What Comes Next?

The soundtrack had been on in the car all morning and it was no hardship for me to re-watch Hamilton again this afternoon with the children.

They sat there transfixed. Asking the right questions, finding the humour, feeling the movements and curling up with me at the inevitable denouement.

I never thought I would find myself giving an improvised history lesson regarding the formative years of American independence to a 6 & 7 year old (thank you google).

This is what the arts do though isn’t it?

They open your eyes, educate, inform, challenge and amaze you like no other.

Lin Manuel Miranda has rightly won a million plaudits, awards and a very healthy bank balance, but I’m sure that he would be the first to admit that he couldn’t have done it alone.

There are actual, real-life people behind every single aspect of every single professional production. People like us, with families to support and bills to pay.

Those people work to provide us, the audience, with experiences. Experiences with the power to elevate us, move us and through sheer escapism for a few hours take us out of ourselves onto a higher plain to see an interpretation of life through a different prism.

There is no argument here that our health and economic infrastructure are cornerstones of our continued existence, but who wants to merely ‘exist’?

To survive, thrive and truly live a life, we need artistic experiences of all types to take us away from ourselves and feed our hungry souls.

For this, a ticket to the show is a small price to pay, but right now, you can’t get a ticket to any show, any where and the forgotten industry and all those who work within it, which gives so much to us as human beings, is now being left to drown in a torrent of apathy.

Don’t be a Burr and “Wait for It”. Act now.

Save the arts.