to build and celebrate community!

 

Mamma Mia!

What a magnificent way to build and celebrate community!

This weekend the Upper School 

pulled off a rousing musical, Mamma Mia!

visually stunning with stage design and construction, costuming, lighting,

well-miked so the engaging story and moving songs were clear,

the many actors sure of selves 

and capably pulling audience into this world

with lines and song individually and collectively meshed

into entrapping conflict of person and goal,

the music true and deepening each moment,

the choreography careful, clear,

opening each actor to the audience,

enabling the groups to work seamlessly together into joy, 

and, when the show was over,

song, dance, and costume changes

won the audience over, again and again,

in the lobby I saw star after star

bubbling over with smiles and laughter, and happiness,

knowing that who each is had a chance to be within this musical,

to be and to be seen,

to be seen and to to be appreciated,

whether from being on stage or to have built the stage,

to have lit and miked the actors,

to have procured, and made, and fixed the costumes,

to express a community it takes a village,

when the village works together, as it did this weekend,

each individual can shine brightly,

and the lights, all together, make a whole,

a community comes to be,

and all of us in the audience can joy in being part of it,

for a brief time,

The PAC was built so that it can be as womb:

what the Upper School birthed this weekend was wonderful!

by Henry H. Walker

May 4, ‘24