Over the weekend, I went to see “A Sage VOICES Theater Project: Precious and Endless” at the Thunder River Theatre. The biggest reason why I went is because my brother, Iggy, wanted to go. He will be put on the record saying, in a sarcastic manner, “Who comes to the third show?” after my query of where our friend’s parents were.
I came to the third show, brother. It’s reporting night! To get back to the main point, I loved the show. It was amazingly heartfelt and genuine, with an incredible amount of charm and a surprisingly great sense of humor. If you don’t know, “Precious and Endless” is a show that shares the stories of both elders and youth, showing the similarities and differences of the generations.
To take a short detour, I have to applaud guest pianist Clay Boland’s incredible playing. At many points throughout the night, I made a note of how well he was playing. His beautiful piano playing added so much to the show. But the main attraction was no doubt the stories of the actors.
Throughout the whole night, I was shocked at the honesty of the stories. Many times, I felt as though I was having an intimate conversation with a grandparent as I asked them about their past. It was real.
At times it was so solemn, and at other times so joyous. The whole show had a bit of a feeling of solemn optimism. Every story had a feeling of nostalgia and bittersweetness, a bit of sadness of the fleetingness of our lives, followed by a great amount of joy that it happened, and hope that there will be more great experiences in the future. The whole show expertly displayed a love for a life lived coupled with a desire to keep going.
And the comedy! There were points in the show where I was laughing out loud for entire scenes. For an example of the show’s incredible sense of humor, there’s a scene where one of the sages, William D. Jochems, is explaining the first time he built a sailboat. He’s explaining how he hired a naval engineer to help him build it, and he says, “We had several conversations where I told him what I wanted, and he told me what was possible.” It was hilarious, and the whole theater erupted in laughter.
The singing portions were also so good! It was an amazing experience, and I loved that I was able to see it. I was able to interview the director, Cassidy Willey, after the show. When asked how long this whole process took, she responded: “We’ve met over 12 weeks, however that’s pretty misleading, because we only met once a week for the majority of it. So we had very few rehearsals to create this original work from scratch.”
She went on to say that “all of it was from the stories … of the people here … we didn’t have a script when we started, we didn’t even have a theme or a name of the production. All of that was created as an ensemble.” No wonder I felt as though an intimate story was being told. This was all these people’s lives; these people’s stories. It was an unforgettable experience, and I’m honored to have been allowed to be a part of it. Even if it was the third show.