Loose Leaf Notes

We are abandoned here on this earth, left to fall irreparably in love with gravity’s garden, trying our lives to persuade a different ending or some other sense of time while our souls swagger towards eternity.~ Mary North

The setting was so intimate – theater in the round in Blacksburg’s new Center for the Arts – that I didn’t feel I could make a move big enough to put on my sweater when my bare arms became chilled.  I could easily see the expressions of the people in the audience and my camera was like contraband that I balanced on my lap and snapped quietly without framing the shots.  You could hear a pin drop.

Six of us traveled from Floyd to see the six of them – poet, novelist, blogger, songwriter, artist and journal keeper – perform their original material in a play titled Loose Threads.  It was directed by Bob Leonard, professor of Theater Arts at Virginia Tech, and described by The Roanoke Times as “a dramatic presentation of poetry, prose and drama about the gains and losses inherent in growing older.”  

Apart from the setting, it was intimate because it was real, with autobiographical sharings of loss and triumph, a cancer diagnosis, caring for a mother with alzheimers, losing a husband, losing a child, and losing parents. I worry I won’t know remember the games mama knew. I worry I’m not sure where the septic tank is. The enormous reference they both were is gone.  ~ Susan Morikawa

 

There was also song and dance, journal readings on building a house of one’s own and tales of a bad marriage.  For this moment in time I write this with a heating pad strapped to my back and my twins are painting my toenails each a different color.  ~ Pat West

After the show we were invited to Gillies restaurant for refreshments and to meet-and-greet the actors, some of whom we knew and others who were new. Still others, were familiar faces we had seen over the years in our Blacksburg/Floyd interactions.

There’s 30 years of friendship between the actors.  

Most of us have been friends for about that long too.

Post notes: Keep a look-out for details of a Loose Threads Floyd performance, possibly this fall.  Check out the Loose Threads webpage with actors’ bios, clips of performances and more HERE.