The Ghost Light Goes Out

I just got back from watching a production of Xanadu at our local community theatre. After this production closes, the theatre itself shutters permanently. It's been around for 79 years. The news came suddenly, a shock to everyone.

I'm not privy to all the tea about what went wrong. A combination of post-COVID malaise, internecine disputes, and money troubles all contributed. They had a new artistic director, now gone. They had a full season planned, now cancelled. Two more weekends of Xanadu, and the stages go dark forever.

It reminds me of the lines from that NPR story I wrote about earlier:

I don't know what comes next. Things fell apart so quickly, but also slowly; as the years passed, cracks started opening up, eventually turning into a chasm. In the end, we didn't make it.

I've seen so many productions at this theatre. I've been in a show there. You can find me in a picture from that production. It hangs on the walls alongside photos from years--decades--past. I saw people I acted with in the audience. I saw people I taught, people I teach with, people from my church, and people from other productions with a rare night off.

The show, based on the featherweight 80s movie, leans into its campy lightheartedness. Clio (they pronounced it kleye-oh), Muse of History, descends to earth to help a young artist realize his dream of a roller disco that also has theatre and dance and sports and magic, etc. 

Much of the plot revolves around revitalizing an old abandoned theatre space. The owner had himself been visited by Clio nearly forty years prior, initially inspired but then backing away from his dream. Many lines concerned what they could do to save this precious space where art happens.

And then they'd shift into one of many lesser-known 80s hits, usually with a self-aware metatheaticality. 

But beneath the silliness and the energetic cast, the lines about abandoned theatres and jokes about artistic inspiration disappearing from earth after 1980 landed differently. 

This theatre had its share of excellent performances as well as many "good try, ya'll!" productions. But its value was never as a source of Great Art. Instead, it really did what the best community theatres do--putting people in touch with Some Art in ways that feel more entertaining than obligatory. Seats fill up for musicals, and standing ovations are the norm. Everyone on stage seems excited to be there. Everyone in the audience seems eager to see and laugh and clap. 

It's a living theatre space. 

I don't know what comes next. So much love and sweat and energy and spirit haunt that place. It feels wrong for a lifetime's worth of of theatre to end so abruptly.

The cast looked like they were having the time of their lives, soaking up the well-earned guffaws at their jokes and the giggles at technical malfunctions (e.g., the projection system crashing) with equal good faith. I laughed, too. 

And I may yet shed a tear. RIP, TBR. Thanks for all the art you produced.