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Letter: We all want to achieve the same goal

We all want to achieve the same goal

As I listened to both the Red Brick and Science Center presentations, it occurred to me how similar our ultimate goals are: To help create thoughtful, imaginative, curious citizens with enough skills to foster confidence in their decision-making and approach to life.

One striking advantage, in my opinion, is how the programs we offer provide periods of time when children (and, let’s face it, adults) are not face down over a device of some kind. One simply can’t peer passively into a screen or cellphone when standing up bravely and trying to execute the spoken, sung and otherwise expressed literature of the arts. The kids and adults who are on the stages, in the classrooms, at the piano, or wielding a hammer to build a set are learning how to find their voice and develop their own creativity, intuition and intellect. Even audiences have to disconnect with the world as they share a one-time experience in the company of that performance’s community. That is our purpose: to provoke visceral responses in our audiences, based on the live experience they’ve just shared. Other than church or sports, the arts are really the only place where a community of people gathers to demand: “Show me. Tell me. Move me.”



My comments are relevant to only the two presentations I attended. But it’s clear that we are both aiming for ways to send people back into the world with more awareness, more compassion for our planet and the people — all the people — in it. To be able to view the world and its dizzying choices and conflicting truths through the lens of a citizen empowered with the knowledge that they have a voice, a heart and an appreciation for the sometimes inexplicable beauty of music, words and expressions of emotion. I hope that our community can find room for all of these means of engagement so that its future residents have the creativity to solve problems and develop the ideas that will shape our future.

“You can’t use up creativity. The more you use, the more you have.” — Maya Angelou




Paige Price

Executive artistic director, Theatre Aspen