I can’t stop thinking about kids in Ukraine. In train stations. Dodging bombs where they should be dodging bikes, balls and other such whimsies. Childhood interrupted.
I can’t stop thinking about quarantine and how much time we lost in isolation. Childhood, adolescence, adulthood interrupted.
How we sometimes still feel so stuck, so unable to turn the page.
Anyone who knows me knows I have a wild imagination. It is my greatest gift, my secret weapon, and I mine it for beautiful things all the time. I love that I’m one of those people that dreams in widescreen technicolor and that with the right collaborators and material we can make truly beautiful things. But the flip side is that I scare easily. I cry easily. I cannot watch films or plays that are too graphic, and will avoid zombie tv at all costs. Really, I can’t watch The Last of Us. I can’t. I tried. I made it 30 minutes in and had to turn it off. My imagination can be frightening enough. It does not need help dishing up nightmares.
As a deeply feeling grown up called to create art with deeply feeling adolescents, it has been my life’s work to help young creatives channel their wild and beautiful imaginations into productive and compassionate collaboration.
In a lot of ways Alice By Heart is the best representation of this humbling and joyful work. This play just might be my thesis.
We build the world we wish we could live in, to heal from the one we do.
Who among us has not lost something profound in the last three years?
Sure, we teach kids computation and citations, formulas, and plot lines but where in the curriculum is there a concrete and specific lesson plan helping young people learn to grieve and heal? To face the very brutal truth that sometimes healing starts with facing a tough choice. The choice to begin. To let yourself be new again.
For me Alice By Heart offers a masterclass in choosing wonder in the grieving process. Of seeing joy and love where fear and sorrow dominate. Of burying your head in the sand and then giving in to grace instead.
That’s heavy for a school play.
Or is it?
Perfect.
Our beloved Rayne Gallager, who is the understudy for two principal tracks, the coach for Young Alfred AND a Lobster, Knave and Soldier in the play, says it best- “Art hurts but art heals, that’s the duality of it. It’s sharing that experience with other people to process all of it.”
