A lover of art, I tend to be the most moved by performance art, especially live music, or theatre.  I can think of a handful of situations where I’ve been so moved by a performance it has been transforming: emotional, all-encompassing and sticks with you long after it ends.  To me, being moved to feel – deeply & authentically, is beauty.

I was around 6 months pregnant with our fourth child and it had been a challenging year.  I had just celebrated my 37^th birthday and my husband, Tim, had given me theatre tickets as a gift.  Living in a city like Toronto had several perks and the constant access to live theatre at all levels and venues was high on the list. 

While Tim and I had performed in high school and community theatre across much of our young adult and early professional years, I had never participated in a production of Our Town.  In fact, I had never even attended a performance.  I knew it as one of those classics that many high schools included in their rotation, but beyond that I went into the performance a bit blind.

The show was staged in a black box setting with very minimal props.  The venue, Buddies in Bad Times, represents themselves as “a leading destination for artistically rigorous alternative theatre.”  And they had various ways of engaging with the audience and breaking down that 4^th wall, offering options for the attendees to ask the characters questions before the show and during the intermission.  All of the warm-ups and vocal drills from the performers, and even costume changes, were executed in complete view of the audience.

For those who are unaware, the story of Our Town is a fictional account of a small town in America in the early 1900s.  It’s not heavy on plot twists or mystery, more a reflection of everyday lives and relationships; struggles and joy.  Now it may have been the pregnancy hormones or my proclivity toward the celebration of simple, everyday moments, but I fell in, hard – both by the performances of the individual actors, but also by the staging choices.  It helped me to feel more connected, almost as though I were a participant versus just a spectator.

Near the end of the play, you learn that one of the main characters has passed away during childbirth.  This woman, Emily, is learning from the other souls who reside in the town cemetery.  They coach her on this new phase and help her to reflect on earthly life from a different perspective.  She’s like a child again, learning about her new role as a soul and trying to accept this change.

Somehow she’s able to travel back to a moment to sort of relive or witness a sliver of life.  The souls caution her about selecting a major moment, as those can be too painful and overwhelming.  They encourage her to visit a simple moment, which she does.

I feel this immense and overwhelming realization that this is it.  The meaning of life, our purpose on this earth… just a tapestry of simple, everyday moments: most of which go unnoticed and unappreciated.  I am sobbing as I sit quietly in the dark theatre, listening to Emily deliver her final monologue, suspended in that magic of realization and feeling.  Feeling gratitude for this gift, this encouragement to notice, acknowledge and embrace – not just the milestones, but the simple, beautiful slices that can take your breath away, if you let them.

I left that performance changed, in all the little and big ways that are possible when you open yourself up to art.