“The stage is a magic circle where only the most real things happen, a neutral territory outside the jurisdiction of Fate where stars may be crossed with impunity. A truer and more real place does not exist in all the universe.”

— P. S. Baber, Cassie Draws the Universe
 

As we write this on Friday night, children are cavorting up and down Maple Avenue outside our window. Two princesses stroll by, arm in arm, secure that tonight, for just this moment, they rule their world. A little boy wears a blue and black striped necktie and a serious demeanor; “FBI” is emblazoned on his black vest. Superman races ahead of his parents so his red cape flies behind him.

Yes, it is Halloween night, when strangers open their doors to the unknown. It is a time when children relish playing the part of someone else. It is also a time when people connect — both those who know each other and those who have never met.

We cherish the magic of the holiday more as years pass because such human interaction is, sadly, more and more rare. Too often, children and grown-ups alike in our world of ever-increasing busy-ness spend more time looking at screens — on TVs, on cell phones, on computers, on tablets — than they do at real flesh-and-blood humans.

We’ve noticed some rites of passage are falling by the wayside. Parents of teens who remember counting down till their 16th birthday when they could get a driving permit are perplexed that their kids have no such desire; today’s teens don’t need to hang out with their friends — they can connect electronically. So few kids show up for middle-school dances these days that many schools have canceled them.

One of the reasons we’ve long treasured and sought out plays of any kind — professional productions on Broadway, community theater from the Hilltowns Players, and local school plays — is because of the values that go beyond the script. When an audience comes together to watch, to hear a live performance, there is chemistry among those watching — strangers who laugh and cry together — and between those on stage and those in the darkened theater gallery.

Each performance is different because of the way the audience reacts and interacts. Laughter can roll in waves from the velvet seats or wooden bleachers and break upon the apron of the stage where the actors feel the force and ride the wave.

We were distressed this week when we interviewed Andy Maycock, a Guilderland High school English teacher who has directed fall plays and spring musicals for years. When he started in 1997, he said, 104 students tried out for a part in the musical. But, in recent years, the numbers have dropped: Last year, fewer than 50 auditioned. The deadline to sign up to audition for this year’s spring musical was Monday, Nov. 3; as of Friday, 37 students had signed up.

“I don’t know why,” said Maycock.

Over the last quarter century, we’ve written scores of stories on school plays. They teach the players much. Many of the earnest and talented young men and women we’ve interviewed have aspirations for a career on the stage. A few of them have made it.

Many others have become music teachers or play directors in their own right, and a large contingent have come back to help with the Guilderland Players production. Such loyalty is the sign of a successful program; graduates return because they understand the value that the experience has had as their lives unfold after high school.

But the plays are about more than vocational training. Kids learn skills as basic as working together, making a scene successful by bolstering another actor rather than stealing the spotlight. Self-confidence emerges as rehearsals progress. Commitment is rewarded as a set of seemingly random scenes with unfamiliar people coalesce into a single tour de force.

By playing roles, the young actors learn about views of the world that may be unlike their own. Over the years, we’ve interviewed kids who have told us they learned about different cultures, different time periods, different genders than their own through the roles they have played.

Maycock was also concerned about the size of the audience for the upcoming fall play and so chose a comedy he believed would be popular. Noises Off, a madcap play within a play, will be performed on the high school stage on Nov. 6, 7, and 8 at 7 p.m. You should go. Turn off the computer or the TV, set down the tablet. See some real people performing a funny play. Laugh until it hurts.

And then keep on going. Read our calendar listings and Out & About features to see other live performances in our midst. This weekend, for example, you can take a ride through the beautiful Helderebrgs to Rensselaerville's Conkling Hall, a community gathering place if there ever was one. There you can listen to three New York City actors — one of them with Hilltown roots — who will  tell stories, giving voice to characters, as one of them put it.

Then toward the end of the month, history will come to life at the Old Songs venue in Voorheesville on Nov. 21 and 22. Old Songs founder Andy Spence has gathered musicians to perform and narrate the history of the Anti-Rent Wars that happened right here.

The half-century struggle was fought by farmers over seven counties discontent with a patroon system that annually collected feudal rent. The rebels masqueraded as Indians in calico and warned each other of the approaching sheriff with a blast on their tin dinner horns.

The moon was shining silver bright;

The sheriff came in the dead of night;

High on a hill sat an Indian true,

And on his horn, this blast he blew —

Get out of the way, Big Bill Snyder

We’ll tar your coat and feather your hide, sir...

Pete Seeger sang those words to us a quarter-century ago. He said he’d sung “The End of Big Bill Snyder” up and down the Hudson River for 40 years. Seeger appreciated the way songs could move people and causes forward.

“One of the extraordinary parts of America, which usually is skipped or skimmed over in American history courses, is the way American history has been formed, not always by the presidents and the officials,” Seeger told us, “but by rank and file people who kept pushing.”

You can hear those songs that helped shape our history as local people narrate the story of the Anti-Rent Wars. Maybe you’ll even hum along and understand the way the rebels felt.

We’re mindful, though, of what Harriet Tubman said of a play to be based on Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Born a slave, Tubman escaped and helped others to freedom, becoming a beacon for both abolition and women’s rights. Harriet Beecher Stowe, a white northerner, reached millions of people with her novel turned into a play, depicting lives of fictional slaves.

Legend has it that Abraham Lincoln greeted Stowe in 1862, a decade after her book was published, by saying, “So you’re the little woman who wrote the book that started this great war.”

“I’ve heard Uncle Tom’s Cabin read, and I tell you Mrs. Stowe’s pen hasn’t begun to paint what slavery is as I have seen it at the far South,” said Tubman. “I’ve seen the real thing, and I don’t want to see it on no stage or in no theater.”

Plays are not the real thing. But they can give the idea of the real thing to someone who has never experienced it. A century after Stowe’s book-turned play, poet Langston Hughes called it a “moral battle cry for freedom.”

We can sit in the dark of a theater and be moved by the actors on stage. We’ve never worn manacles, or been beaten, or starved, we’ve not had our liberty and identity taken from us as Harriet Tubman had. We don’t blame her for not wanting to see what must have been for her a pale echo of reality on stage.

But for those of us who haven’t experienced slavery, such a play could open our eyes and hearts to a new reality. The same is true of plays today. We can understand more of what it means to be a human being when we come together with others to hear and see a play.

 
— Melissa Hale-Spencer