Are you crying? Consider it a privilege.
Yesterday, as part of our Broadway series package, my sister and I attended the Cleveland production of Miss Saigon (one of my all time favorite musicals - it is a tragic love story on several levels, so this is probably not a shocker). As you may or may not know, the inspiration for the play was a photograph from 1975 of a Vietnamese woman making the ultimate sacrifice: giving up custody of her daughter to her GI father so that the young girl could live a different life in the West.
Alain Boublil, one of the show's producers had this to say about the photo, "The pain of being torn apart and the fracture of the maternal bond must always be a presence in the depths of this woman's heart. What we felt for this girl and her mother has always moved us deeply, both as fathers and as the children we once were. This Vietnamese woman, her face frozen in pain, knew that finding the child's father marked the end of of her life with her daughter, and that this moment at the departure gate was the end. This silent scream is the most potent condemnation of the horror of that war - of all wars. This photo could have been taken today in Syria, Sudan and probably in the Ukraine. We hope that such a picture will never be taken here." And yet....
As I sat there balling through most of the production, I couldn't help but think both of the political position we find ourselves in today, as well as Playhouse President Gina Vernaci's Program Note. The note opens as follows:
"Do you remember the first time you were moved to tears in a theater? A 2011 article, titled "Culture and Crying," speculates that those of us lucky enough to be living in a prosperous and democratic country tend to turn on the waterworks more often than others in less moneyed, free-thinking nations."
When trying to find the original article, I came across another titled "Tears are a Luxury" which offers its own commentary on the cited study. A passage from it reads: " And that’s where researchers concluded something extraordinary about the socioeconomics of crying. 'Rather than being the habit of the wretched of the Earth, weeping appeared to be an indicator of privilege – a membership perk enjoyed in some of the world’s most comfortable and liveable societies,' Sweet writes. So war, destitution, poverty, other equally horrible things in less privileged societies don’t bring on tears, yet having a bad day at work in the Western world somehow does? As the researchers theorized, when you’re a citizen of a war-torn country dealing with some pretty grim life-or-death situations, you realize crying isn’t really going to get you anywhere; also, there’s too much to do."
And so sitting there in my orchestra seat, center stage, sipping my sparkling water lemonade I was both preaching my case against those who villianize illegal immigrants, and struck by the immense privilege I have in being able to debate the issue at all - let alone dialogue about it in a temperature controlled theater while checking all my social media apps/texts/emails under the light of massive chandeliers during a well timed intermission for those who may have consumed one too many glasses of $7 wine and needed desperately (even using the word desperate in such a context feels dirty now) to use the restroom, or indulge in an over-priced hot pretzel. I mean....TALK...ABOUT...LUXURY.
I love theater for its ability to stir emotion, and I applaud Vernaci for pointing out how the expression of that emotion is also a privilege, one that those who are actually living the types of lives I'm crying about probably don't have the time, energy, or resources to reflect upon, let alone mourn. They are, after all, too busy surviving.
