So I’ve been talking to Abby recently about what I can contribute to the blog; or more how I can contribute and what her vision is for it. A theme arose after exchanging a few emails about the relationship between the Alabama Shakespeare Festival and the community that supports it. I’d already been thinking about sharing my experiences with ASF and nothing seemed a better question to ask than “Why theatre?”
My love affair with theatre started out originally as just something to do on a Friday night. My mom used to take my sister and me to the Dinner Theatre at Faulkner with her so we could help in the kitchen in exchange for free food and a show. I adored it and somehow to my young mind it was like a live movie that reacted to the audience’s laughter and tears. To a twelve year old, it was entertainment at it’s finest.
Somewhere between junior high and high school, I was officially introduced to the Alabama Shakespeare Festival in Montgomery, Alabama, and I loved it instantly. I’m sure we were watching a stage production of some story we were reading in our English class, but this was more that mere words. This brought a kind of life to the story that filled my imagination with real faces and voices for the characters we had studied. Theatre became a visual representation of what I had read on the page.
In the latter years of high school, theatre began to mean education as I started studying it as an art form. I learned some of the skills and vocabulary involved in producing this art. The Alabama Shakespeare Festival meant perfect execution of these skills; priceless and timeless examples of it in the work done by Greta Lambert, Ray Chambers, Greg Thornton, and others who have performed on the stages at ASF.
In college theatre became a hobby where I practiced and honed these same skills. My work within the theatre became something I shared with my friends for the enjoyment and appreciation of the art. But it was while I worked in the Box Office that ASF truly came to mean friendship. I still think fondly of the coworkers I befriended while here and I also saw the friendships form between our patrons. There were subscribers who became friends because they sat next to another couple at every show; and I would see friends greet each other in the lobby and see a Saturday matinee together.
I’m proud to have two theatres to call home, and I’m especially proud that one of them is the world class Alabama Shakespeare Festival. It’s come to mean a lot to me and many others. I’d like to invite you to share what it means to you in a comment on this blog. Share with us your favorite memories of ASF, and if you’re not sure what it means to you then maybe you should come again to visit a place where great shows come to play!
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