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Community Performance Inc.

December 19, 2007

Last year I started a new Christmas tradition at Swamp Gravy. At the end of the production, the cast, along with the audience makes an old fashioned ornament together. Last year, we made little elves made out of wooden clothespins and ribbon. The audience loved it, it was a fun interactive event. Each audience member was given a small Ace hardware bag (donated, thanks a bunch, Ace) and inside each bag was a clothespin, felt triangle for a hat, and some ribon for a tunic. Lots of fun. Yet, the prepartion of each bag was time consuming. This year, I created a simpler ornament. Not because it needed to be simpler. I was thinking- what do audiences come for? Memories and stoires, right? So for this year's ornament, I created a memory card.

Hang with me a minute while I explain. In the play, the character of Ellie is descended upon on Christmas Eve when her son surprises her by arriving home from overseas, and he also invites 17 fellow soldiers from the train to have Christmas dinner with them. She sees how they are very much like his brothers- which makes them family. And everyone in her family has an ornament on the tree. So she gets a bunch of cards and ribbons and pencils and has each young man fill out his card with a special Christmas memory- a special gift they received- or a special gift they gave- a special person, or memorable event. Then, she turns to the audience, who upon entering the theater, was each given a small bag containing two cards, pieces of ribbon and a Swamp Gravy pencil. She asks the audience to take out one card and piece of ribbon. Tie a loop through the card. And then, write down a special memory. OK, I know what you're thinking. Dumb idea. What audience member is going to do that, right? I heard several grumblings of such thoughts leading up to the show, right up to opening day. But remember- what do people come to Swamp Gravy for? Memories. Many startred to do just that. But...not everyone immediately filled out the card, so Ellie teased a few memories out of some willing members who wanted to share- a cordless microphone was passed around to hear some of them, while others began to write their memories down. And pretty soon, everyone is filling out their cards. Then, Ellie tells them to find a place out in the lobby to hang their memroy, because they are now family, too, and we want their ornament hung in our Santa's Workshop which we'd made out of the Lobby. And at the end of the show, people were hanging their cards everywhere. When the tree was filled, they hung them on the other greenery and railings. We performed about 15 shows, and the memory cards in the Lobby continued to accumulate, until thousands of Christmas memories were hanging in our lobby. The staff decided to hang more greenery up, because all the available greenery was filled with the cards. Then the box office was covered, the entry ramp. Everywhere you looked were the memory cards, about 4,000 of them by the last show. And as new audiences came in and awaited the opening of the theater doors, they could wait in the lobby, and read all of these thousands of Christmas memories. Some were hilarious, others so moving. A man wrote about being a POW over Christmas and surviving to tell about it. It worked. I didn't get to see what the lobby looked like at the end, because I was already working on the show in the Ozarks. But I received some photos. What a wonderland.

Oh, and as for the second card in the bag- they were to take it home, and hang their own memory on their own tree- and encouraged to ask their friends and family to fill one out, too. It was so successful. I'm actually doing it here at my house. Well, I've done it in the past, too, but I'm doing it again. It worked. I thought you'd get a kick out of seeing the picture of the railway leading up to the box office.

   

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