Live theater has a special place in my heart. In the past month, I’ve had the opportunity to see two thrilling theatrical productions without having to travel to London or New York. Both happened to be just minutes from my home in the Santa Ynez Valley. The first, a performance by the Laketown Players, was in Santa Ynez, and the second was in Buellton, where the Jewish Women’s Theatre performed “Family Secrets.”
I love storytelling. For me, there is nothing more powerful than being in the room with the storyteller — especially during live theater. We, the audience, are right inside the story. Theater folks call it the removal of the fourth wall. There is no big or small screen to separate us.
True, Netflix and other cable channels, do some amazing shows for television. And, with a good book, we can also lose ourselves, forgetting where we are as we read the story. But for me there is nothing like live theater, where we see sweat on the actor’s brow, and sometimes spittle spray from their mouth.
If the writing and the acting are good, we completely disappear into the story.
The writer Yuval Harari, in his recent best seller, Sapiens, wrote that stories are what separate humans from all other species. We don’t need to see the action in real time. By listening to stories, we imagine the action, and by the use of our imaginations, we are changed. Cave men told stories around the fire.
The Greeks left us important stories found in their classic plays and the Bible, perhaps the greatest collection of stories, giving us complex characters and plots that take our breath away. I never tire of a story well told.
I recently had coffee with the esteemed writer, Jerry DiPego. In his long career of writing screenplays, novels and short stories, he’s a master storyteller. He directs the Laketown Players, and last month I had the chance to see the group, comprised of local actors, many of whom have had professional training, perform a dramatized reading of one of Mr. DiPego’s novellas: The Man with Three Fists.
It was performed in a former beer tasting room on Sagunto Street. As I watched and listened to the actors, I was transported from Santa Ynez to a small drought- stricken town in Northern Illinois, where I watched a farmer grieve for his crops as well as his child.
As this farmer desperately grapples to find a way to keep his crops, as well as his marriage, alive, I grieved right along with him — praying for rain and his lost love. I thought about the fragility of marriage and how to keep it from becoming drought-stricken. The story and the actors transported me.
Then, last Saturday night, I had a similar experience while in the audience of the Jewish Women’s Theatre which performed at Industrial Eats Grand Room in Buellton. This group of professional actors travel from their home theater in Santa Monica throughout California, performing true stories centered around a theme.
This year, it was "Family Secrets."
The four actors, directed by Susan Morgenstern and produced by Ronda Spinak, told stories that were not just for Jewish people and not just for women, but were human tales about what happens when a family tries to guard their secrets from each other and from the world.
We heard a true tale of a woman who traveled to Oman, an Arab country, and laughed along when she told us how she found acceptance and love from people from whom she’d expected rejection when she admitted being Jewish.
There was a devastating story of a young woman who discovers that her father, a respected doctor and religious man, has been harboring a secret stash of unsavory pictures. A hypocrite, the father has been betraying his wife, daughter and religion with his dedication to pornography.
These stories, well written and acted with skill, made us empathize with the tellers, as well as think about our own families and how secrets often get in the way of love.
If you missed these productions, I encourage you to watch for the wonderful opportunities we have for live theater here in the Santa Ynez Valley. It may not be New York or London, but good storytelling by talented writers and skilled actors, makes us all more human.