Energy, sacrifice good sportsmanship found on stage, too

“Why High School Musicals Should Be As Respected As Sports Programs Are.”

That is the title of the article I read at the website Odyssey Online last week.

I idly posted it on my Young Thespians Facebook group page because it echoes the mission of this column. You can read it yourself at https://bit.ly/2ntA5E7 or join our group to see it linked there.

I enjoyed the message, but didn’t think much of it after I shared it. I mean, preaching to the choir for me, right?

But to my surprise, as of this writing it has already been shared 71 times, and it is still going. Now, I don’t know if you know much about Facebook — other than they haven’t done enough to stop the Russians from peddling conspiracy theories, they’ve played a little loose with users’ private information, and their stock price has been pulling a Titanic lately, but that’s a topic for a different columnist — but let me tell you, that’s a lot of shares. Well, it is for me. It is certainly the most I have ever seen any of my posts shared in our Young Thespians group, or my own personal page, for that matter, save perhaps one. And it is still working its way around.

Now maybe there’s something algorithmic about the whole thing, but digitally enhanced or not the viral nature of it suggests that column struck a nerve with my followers in the arts community throughout Northeast Ohio. Why is that, I wonder?

Turns out that when it comes to education or community programs, arts people are used to fighting for things.

Maybe it’s in the water these days. Perhaps you haven’t paid it much mind, but there are a lot of people out there fighting for a lot of causes lately. Whether it’s the #metoo or Time’s Up movements or the March for Our Lives or Black Lives Matter movements or the teacher walkouts across the country — whatever you think of them — it is certainly a moment in our country when civic involvement and activism is dusting itself off and getting up off the mat.

On this 50th anniversary week of Dr. Martin Luther King’s assassination, perhaps this reawakening of civic engagement is appropriate. I’m not the first to suggest that the current atmosphere is the most active since perhaps that turbulent 1960s decade.

But as one of my esteemed colleagues might write, I digress.

Arts people are so used to fighting for things, sometimes we even fight each other!

I distinctly recall some friendly fire I took on a column I wrote about five years ago on a local production because of this very sports-arts divide. One of the star football team players was in a supporting role, and I thought that was an interesting angle given the tension that sometimes exists between seemingly better funded sports programs and their more coupon-cutting arts colleagues.

I thought it was a great example of how athletes can truly appreciate the arts, and how welcoming thespians can be — no matter your origin. You know, a “High School Musical” kind of thing but in real life!

Well, I don’t get much actual reader mail, but I got one after that column — and it wasn’t a happy one. “Oh, boy! Great job focusing on the one football player! Don’t they get enough attention? Focus on anyone else!” was the gist.

As a theater educator myself, I thought that person totally missed the point — Tell me something I don’t know! — but you get the idea. A tension definitely exists between these communities in a world where an “adequately funded” education is merely a goal.

Now as someone who has participated and coached, admittedly with minimal success and longevity, more than one sport and is totally committed to our local and regional sports scene (I was enjoying a book about the Cavs 2016 title run from a local columnist immediately before starting this column today), I can tell you that I am not down on our area athletes in the slightest. I enjoy their efforts and have known many of them over the years personally. (Looking at you, Mitchell Trubisky!)

But if you want to see teamwork and individual achievement in the same event, if you want to see sacrifices of time and energy and effort of both the physical and spiritual variety,

A tension definitely exists between the sports and arts communities in a world where an “adequately funded” education is merely a goal.

if you want to see good sportsmanship and leadership on a public stage, well, maybe try a stage.

The gridiron or hardwood or diamond is not the only place those things can be found.

Your area young thespians are winners. And as each team deserves a fan base, your local thespians deserve a booster club, too. Rah rah rah, go team!