banter
Welcome to my blog, Banter.
I’ll start, you chime in—I really want to hear from you!
Sharing the Stage
There’s an old joke about community theater. Imagine a group of young, scrubbed, overall-clad youngsters in a barn. One projects loudly, “We’ve got a barn! Let’s put on a show!” The others ad lib with big smiles, “Sure thing!” “I can build the sets with this old scrap wood!” “We can use this sheet for a backdrop!” “I can sew these old rags into costumes!” Then, all at once, the whole group stops talking, orients towards a kid standing on a hay bale, settles into varied comfortable but affected positions, and gazes expectantly. The kid on the hay bale launches into a monologue and/or song. This stereotypical trope from amateur theater is easy to satirize (Christopher Guest’s Waiting for Guffman does this with love). And I am not recommending that anyone do this on stage, exactly…but the truth is that the audience …Read on.