The cast of Carrie: The Musical, now playing at Birmingham-Southern College. Photo by David Garrett.
In honor of this week’s special Performing Arts Issue, Weld asked some members of Birmingham’s performing arts community a question: What role does performance play in the human experience and how has that role shaped Birmingham as a whole?
Cathy Gilmore, president, Virginia Samford Theatre
The performing arts are an integral part of the human spirit. Theater, music and dance, along with the visual arts, help people achieve inspiration, develop imaginations and see things differently to produce positive and enduring social and cultural diversity and change. For our important young people, arts education programs strengthen critical thinking skills and build self-confidence and discipline – traits that will lead them to success in tomorrow’s workforce.
Birmingham is an oasis for talent in the arts. For almost 100 years, artists in the metro area have provided outstanding live theater, music and dance performances which have attracted new businesses and young professionals, stimulated the economy through tourism, and instilled a sense of pride in its citizens with creative quality of life choices and amenities.
Leah Tucker, executive director, Alabama Jazz Hall of Fame
All art forms contribute to the human experience by offering the average man a way to express himself, whether it is through visual arts, dance, theater, poetry or music. The arts can ease your pain, evoke a mood, expand your horizons, enrich your spirit and fill you with happiness.
Birmingham has quite a rich cultural arts society. The role of the arts in Birmingham have served to champion a cause, educate the masses and decrease the divisions between individuals. The arts help people to communicate freely with each other and learn more about each other’s way of life.
Marva Douglas, president, Aldridge Repertory Theatre
As an actor, the performing arts give me life. I feel not only enriched by the chance to share my talent, but I also earn the joy of knowing the audience will be entertained. You can’t beat that. The audience, on the other hand, experiences joy, anger, love or hate in addition to being entertained. And, as one board member said, they can go on a “virtual” emotional journey without taking any personal risks.
The performing arts have helped Birmingham grow into a well-rounded city. I can’t think of any performing art that is not available here. It’s becoming more and more difficult choosing where to go and what to do on weekends. And that’s a good thing. It’s especially good for the Birmingham economy. The variety — music, art, dance and theater — allows patrons to choose how they might get the best bang for their buck when looking for entertainment. There is something for every taste and every budget. Of course, I’d love to see all of those bucks spent on live theater.
Photo courtesy of Marva Douglas.
Keith Harrelson, owner, Moonlight on the Mountain
Most critters in our world exhibit display behavior — usually as part of a mating ritual — but only humans are said to employ imagination and empathy in highly-developed expressions of their feelings. Music, theater and dance are capable of taking us back and forth in time, memory and attitude, offering those who will participate a greater perspective of the human condition itself…and more importantly, to remind us that the known universe is not entirely contained by a sparkly glass tablet in the palm of your hand. Look up, people — there’s actual flesh and blood waggling and warbling right there in front of you…if you’ll pay attention, it’s almost always more fun than watching snippets of a tiny iPhone movie, especially when (as I am convinced it usually is) the real thing is just a thinly camouflaged mating ritual.
Any community will have a core of folks who aren’t afraid to call attention to themselves, so we will inevitably create the stages and stadiums required to establish the performer/audience equation. Historically, Birmingham has kept pace with its sister cities in offering specific niche venues to host a wide variety of artists — but these days we can’t boast any greater ongoing public support of the entertainment arts than seems to be the norm elsewhere. At least, that’s what we hear from nearly every traveling musician we’ve presented in the last decade.
Regrettably, we’re systemically susceptible to two overarching conditions — the right hook of a spongy economy and the uppercut of completely free music, sports and movies via electronic media — that have critically eroded ticket-buying audiences across the board. If there’s a bright spot, though, it’s that players are gonna play — whether anybody gets properly compensated for it or not…and that’s what somehow keeps the little boat afloat.
Merrilee Challiss, owner, Bottletree Café
Obviously, the notion of what it means to be human is changing because of our dependence on technology. If you are in the business of promoting the performing arts, you are conflicted, because you are reliant on the ease and speed of “reaching” your audience to promote said event, but you are at risk of losing the battle to those same flickering screens to which we have become addicted as a species. What does it mean that I get more “likes” for my event on social media than actual attendees in the room? Armchair support, or likes on Facebook, is not support — it’s virtual support — and it doesn’t pay your light bill, or pay the artists who have traveled to your city to share their passion with you.
So I encourage people to remember that while most of us probably have some level of engagement in the virtual community, the one that really matters is the community made of flesh and blood. We are still human and connecting with other humans, and supporting each other is what makes a community strong. Performing arts are really important for the cultural health of a city. We often — I am also guilty of this — take for granted all the opportunities available to us. In fact, most of us don’t appreciate what we have until it is gone.
