FEB
14

A Love Letter to Theatre

By Lavinia Roberts 

Lavinia Roberts is a theatre teacher and award-winning playwright who’s passionate about arts education and about creating zany, engaging, and meaningful plays for schools and community theaters.   

Dear Theatre,

You hold a special space in my heart.  Onstage, backstage, or as an audience member, theatre has touched my life, as well as the lives of countless others.  As Valentine’s Day approaches, I want to shine a spotlight on your many attributes that are near and dear to my heart.

Thank you, Theatre, for providing ample opportunities to create and share with others.  I appreciate how you have taught me to work under tight deadlines with humor and warmth.  I am grateful for watching firsthand how you teach cast and crew members to work together toward group goals and thrive as a team.

Also, thank you, Theatre, for the myriad of ways you improve communication skills for cast and crew.  Stage actors improve their active listening skills by focusing on responding to their fellow actors.  Directors must convey their directorial vision and concept to the creative team, as well as provide constructive feedback to actors.  Designers must communicate with each other and the director to share their ideas and create a unified production.  Members of the crew must listen to the stage manager and communicate with each other in a professional manner.

Thank you, Theatre, for building community.  As Russian theatre practitioner Konstantin Stanislavski says, “There are no small parts, only small actors.”  Members of a cast and crew connect through the shared experience of creating a work of art.  Thank you for bringing the community together to be entertained and moved by the story being told onstage, brought to life by the cast and crew.

Additionally, I am grateful to you, Theatre, for igniting imagination.  The director must use theirs to create a directorial vision and concept.  Actors use their creativity to connect with the internal life of the character they are portraying.  Designers use their imaginations to create sets, costumes, light, sound, and props to bring the world of the production to life for the audience and engage their senses.  The audience, too, uses their imagination while experiencing the production, suspending disbelief and immersing themselves in the world of the play.  Thank you for bringing creativity and new possibilities of seeing and experiencing the world to the lives of so many.

Finally, thank you so much, Theatre, for engendering compassion for all involved, onstage and off.  Actors develop compassion for their characters and imagine what Stanislavsky called the given circumstances of the scene.  Who are these characters?  Where are they?  Why are they there?  What is their objective in being there?  Audiences also develop compassion while experiencing the theatrical production, empathizing and connecting with the characters onstage.  Thank you, Theatre, for taking all involved on an emotional journey, sharing in the challenges and dreams of the characters.

Like a box of chocolates, you are full of sweet treasures that touch the lives of so many.  This Valentine’s Day I celebrate theatre, its directors, cast, and crew, and all patrons of the arts! 

Much love,
Lavinia