COLUMN: Embracing the arts is a worthy endeavor

If we’re lucky in life, we have been raised by parents who taught us to appreciate the arts.

“The arts” is one of those all-encompassing terms, but essentially it boils down to the expression of human creative skill, whether through music, painting, writing, dance, theater or any number of ways we manifest our creative impulses.

Lately I’ve been thinking about how truly fortunate we are to live in an area where the arts are all around us. We can dip our toes into the experience, or fully immerse ourselves.

In recent weeks I’ve watched a couple of the Alpine Theatre Project’s musicals and have come away completely mesmerized by the Broadway talent that made me laugh and made me cry. I’m a fan of all of our local community theater groups, but I have to say the Alpine Theatre Project has worked its way into my heart in a big way.

ATP wrapped up its summer repertory season Saturday and now we have to wait until October until the next production. Thankfully there are plenty of other opportunities to enjoy the arts in the Flathead this summer. Festival Amadeus starts today for a week of classical music offerings.

Appreciation of the arts is amassed over a lifetime, really. For many of us, myself included, our first exposure to learning an art form came when our parents signed us up for piano lessons and then cajoled us daily to practice, practice, practice.

Piano lessons invariably lead to joining the school band. I was encouraged as a child not only to develop my music skills but also my public speaking ability. I joined the speech team in junior high school, taking up serious oral interpretation.

By the time the junior class play rolled around, I auditioned and got one of the lead roles in a very serious drama, “The Death and Life of Larry Benson,” by Reginald Rose. I played the mother of Larry Benson, a soldier who has been missing in action for three years. Larry’s home town is excited by word of his homecoming, but there’s a twist. The soldier who comes home insists he’s Larry, but he’s a stranger, a comrade of Larry’s who has somehow assumed his identity.

I don’t know how my acting skills really stacked up because, of course, my parents thought I was great. I do remember getting a letter, though, from a boy who was two years older than me and was at the time a college freshman. He wrote how moved he’d been to see the play and said he’d been particularly impressed with my performance. “It was you who made the difference,” he said.

I’ve never forgotten that kind note from Kenny. He wasn’t a close friend. In fact, I didn’t know he knew I even existed. The take-away lesson was that I had made a connection with the audience. That’s a very powerful feeling.

My acting “career” was short-lived. I played pushy, outspoken Mrs. Snodgrass in our senior class play, and that was it. During my college days at Moorhead State University, a lot of my friends were theater students. I always seemed to gravitate toward that crowd. I rarely missed a performance of the university’s Straw Hat Players summer theater season.

My dabbling in the arts has continued through the years, mostly through music. Most of us aren’t destined to wind up on Broadway, but we can fill the seats and support our local theater and myriad musical performances.

Beyond the opportunity to be entertained, immersing ourselves in the arts — whatever that form of expression may be — stands to inspire us and transcend us to a better place.

Features editor Lynnette Hintze may be reached at 758-4421 or by email at lhintze@dailyinterlake.com.