Tennessee Williams: The Congregation of Spirits

There is always the eventuality of worthiness when people who love the theatre gather together to value what is strongest about its nature, which is its welcoming embrace of the altogether unique people who are singularly responsible for creating it. 

I was once produced in Broadway theatres, and now I find myself working in church basements, but the essential love of theatre is present even in the most modest of circumstances, and is probably purest when compromised or minimized.

We work and we fail.

We work and we love.

We work and we dream.

The essential thing is that we work.

If we are true to ourselves and to our partners in this remarkable art of theatre, we are rewarded, and it is not the prize you remember, or the parties, or the willing flesh, but the congregation of spirits who work toward your shared goal, and occasionally look over at you and let you know you were noticed and that you mattered.

Tennessee Williams to James Grissom

New Orleans

1982

© 2014  James Grissom