Perhaps it was due to some of the good reviews, but tonight -as we were peering through the small tears of the backstage curtain- it seemed like the crowd was buzzing with excitement. The audience had doubled in size from our last performance and we were all nervously waiting for Ben’s call for “ATTENTION!” to get the show started.
It was a fantastic run with a captivated audience who seemed to laugh and gasp perfectly on cue but the real fun happened after the bows. While we were striking, a man approached us and invited us to dine with he and his friends above the theatre at a small Tapas bar. We agreed and met the group of smiling seniors upstairs for an experience that might just be the highlight of the festival so far.
We sat down at a long table and one-by-one they began to introduce themselves and share their stories; there were five of them. Susan (who moved to Canada with her Draft Dodger Husband), Rebecca (a former Goshen College student during the early seventies), Jim (a Univeristy Prof who had been arrested for staging a sit-in to resist the mandatory MIlitary Officer classes on campus and had also burned his Draft Card), Peter (a student at McGill in the sixties who had marched in anti-war protests in Ottawa and Montreal), and Jeanette (who was also married to a Draft Dodger).
It was a surreal experience. Here we were sitting across from the very people who had lived out the story we’d just told. They all raved over the authenticity of the play and verified that the emotions and sentiments we’d communicated aligned with that of their own escapades. They told us of the causes they were now working for and reminisced about their pasts as well.
Here we were, sitting at a long banquet style table, Theatre of the Beat on one side and our new found friends on the other and I couldn’t but think that it was as if we were looking into some fantastic mirror that showed us what we could all become if we never lost our passions and maintained the audacious idea that the world is a malleable thing that can be made better. We were in awe but our attempts at praise were not accepted. Instead they thanked us! They seemed grateful that there were still young people today who were thinking about their story -as if our doing this play somehow proved their efforts hadn’t been in vain.
We passed around plates of food and as we finished I noticed that Jim (the oldest man) had a small red square pinned to his shirt to show his suport for the student protests. I pointed it out and with a grin on my face called him a “trouble maker”. He smiled a wry grin and assured me that “[he’d] always be a shit disturber”. We shook their hands, thanked them for their generosity and headed off to see another Fringe show. We left inspired, excited and hoping that someday, a long way down the road, we too could be as cool as them.
-Johnny
theatreofthebeat 