gratifying part of it was the support I received from my family and friends to sit through and endure my attempt to perform my characters in an artful entertaining manner.
Maybe live amateur theater has left behind its value as a vehicle for entertainment for a culture whose expectations for visual and auditory spectacle, a little theater on Chardon’s Square cannot come close to competing with. It is no different than reading a 400-500 page novel of Dickens or Henry James. The modern attention span and focus has changed.
The value that this little converted movie house on the square provided may only have truly been felt by all the children, young adults and wistful actresses and actors that gained an incredible education and satisfaction by being a participant in their productions. The community support was fairly and unevenly solid. But it is hard for an enterprise to make a living in such a competitive entertainment environment with changing and impatient tastes.
Below is my grateful personal experience of being a participant …
I love the smell of this theatre. I like to look at the autographs and graffiti written on the back stage wall. I like to walk on the vacant stage when all is quiet and listen. Have the walls, the stage floor, the empty seats somehow stored remnants of past shows… the laughter, the missed notes, the late cues, the panic of walking out in front of an audience for the first time?
Do I sense the presence, the vibrations of all the miles walked on the worn, creaky, wooden stage floor; the multitude of theatrical characters that have paraded over it; the bumping and cursing of carpenters, designers and stage hands that have transformed it? Are they now all phantoms straining to break into the present once again… hoping to be freed, to express their souls for one last show, one final applause? Might I rescue them out of the crevice in that floorboard?
Or maybe they are somehow hidden unobtrusively in a corner off stage waiting to be released like a wound up spring. Like an archeologist, I seek to detect any hint, any clue of their lost existence.
I know I am only dreaming. It is wistful thinking. And with resigned acceptance I know that each one of our stage characters will meet the same fortune, will be relegated to the same fate, and experience the same slow descent into oblivion as all the others that came before. It is a short life well lived.
But, we have left our mark and I am certain that some small vestige of these performances shall remain forever a part of the fabric, the tapestry, the very life and character of this grand old theater.
And so farewell… to the generous love of live theater and all of you volunteers and meagerly paid administrators and teachers… all hopeful with a passionate love of our little theater to make it work.
It has been a good run. Each and every one of you has made my life a bit richer. I salute you all.
