Arts

If you wanted even more compelling proof of the power of live performance, however, you would have found it a few weeks later, at a different elementary school. The cast of The Legend of Sleepy Hollow was gamely performing on a stage in a cavernous, acoustically deadening cinderblock-walled “gymnatorium” against a chaotic backdrop of noise and movement. If the performance was supposed to have been a special occasion for the students, that wasn’t obvious from the official reception it received. School pictures were being shot at the opposite end of the room, and the process continued uninterrupted throughout the performance, as though the show had been scheduled merely to keep the kids occupied while they waited for their turns in front of the camera. Whole classes were rousted one by one from their seats on the floor to line up for pictures. At the back of the room, the photographer could be heard directing his assistant and the students with spoken commands. His background screen was regularly snapped up and down like a roll-up window blind. All the while, a number of adults—teachers or administrators—came and went, carrying on discussions with each other at barely muted conversational volume. The school intercom went off with a piercing electronic whoop, followed by an unintelligible announcement. Someone let one of the heavy steel fire doors opening to the outside slam shut.

Flanagan, the director, says that actors regularly have to contend with all sorts of unexpected distractions and interruptions, including “business as usual” occurrences like fire drills and intercom announcements, and once a principal suddenly insisted mid-performance that the show end in ten minutes, “or we’re leaving.”

But in the gymnatorium, the actors never missed a beat. If anything, they seemed to respond by making make every gesture just that little bit more broad, every line a little brighter, to hold their audience. And the students remained rapt. The only wiggling broke out when another character sang that he could pat his head and rub his belly at once, and a flurry of head-patting and belly-rubbing swept briefly through the audience. The kids stayed focused on the stage even as they were being dragged off for their pictures, and after the actors had taken their final bows, hands shot in the air for questions.

Backstage a few minutes later, the actors didn’t seem preoccupied with the show they’d just finished. They already were busy with their post-production routine—shedding costumes, talking logistics, striking the set and preparing to move on. In a few hours or another day they’d be back in costume again, singing the same songs in some other poorly lit gym or cramped multi-purpose space or maybe a real theater where their voices would carry beautifully to the very last row.