IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE LIVE
This play is being performed for the next two day at the Virginia Samford Theatre!
Blog 26
Written for December 16 in my book Theatre Is My Life!
“Strange, isn't it? Each man's life touches so many other lives. When he isn't around he leaves an awful hole, doesn't he?”
Clarence in It’s a Wonderful Life Live, (originally produced by Chicago’s American Blues Theater), based on the film produced and directed by Frank Capra, based on the short story “The Greatest Gift,” by Philip Van Doren Stern
A few years ago, my former student Marty Higginbotham, who had moved back to Birmingham, produced and directed It’s a Wonderful Life Live, a play he helped develop, produce, and direct in Chicago based on what happens to be my favorite movie. In Marty’s delightful version, just eight actors bring Bedford Falls to life, accompanied by live Foley sound effects, an original score, and a setting suggesting a 1940s radio broadcast.
Surely everyone knows the story: George Bailey is a frustrated husband and father who long ago relinquished his own dreams of traveling the world so that he could help others. When he is considering suicide on Christmas Eve, prayers intercede for him and prompt the appearance of a guardian angel named Clarence Odbody. Throughout the night, the somewhat bumbling but lovable divine messenger presents George with the realization of how many people he has positively influenced and how altered Bedford Falls would have been without his presence.
What Clarence did was to open the heart of George Bailey to see how different life would be if he had not been born. Open-heartedness is a physical feeling as well as an attitude. Because the body, emotions, soul, and mind are so interconnected, when we can learn to create the physical sensation of open-heartedness, our thoughts shift to reflect the body’s reality.
The other night, I tried this meditation at a Camp Winnataska volunteer meeting, and you can try it, too. Close your eyes and take a few breaths. Remember a time when your heart was truly open: seeing a beautiful sunset... hearing the crashing waves of the gulf… tasting a freshly picked peach... smelling a favorite home-cooked meal. Bring all your senses to the memory, recalling the sights... the sounds... the fragrances ... how your body felt and the emotional and physical sensation of your heart opening.
During our meeting, we sat with that sense of open-heartedness. I had handed out small paper hearts and asked them to write on the heart a camp person who helped their heart open up?
I wasn’t sure how the exercise would go over, but they enjoyed it and when I asked if someone wanted to share their revelation, Paul spoke up. He said that he had not thought of this incident for years, but the first time he was a hut leader, he tried to pull a funny joke, but it backfired. He was 15 years old, and knowing nothing else to do, he ran to hide in his hut.
A little later, the camp director knocked on his door and Paul appeared, apologizing profusely. On his way to have a private talk with the director and his wife, he worried they would send him home. But, after talking to him, they decided he would simply lose his canteen privileges for the week.
My friend was so very grateful that he was not sent home and that they dealt fairly with him. Just think, he said, “If I had gone home, I wouldn’t be sitting here tonight. I wouldn’t be chairman of this group. I wouldn’t have met and married my wife, because I would have never come back and spent another six summers at camp. I wouldn’t have my two boys. My life would be totally different.”
As Clarence would say, “Strange, isn't it? Each man's life touches so many other lives. When he isn't around he leaves an awful hole, doesn't he?”