I was angry that day for no good reason. Halfway through our educational performance, our director Dian, stopped the show to ask the front row of third graders to move up to make room for latecomers. The other dancers and I were standing in the wings, shaking our heads at this lack of foresight in seating. We heard the theatre’s sliding door rumble open, then closed. Dian explained to us backstage that we had an audience of mentally challenged adults coming into the house. After perfunctory apologies for the disruption, the lights dimmed to black. We resumed dancing, but we could hear someone moaning in the audience over the music. It made me want to jump higher, sink deeper into the role I was playing as a way of attempting to escape this unusual audience or at least erase the extraneous noise, but that was not an option. What an odd swirl of contrasts: young, ordinary third graders glowing with impetuous, intelligent energy seated beside a leaden file of mentally challenged adults varying in age from their mid thirties to late forties. The stage lights managed to dimly illuminate several distorted silhouettes of physically challenged adults. It was a mediocre performance that day, but it was ultimately a powerful lesson in humility.
As we were breaking down after the show, one woman kept asking us, one of us, any one of us, to zip up her coat, an old bedraggled coat which hung limply from her crooked shoulders. She was oldish, her speech was halting, repetitive, and the two folds of her coat lay feebly open. After repeated pleas, I finally knelt down to try to zip it up, but the zipper would not catch. She barely seemed to notice. I thought the zipper was broken; or maybe I simply did not know how to zip up someone else’s coat. I mumbled a helpless apology as she was shuttled down the corridor by the group leader.
From outward appearance, they are almost frightening, like a travelling group of ghastly apparitions with their stiff, shuffling steps, somewhat glazed expressions and distorted bodies. Still, I suspect that art has the ability to reach beyond their broken shells to touch a vulnerable spot somewhere beneath their mussed hair and old clothes. They made me want to speak to them, to heal the brokenness that lies etched clearly into their bodies, but perhaps not their minds? I do not actually know the degree or the ability of each person there, but perhaps it was a triumph in itself that they had arrived to sit in the darkened theatre space to see the changing of lights, costumes, colours, bodies and stories. They silenced me out of my anger, which melted into a dull sadness and yearning to let them taste the blessings of movement, music, performance, and life, which I have been given. Yet, perhaps they are happier than a privileged person could be; perhaps they understand and know the blessing of simplicity best. It felt appropriate and symbolic that I knelt at this woman’s feet, trying ineffectually to gather the two folds of her coat into one piece that would protect her from the unforgiving cold outside. She could not help herself; I could not help her either. The weakness of one equals the weakness of another despite superficial appearances, further revealing the common denominator of human frailty, and the gifts of grace and redemption that are so undeservedly bestowed. The rest of the group made their way down the creaky wooden corridor. I wonder how they made it down the stairs.