I always thought I was a pretty nice kid except for a defect which plagued me into adulthood. I learned almost too late how powerful an effect (for good or bad) body language had on others. My mother would often tell me my face would one day freeze in a scowl and I would be ugly for the rest of my life.
K.B. and I attended a community theater (Calhoun Players) last week in the auditorium that was built in the year that my mother was born (1926) and the same auditorium that my mother graduated in (Cameron, S.C., 1946). The production was Irving Berlin’s Annie Get Your Gun with a cast of 39 – half were children. We were seated in the very front row. I was riveted watching the faces of the young cast members. I could tell that their being on stage was disciplining. What a rich experience! I immediately became an enthusiast for community, and particularly children theater.
In an environment that does not even pretend to be professional, I thought about the confidence and responsibly heaped on these young actors and the unique opportunity they were experiencing furthering their education of self-expression. They were also learning to project effectively a persona that was not their own.
Perhaps … just perhaps, if I had been in a theater cast at an early age and was exposed to the magic of acting and expression, I could have made a “B”.
