Progressive Wednesday

What’s in Carey Mack’s Pocket?: Magic

May 20th, 2007 by Carey Mack

I’ve always thought that the very, very, very funny film Waiting for Guffman totally mocks community theater. They put on their show in a gym, and the audience sits in folding chairs. They are not great actors, singers, or dancers. They lack self-awareness; in a word, they are horrible. The Blaine, Missouri residents involved with the show slave over it in pursuit of a dream that a man named Guffman is going to come see their show — Red, White and Blaine. Guffman is a Broadway producer. I’ve always thought that the entire movie is a ridiculous satire of community theater. I wonder: is it that ridiculous?

Before I go any further, I need to say that I have always felt very self-conscious when I start to talk about my experience doing theater in high school. It feels like a parallel to “…and this one time? At band camp?” Or, even worse, that people will see me as I see the characters in Waiting for Guffman. But I’m all about showing up for my life and not apologizing. Plus, Tom Hanks gets just as effusive as me when he talks about his high school theater experiences. And Tom and I had eerily similar experiences: “[I] tried out for the plays, and got into them, and had more fun than I could possibly imagine. It was an incredible group of people, some of whom are still my friends. I got into this eclectic group that was kind of rootless and clique-less.”[1]

Wow, if that isn’t dripping with theology, I don’t know what is — we are, as humans, rootless and at the same time, I think it says something in the Revelation of John that in God’s world, there will be no more tears, or pain, or cliques, especially high school cliques. Can I hear an “Amen!?”

What got me thinking about all of this? Well, dear readers, I tell you — I found, in a pocket, a remnant of an experience that I had this past March. I jumped in at the last minute to run follow-spots for a community theater production of Gypsy, performed ably by the Saline Area Players (of the Great Lakes State). I jumped in at a crazy time: the week before the performance, when people are just a tiny bit crabby and exhausted. It felt somewhat amazing to me that I remembered, in my bones, why I love big creative group projects. For example, I can’t think of a better way to spend an evening watching stuff that’s not supposed to happen, happen — like watching a live lamb poop all over the former Miss Saline. And it felt somewhat amazing to me that I remembered something else — we were contributing to civil society, democratic life, doing good deeds, and contributing to the common good! I remember something from my formal education, something called “social capital.”

Like those high school theater experiences, (and not unlike the characters in Waiting for Guffman), we bonded. I can’t speak for everyone, but I experienced idealism — “It’s what artists-especially theatre artists-do . . . imagine new worlds and possibilities, draw uncommon connections, and bring heretofore unassociated elements together to articulate new worlds. All of which we hope (ohpleaseletitbe goodenoughsmartenoughfinished enough) will provoke or enable people to somehow reconsider the nature of possibility.”[2]

And we make social capital, which is basically a term that describes any occasion in which people collaborate for communal purposes, or a common goal. And their work together finds root in common and informal rules because they value and appreciate the same ideals. In high school, we valued being funny, creative, iconoclasts, and, seriously, good theater. The people of Gypsy valued art, people who might never have met one another, or collaborated on anything (exhibit A: Former Miss Saline working alongside the former President of the AV Club). I’m pretty sure that when the ancient Greeks thought about democracy, that’s exactly what they thought of.

Why is social capital important? Well, when a person bonds with groups of people, they are more likely to engage in reciprocal help. In high school, this meant that someone might help me with my math homework, while someone else was helping another person decide whether or not they were going to lose their virginity to Otto Meisbauer (name changed to protect the guilty and/or innocent).

I also think that high school theater was huge because after feeling some isolation (and even more profoundly, the sudden death of my father when I was fourteen), I finally stumbled into a group of people who were gonna be there for me, every Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday at 6 p.m. – and we trusted one another. We trusted that one another was going to be there.

Also, social capital empowers people: one can see the more high profile forms of social capital in things like the civil rights movement (churches organized boycotts). Funny, creative, iconoclasts that we were, we used the social capital generated by our theatrical experiences to hold a dance called “Morp” (prom backwards), for those who preferred to have a dance that celebrated funny, creative, iconoclasts, rather than whatever prom celebrates. (I am not dissing prom. I had a great time, a great dress, and a great date and was able to go strapless just before my boobs got too big to be held up by anything other than industrial-strength “foundation” pieces, and I must self-disclose that I was the Morp Queen, and got to wear a balloon-animal crown, and at prom, I was just one of the masses).

Here is my point. I grew up believing that if something was fun, it probably was not of much use to the world. And I am so thrilled, in my early thirties, to remember that the fun I was having doing high school theater, the fun that I had working on the Gypsy show, that it was actually about something the greater good. And yeah, there is an actual fifty-cent “word” for the phenomenon — social capital. Coming (or happening, or could happen) to a theater near you!

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[1] This was in an article in Interview magazine (March 1, 1994). I photocopied the quote, so I don’t know what page it was on. You’ll cope.

[2] Joseph, Melanie. “Another World in Progress.” American Theatre 22.5 (2005): 54-57.