local theater | BREATHE: Michelle Garren-Flye

I was born at the beginning of the 1970s in the mountains of North Carolina. Maybe it was the altitude of my little town (3,000+ above sea level), but the end of Jim Crow Laws didn’t seem to mean much there when I was young.

And really, I was too young to be aware of much, but I remember hearing my parents whispering about burning crosses and nooses. For some reason, the streetlight on the corner near my house marked an area of our neighborhood I wasn’t allowed in. An area of people whose skin was darker than mine but who lived the same way I did.

Mostly we used the “polite” word. Colored. But as my brothers and I got older, we rode bikes and climbed trees and played stickball games until well after dark with any color child that showed up, regardless of which side of the neighborhood they were on. The streetlight on the corner shone equally on us all.

I never really understood any of what was happening around me or what I heard until much later. I didn’t know what racism was or that some of the people I knew were racists. Even some of the people I loved.

And it wasn’t until recently that I realized I would be banishing vestiges of that same racism that I was born and bred with for the rest of my life.

It’s a journey.

The thing I have learned from playing Miss Maudie in To Kill a Mockingbird in our local theatre production is that this journey is one I can’t just take in my own shoes. As a white Southern woman, I have to look past my own sphere into others’ worlds. I have to not only see other people for what they are but to feel it as best I can.

This nearly 100-year-old play remains important to this day because our nation continues to a journey toward enlightenment and living together. Sometimes we go forward in this journey. Sometimes we take a step back. But I believe eventually we will reach that light, and maybe we will find a really fun stickball game going on under it. A game everyone plays together./

If you’ve ever read Victor Hugo’s The Hunchback of Notre Dame, you know it’s full of bitter truths. That love has no reason. That mankind is cruel. That wealth and status are merciless and religion can be flat out wrong. Of course, most of us haven’t actually read the masterpiece. At best, we’ve seen a movie adaptation. At worst, however, we’ve heard the music of Disney’s adaptation at some point.

When Notre Dame burned last year, I cried. I hadn’t seen it yet and it was on my bucket list. It still is, even though I’ll never see the cathedral that was termed “The Forest” for the network of wooden beams that made up the roof. But some of the grand church was preserved. The fabulous rose windows and stone walls still stand. I can see those…someday.

And then I heard one of our local theatres was doing the musical adapted from Disney’s Hunchback of Notre Dame, which was adapted from Victor Hugo’s epic novel. Of course, I had to audition. And somehow, in spite of my audition, I made it into the choir, so I get to sing many of these songs while sitting or standing on stage the entire time. And as an added bonus, I have a couple of lines as a gargoyle.

It’s been fun. Nerve-wracking at times, but fun. I’ve listened to the music so much I may never want to hear it again, even “God Bless the Outcasts” which I’ve been known to blast in my car for no real reason at all. I’ve enjoyed getting to know the people—theatre people are great. Differences don’t matter when you’re on stage. I’ve noticed that particularly with this cast. Race, religion, sexual orientation and the big one—Politics—none of that crap matters when you’re telling the story you’ve been charged to tell.

As for the production, well it’s fun. It’s exhausting. It’s taken a lot of time away from my family, and I’m really kind of looking forward to being done with it. But being in this production has also reminded me of what’s perhaps the most cruel of Hugo’s lessons to his readers: That dreams don’t always come true but life really isn’t worth living without them.