On any given day or night, there are lots of amazing events and activities in Birmingham. I think attending a play, or a show, or a lecture, or viewing an exhibition not only helps us connect and participate in community, but participation in those sorts of activities is important to help us reconnect with what I believe it actually means to be human — and that is to create and to have a sense of wonder about our environment.
Dane Peterson, producing artistic director, Dane Peterson Theatre Company
Performing arts offer humans the opportunity to express our shared experiences, emotions, understandings, challenges and triumphs. The common bond created in a performance space between audience and performer is an unmistakable and ancient need for community, creating a catharsis among all involved. When one looks back over the centuries, the arts are consistently present, giving us insights into the lives of those that came before. The arts will always influence us today and help instruct our tomorrow. It is impossible to separate artistic expression from the fabric of the human experience.
Birmingham is a jewel of artistic pursuits and talents. Theater, music, dance…all have helped us celebrate the joyous times and learn from the difficult ones. Living another’s point of view in the form of the arts lets those on the stage and those in the audience explore the facets of our inner lives that do not exist in the tangible.
Drew Francis, director of marketing, Red Mountain Theatre Company
The performing arts inspire conversation and stir the collective social consciousness. If I just look at the shows on the Red Mountain Theatre Company Stages in the past few years, this statement resounds. Les Miserables is an epic story filled with perseverance, faith, reconciliation and a fervent desire to question society’s moral consciousness. This season we are thrilled to bring a new work to the stage celebrating the life of Nelson Mandela where clearly the same themes will be explored.
I have had the pleasure to witness incredible audience exchanges during our talk-backs after powerful performances — The Martin Luther King Project, The Color Purple, Legally Blonde etc. In the wake of these shows, authentic conversation was spawned in multiple ways, igniting a renewed social exchange. During one of our talk-backs, a patron heavy in the Civil Rights Movement recalled how affected she was sitting in our theater with the realization that it was the first time she had returned to that building since her youth. The same building where on a wall not far from where she now sat was a “colored only” drinking fountain.
I believe that the work we do in reaching 17,000 students in the Birmingham area for the arts is important. I believe that the arts change lives and show people that the impossible is possible.
Theresa Bruno, corporate board chair Alys Stephens Center. Photo courtesy of Alys Stephens Center.
Theresa Bruno, corporate board chair, Alys Stephens Center
The performing arts truly have the power to transform lives. This is a recurring theme in the work at UAB’s Alys Stephens Performing Arts Center (ASC) and our education and community outreach facility known as ArtPlay. The ASC staff and I have witnessed with our own eyes shy children take the stage and blossom into charismatic actors, graceful dancers, virtuoso musicians. We have seen the faces of economically and socially disadvantaged children and adults brighten with wonder and pure joy at the opportunity to see a famous artist perform, or to learn a new song or dance move themselves. And a sight that we all should be so fortunate to witness is that of a cancer patient temporarily relieved of pain or anxiety while enjoying an artist performing at his or her hospital bedside. Art is a healer; it feeds the mind, the body and the soul.
James Lee Griner, board of directors, Birmingham Festival Theatre
Birmingham has jumped into performing arts with both feet — and started dancing. Birmingham Children’s Theatre is an absolute treasure because it introduces local kids to the wonderment of pretend on a big scale. Alys Stephens Center Kids Club and ArtPlay do the same thing, involving children in the magic, putting them on stage, talking to them after the show. You have to do that kind of thing if you’re going to have an audience 20 years from now, and we do that here. Several of the local high schools have award-winning theater departments, not to mention the work done at ASFA. UAB, Samford, Birmingham-Southern, Montevallo and other universities have nationally recognized performance programs for college students, both undergraduate and graduate.
And then, I guess sort of naturally from all that talent being concentrated here, there’s the fairly recent explosion in community theater groups. When I moved to Alabama in 1981, there were maybe two or three groups doing community theater — and by community I mean largely done by volunteers who just love it so much they have to do it. Now, in 2014, there are more than a dozen. We nurture each other with opportunities to perform, build, manage, costume and see each other. Fortunately, we have supportive audiences who attend as much as they can, but honestly there’s just no way to see everything. We love our theater in Birmingham, and it shows.
Jonathan Fuller, artistic director, Alabama School of Fine Arts
The performing arts are probably one of the oldest art forms (next to cave painting), when early man presumably put on the antlers of his latest kill to enact how he bravely stalked and brought it down. Human beings are primarily storytellers not only in plays, opera and film, but also see metaphors of life in societal pastimes such as sports.
Personally (and perhaps prejudicially) I think theater , as opposed to film, gathers together people in society to witness, connect with and be a part of a live experience where ideas, tragedies, dialogues, comedy and social issues can be played out for and with them. The theater is a way for people to witness and act out the best and worst of mankind in a socially acceptable environment, and in my book, learn life lessons from walking a mile in another’s shoes; feeling, thinking and seeing points of views which enrich the human experience. I think performing arts, the theater in particular, teaches us how to be human beings.
