Joy: I got two tickets for Sunday. Sending you the picture.
| RIVER ROAD THEATER |
|---|
| The Long Road Home |
| Sunday · 4:00 p.m. · Screen 1 |
| Row F, seats 7 and 8 |
| Student 150 · No food inside |
| Free water at the service desk |
Ken: Four o'clock is fine. How long is the film?
Joy: Two hours and ten minutes, so we will be out before seven.
Ken: Then let us eat first; I do not want a stomachache in there. The ticket says no food inside anyway.
This year's play: a story set in a small town in 1950
There are eleven speaking parts and about twenty other jobs: lights, sound, clothes, a roller blade scene, and the picture on the stage wall. Please tell us if you would rather work behind the stage; those places fill up faster than the acting ones.
We practice twice a week until March. If you cannot come to every practice, say so now. It is not a problem, but we must know before we choose.
Dear Mr. Kao,
I listen to your Sunday show while I work in my father's shop. I am writing about last week's show on old films.
You said that nobody under twenty watches black and white films now. I am seventeen. My class watched one in March, and four of us have watched five more since then. We did not find them slow; we found them quiet, which is not the same thing.
I am not writing to argue. I am writing because a young person listening to that line might believe it is true of him, and stop before he starts. Could you say on air that some of us are out here?
Chen Li, 17
Every country in the world has some form of drama, and no country had to be taught it. Children begin to act out other people before they can read.
One reason may be that watching a person act out a life is a safe way to feel something real. In two hours we can lose a home, forgive a brother, and stand in a court, and then walk out into the same evening we left.
A film also lets us look at a face longer than we ever may in life. We watch somebody be afraid for a full minute without turning away. Perhaps that is the true work of drama: it gives us practice at paying attention to another person, which is the one skill no machine has learned to do for us.