"I stumbled out of the theater..."
And a May 16 Ibis Books event
Sometimes a guest says something so perfect and profound, there’s nothing to do but go, “Yeah. Wow.”
Such was the case in my recent interview with award-winning playwright, librettist, and musical theatre professor Deborah Brevoort.
Her podcast episode just went live, and you can LISTEN TO IT HERE.
I want to share a snippet from our conversation. For context, Deborah also has a Master’s degree in Political Science and worked at the state level as a Chief of Staff in Alaskan politics. She is very open about her belief that everything, including theatre, is political. But she abhors political activism in the theatre.
I asked her about that, and here’s a bit of what she said (gently edited and only for clarity!)…
The thing about beauty is it awakens something in us that's invisible and powerful.
And more importantly, whenever we encounter beauty — whether we're driving down the road and we see a snow covered mountain or we see a beautiful rose or we meet a person who's beautiful or whatever beauty creates — it makes us feel alive and hits us in the heart, because beauty doesn't hit us in the head. It's not a thought. It's not an idea. It's a sensation. It's a feeling. It's an enlivening that happens.
It also awakens in us the desire to replicate it. Just think about you're driving down the street, and Mount Kilimanjaro appears in front of you. You slam on the brakes, pull out the cell phone, and take a picture of it. You duplicate it, right? Or if you're a composer, it inspires music. Or if you're a poet, you write a poem. And so beauty has a duplicative effect in the world. It unleashes something. And what it unleashes is vibrant and full of life.
Beauty moves us in invisible ways. And this is the power of art, right? Because you can't control it. This is why authoritarians are always locking up writers and artists, because artists unleash something that is alive and that starts duplicating itself, and it sets something loose into the world that actually opens our hearts. And when our hearts are open, our minds are open, right? So if I find a really compelling story and I tell it, I write it really well, and I move people through feeling or laughter or beauty or humor, then I'm shaking loose the human heart and setting something in motion that will be duplicated in some way.
Writers are awakened to art by other writers. I started writing because I sat in a theater in San Francisco in the 1980s, and I saw this little known play by Lanford Wilson called Angels Fall that was a total failure. People were leaving in droves, bad reviews. It's never been produced. It went out of publication. But there was something so powerful in that play that it just… it took my breath away. I can't even tell you what it is. I could weep just even thinking about it. And I stumbled out of that theater. I was probably the only one. I stumbled out of that theater not knowing what hit me. And I felt compelled to meet the power of that work by putting something powerful of my own into the world. And that was when I started to write. And so art awakens that kind of stuff in people, those feelings, those responses, and that is actually a humanizing and a very, very powerful thing. Whereas arguments, theories, political activist viewpoints, if anything, they arouse resistance.
—Deborah Brevoort
BE THE PROTAGONIST on May 16 at 4:30pm
The next IBIS BOOKS event features the phenomenal Maria Schaedler-Luera.
She’ll be reading an excerpt from her book, BE THE PROTAGONIST, before doing a q&a and then autographing copies that will be for sale (or bring your own already purchased copy and she’ll sign that one!).
This author meet’n’greet is at the Senior Friendship Center (1888 Brother Geenen Way, Sarasota, FL 34236) on Thursday, May 16, 4:30-6pm.
Admission is free and light refreshments will be provided. All you gotta do is REGISTER HERE.
Thursday, May 16, 4:30. Be there! And Be the Protagonist!
This weekend, keep your eyes peeled for something beautiful. Let it hit you in the heart.
Jason “Beauty Duplicator” Cannon