–Matthew 

My experience with About Face and Chicago Dramatists Theatres performing in playwright Sarah Gubbins’ The Kid Thing has been a phenomenal three months of storytelling. This play asks all kinds of questions about family – when to start one, why to start one, how to start one, do we have enough money, do we really have that much left to figure out, will having a baby help us “solidify” what we’ve already got?

But more than figuring out when to do “the kid thing”, I am struck by the play’s even stronger message about our responsibility of why to do it – if we so choose. The central character, Darcy, chooses not to become a parent because of how she is perceived in the world, being a lesbian who is often mistaken for a male, and is paralyzed by her fear of how that would impact a child on a daily basis. But deeper than that, is her concern of what her own child might think of her – or rather – how. With Shame. Embarrassment. Confusion. And then there is the intense pain of coming to terms with the reality of her own self-loathing.

One of my lines in response to Darcy’s argument as to why “gay people who look like me, shouldn’t have kids” is that it “takes two, maybe more adults in a child’s life, to give them comfort. To help them learn how the world works.” And if I’ve learned anything, it is that family is a broad, broad umbrella with a very specific function – to love, nurture and grow the next generation.  It takes a tremendous amount of courage to subject yourself, your family, to the effects of change. But the why – the reason it is worth doing – is so critical. I think the responsibility we have as human beings is to move through our fear, and all of the limits we, or our predecessors, have created because of fear. To continuously evolve, living in our most loving and truthful capacity. We have made great steps in tearing down the structures in our society built from fear and ignorance. And I can’t think of a greater responsibility and joy for families than loving a child, and one another, so much that you bravely introduce them to a world you are committed to changing.

-Rebekah Ward-Hays

*The Kid Thing plays through October 16th.  For more information, please visit www.chicagodramatists.org

This is our mission, in case you weren’t aware of it:

BackStage Theatre Company is a not-for-profit ensemble of theatre artists dedicated to the exploration of family. Through the creation of bold and eclectic productions, we question and examine what family means socially, spiritually, economically, emotionally, politically, and culturally. Our BackStage family is committed to the growth of all families.

I am constantly challenged and exhilarated by this mission.  And yes, you read correctly; I believe that this mission of this little theatre company can help to change the world.

All one has to do is to turn on the television or listen to NPR or read the titles of the books that silent commuters read on solemn trains and one gets the very clear sense that in some essential way, our national seams are loosening and we are slowly coming apart.  Politicians, religious leaders, pundits and “self-educated” talking heads increasingly see only one side of any argument and seem to thrive on sundering any consideration about the collective “we” into the bitterly divided camps of “us” and “them.”  Our great experimental nation has gone from being an epicenter of new, connective ideas, to a breeding ground for shallow, divisive political and religious one-offs that draw schismatic lines-in-the-sand and splinter our collective consciousness into paranoid camps of who is righteous and who is wrong.

What does this have to do with our mission?

Everything.

By embracing this complex mission; by considering the multifaceted idea of “family,” our mission becomes an antidote to this widening national trend of divisiveness.  By choosing this mission, BackStage has committed itself to the careful examination of the basic and initial means by which all human beings attempt (successfully or not) to connect to one another.  Despite what many of todays loud-mouthed pundits claim, the idea of family is not self-defining, nor are its values.  In fact, the reality is very different.  The American Family is becoming increasingly heterogeneous and complex.  The Family is the primary human institution, worthy of constant and careful consideration, and its “values” are dense and varied.  According to certain ideologues, the family is a simple institution with a clear, simple code of ethics.  In reality, the family is an emotionally complex and often volatile institution that constantly challenges the limits to our patience, our self-image and our capacity for forgiveness.

A family cannot be defined by its values, but it can be defined by our universal human journey within it.  We are born into the family, we leave the family, and in one way or another, we ultimately return to it. The connectivity of that universal journey has inspired the greatest mythological and dramatic explorations this human world has ever seen, and it is that journey that our mission calls us to explore.

Now, I am certainly aware that claiming that a small storefront theatre could somehow help to change the world might seem to be a grand flirtation with pretentiousness.  Well, so be it.

I have long lived with this quote by Peter Brook:

“We can talk about housing on TV.  We can talk about heaven in the empty churches.  In the theatre, we ask why it’s worth living in the house and if we want to go to heaven.  Where else can we do this?  We can talk about shorter hours of work in the weeklies and about leisure.  If  we don’t examine the living of our leisure in the the theatre, where else will we do so?  In the loony bin?”

Now is the time to raise voices, to ask big questions, to make bold claims and to stop shouting into the void.  If we have something to say, it’s time to say it. It is time to stop telling stories in the vacuum and hoping the audiences show up.

So, in honor of our 10th Anniverssary Season, I make the claim that our mission can help to change the world.

Can yours?  If so, I cannot wait to hear about it.