It's a union!

Last night Seth went to work with me and later in the month I'll go to work with him! How neat is that to have jobs where your partner can appropriately also spend time as your partner at work? Such a new and comfortable and "right" feeling. I love having a spouse. I love being married to my perfect complement.

I organized a special Saturday outing to go see the play The Miracle Worker at our local Bedford playgroup. Three clients, Seth, and me. We all met at Target and drove to Bedford in the Buick which we (being mostly Seth) cleaned out yesterday. Lucky Buick! A 6th grader played Helen Keller and boy was she impressive. Eh, she's homeschooled - whaddya expect! The physical scenes between Anne and Helen were also super - I got tired just by watching 2 minutes of the back and forth wrestling and frustration and repetition of defiance and one of my clients who uhh, sometimes is a bit physical and energetic herself, was engrossed, leaning forward, unblinking, occassionally letting out a shocked "No!" as she lost herself in the drama.

On the way home Seth and I had a small discussion about whether or not in the future, white people would be able to play Black roles and black people would be able to play White roles in average local plays. I say it will definitely happen, small makeup changes. But in the long term future, even more definitely, unquestionably, since we're gradually blending colors and hair and body types of people groups from all different latitudes so it will be difficult to find someone who looks just like someone looked say in 1880. I mean, we don't worry that we're casting tall people now even though the average male was say only 5' 4'' (made up guess) back in 1880 because we can't FIND enough short people now. Even if the black people who played the servants last night on stage didn't look quite like ex-slaves would have looked in 1880 being only one or two generations removed from Africa, that didn't bother us did it? We found it completely acceptable to have the black people playing the black roles even though they don't look like those servants would have looked. We're perfectly content because we still think of black is black is black and white is white is white. I think this is a subtle example of our deeply held yet unacknowledged racist foundations. That it matters SO much that a person called "Black" today play the slave role and not the "White" role and vice versa. This is local theatre. See, I don't think it's only "accuracy" that we're focused on. I think there are some "givens" that we're using that are in fact, NOT givens. I'm not arguing for professional theatre right now. My point is that one day, we will all look so much alike that we will be able to accept anyone playing the part, adequately made up (correctish speech, headwrap, barefeet, stance, makeup to enhance, etc. ) (Actually, I guess that's not my point, my point is that I wish that day were already here.) For now though, we apparently can't get past it and it would be "unrealistic." Even though it is already unrealistic and we are not bothered by other things in the play that are unrealistic. Never mind that Anne looked to be in her mid-30's playing a 19 or 20 year old. We make exceptions all the time. In Anne's case because we "had" to. Yah... Good reasoning. No. We didn't "have" too. We decided that we wanted that actor to play Anne even though she was a bit old. It was worth it to us. It's simply not worth it, it is not a big deal to us, to have other-than-black play the servant roles. There were black actors for the roles, so there. Simple. Why are you always making such a fuss Jessica?

But back to the union, the partnership. At the end of the month I will accompany Seth to chaperone a high school dance! Hee hee! Yay!

Be well all. And thank you God.