This morning, I spoke with a friend of mine who expressed anguish at how his father, now retired and in his early sixty’s, has no passion for anything or interest in doing anything other than parking his derriere on his sofa while watching a movie on the TV, listening to a baseball game on the radio, or perhaps watching another sports event being streamed on his smart phone.
With his mortgage paid off, and no job, he has no incentive to do anything with his time other than to let it go by. “What a waste,” says my friend, “With so many jobs available; so many volunteer opportunities to engage in or interesting things to do that could offer him the ability to learn, grow, and engage with or help others, it’s just a waste. This should be the time of his life.”
In the articles that I’ve written over the past several months, I’ve provided examples showing how the arts have saved, transformed, and helped to improve numerous lives throughout our communities. I’ve shared how theater companies, high school drama, art, and dance programs have served young people throughout the East Bay. I’ve shown how troubled and disadvantaged children have found confidence, pride, recognition, and new life through these programs and mediums, and how people involved with the arts have assisted them in finding meaning and satisfaction in their lives.
I have illustrated how young people who began with a passion to become actors and performers eventually altered their artistic and educational paths so that they could do for others what others had done for them, by becoming teachers and mentors themselves.
Today, I wish to congratulate those whom I call our communities’ “backbone benefactors,” the everyday citizen volunteers who support the needs of these institutions, without whom, most of these organizations would fail.
So, while I laud the importance of community and high school theaters’ paid management and owners for providing creative direction and opportunities for our youth, there are many more benefactors who seldom get more than a basic nod when people read promotional material for theater productions. I don’t believe that there are any community theaters in America today who can survive by ticket sales alone.
While there may be many wonderful artistic directors, writers, and composers who can create and guide the production concepts and oversee the quality of community or high school theater productions, it is, in large part, the volunteers –the “backbone benefactors” –who make it all come together, especially where there is little or no funding to pay for professional support staff.
In previous newspaper and magazine articles I’ve mentioned costume designers and seamstresses such as Hope Birdwell, Liz Martin, and Lisa Danz, set builders like Diane McRice and Ryan Terry, sound equipment operators like Randy Knott and Michael Kelly, just to name a few, for whom I have great respect, who work tirelessly to make these shows come to life. Add to this, the lighting designers, scenery painters, poster graphics artists, publicity staff, social media mavins, ushers, and directors, who provide the backbone of these wonderful little theaters.
When I first met my wife at the Town Hall Theater in Lafayette in the early 1980s, her mother, Nancy, acted in and directed shows; her father, Edwin, built sets and stored the reusable materials in his construction company storage buildings in Berkeley for years, without any cost to the theater. My wife even managed lights, sound, and stage props in some of these community shows. It was here that I learned how important it was to have someone who could make sure the appropriate prop was where the actor expected to find it when it was needed, and how important it was to have someone after the production was over, to clean up and take down or “strike the set.”
Sometimes these backbone benefactors go far beyond what anyone might expect them to do just because their child or children are in a company’s show or classes. Take for example Dr. Samuel Lewis, a now retired Lafayette Podiatrist, whose son, Rob, performed in the Belasco Theater company in Walnut Creek. Sandy (as he is known by friends) became so excited by the excitement of the children in Eddie Belasco’s theater company, that in a short time he went from the role of proud parent supporter and funding donor, to assisting in funding the theater by soliciting funds from other professionals who were his peers in the area.
If it were not for so many wonderful philanthropic organizations and individuals of wealth and compassion who have practiced extraordinary acts of philanthropic giving, such as the Dean Lesher family who assisted significantly in the funding of the Lesher Center for the Arts, the old Walnut Creek walnut warehouse theater probably would never have been razed and rebuilt as the Lesher Center for the Arts. Without the Campbell Family’s generosity, the old auto parts store in Martinez would probably not have become the great community asset now known as the Campbell Theatre. If it were not for local city governments finding ways to support the arts, I believe our communities would be less socially responsible, healthy, wealthy and wise.
In conclusion, let me propose to you as I did to our friend in my opening paragraph—share with your friends and family the wonderful contributions that they can make, and the joy they can have as volunteers in our local worlds of the theater and the arts.
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