NeverLift

I've lost count of how many times I've seen this film -- at least once with each new friend. It is a celebration of beauty, childhood, and transition -- and, oh, yes, dance. I wish at my adult age I could dance with the grace and involvement of these children. The film maker follows them outside the studio, to show us their hopes and dreams. It is astoundingly rendered, particularly for this physically inept klutz reviewer that finally found his dance as he approached 50, and now agonizes: Where were these teachers when I needed them?

If you have felt the music but never felt comfortable showing that feeling in public, believing you were too clumsy to exhibit your appreciation: See this movie. Glory in it. Then take a few lessons. It's there, go for it.

I was lucky enough to see this in its first broadcast, and have never forgotten it, especially Act III. I agree in retrospect with the criticism of Hal Holbrook being too "folksy", only because I am currently involved in a stage production in which the Stage Manager's narration is more detached -- not cold, but not as personally involved.

There are many plays that will move me to tears, or to anger, but the emotional response is usually FOR the characters portrayed. That is, it is a detached response, with little or no sense of personal participation in the milieu that is creating the response. In "Our Town", the paucity of set decoration and the inclusion of us, the audience, in the action through our being addressed directly by the Stage Manager, makes this a personal experience.

In the presentation of which I'm a part just now, I'm merely an extra -- one of the dead in Act III without lines, Farmer McCarthy. I found there is just one difficult aspect of that role: Enforcing on myself the rule that dead people don't cry. Takes discipline.