“A song is no song till you sing it.” Sixty years ago, Oscar Hammerstein wrote those lyrics for The Sound of Music, our next musical at SCA. Art is all around us in every corner of our lives. When we watch, listen, observe, read or experience art in any way, sometimes the question arises, “What does it mean?” Celebrating her 20th year conducting the Buffalo Philharmonic, Music Director JoAnn Falletta, in a recent Buffalo News article recalled Leonard Bernstein’s visit to the Julliard School when she was a graduate student there. He advised the students that the music they would be making is really all about “the drama, . . . the emotion” in the music. For me, as a theatre director and acting coach, it’s all about the story. Drama, emotion, story. Art forms have their angles. What does it mean? What is the story? In the article, Falletta, one of the most accomplished and renowned “artists” in the world, talks about the effect that music has on us. Isn’t she talking about art in general? “When you leave the hall,” or the gallery, the theater, the book or any experience of art, “you feel better about being a human being. You feel better about life in general. You feel an optimism, somehow. You don’t even have to talk about it, but you feel it, that something clicked and was right. It gives you the energy and the strength to go on. There’s something incredibly healing about that.” When you join Springville Center for the Arts, you contribute to and become part of everything we do here. Artists appreciate their audiences, but audiences are not just passive presences. As I tell our theater audiences in my director’s notes, we’ve been waiting for you. There is no theater without you. A song needs both a singer and an audience. And an Arts Center needs its members. Please consider joining us.
Don Wesley
Member: Springville Center for the Arts
Associate Member: SDC
(Stage Directors and Choreographers Society)
Director: The Sound of Music
May 14-24, 2020
