Miles of AisIes
Gather all you poets, purists and music enthusiasts, and you’ll soon realize I’ve borrowed this title from Joni Mitchel’s first quasi-live album. Forgive me. By the way, in case you don’t know the album check it out; it tells wonderful stories of Yellow Taxis, Woodstock, The Circle Game, Cold Blue Steel & Sweet Fire, and others. Oh yes, and read on because I also stole one of my favorite quotes of hers from that album.
For this blog entry I wanted a succinct title that paints a picture of the timelessness of performing arts. I suppose I could have used “What a long strange trip it’s been” by The Grateful Dead, but that might imply that the proverbial trip is nearing an end. It is not. I could have chosen Bob Segar’s “Turn the Page,” but I think I may have used that one already. And then, of course, when you cannot think of anything of substance to say, you try to simply bluff the reader by using Bachman Turner Overdrives, “You ain’t seen nothing yet!” But I digress.
We often talk about how many years QCT has been in Quincy, 93, and how many years of performance productions, 79. What we also talk about is how many years Paul has been Technical Director, 24! Or how many years Brandon has been a teacher, director and now Artistic Director, 10! We have been at our current location for 21 years, the carpet in the offices is now 1 month old. Counting VANYA AND SONIA AND MASHA AND SPIKE we have put on 410 productions and that does not count the miles of isles created by our student theatre productions.
Quincy Community Theatre still creates Miles of Aisles during these times when there is a preponderance of electronic entertainment devices where information is being converted by image sensors into digital signals that are processed by computers and outputted as visible-light images. (Whew, try to diagram THAT sentence!) AND the wonderful part of telling stories through the performing arts is that it is a new story each time it is told.
“That’s one thing that’s always, like, been a difference between, like, the performing arts, and being a painter, you know. A painter does a painting, and he paints it, and that’s it, you know. He has the joy of creating it, it hangs on a wall, and somebody buys it, and maybe somebody buys it again, or maybe nobody buys it and it sits up in a loft somewhere until he dies. But he never, you know, nobody ever, nobody ever said to Van Gogh, ‘Paint a Starry Night again, man!’ You know? He painted it and that was it.”
― Joni Mitchell
We will continue to tell stories that we can relate to, sing to, laugh with and cry with. That is because people want to listen to other people tell their stories onstage, thus creating more miles of aisles. Next up at Quincy Community Theatre is the student theatre production THE HALLOWEEN TRILOGY, a radio play telling stories of Edgar Allan Poe, Rudyard Kipling, and Oscar Wilde performed in the round. (With tiny, tiny little aisles, but still aisles!) The musical SISTER ACT is starting rehearsals and promises to be a wonderful musical comedy. This music may make you want to stand in the aisles and join the celebration.
With all the choices you have in Quincy, Illinois this summer, we encourage you to experience the arts: shows at QCT, Muddy River Opera, the Midsummer Arts Faire, Blues in the District, the Symphony, The Park Band, other concerts, the great museums and art exhibits, and on a nice quiet evening on the porch with a nice cool beverage, you might want to experience Joni Mitchell’s “Miles of Aisles.”
I especially invite you to travel down the aisles of Quincy Community Theatre and experience live theatre at its finest! Have a wonderful Summer, and always remember!…..Let’s be careful out there!
Dan