Closing weekend @ThePalace: 7 reasons to go see ‘The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas’

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Cast of "The Best Whorehouse in Texas," is ready for closing weekend.
Cast of “The Best Whorehouse in Texas,” is ready for closing weekend.

MANCHESTER, NH — If you haven’t yet been to see the current offering at the Palace Theatre, we’ve borrowed some ammo from Manny Strauss, formerly of Theatre Washington, who compiled a list of seven reasons to go see live theatre. Although he meant it for the patrons in Washington, D.C., it’s universal truth, and applicable any theatre in any city or country around the world.

We’ve truncated it below, but you can read it in its entirety here.

We believe it helps underscore why supporting the arts is important —no — vital, to our city’s continued progress. Escapism is important for our mental and spiritual well-being, and “The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas,” in particular takes you to a place where you can truly “forget your troubles and just get happy” — and maybe even blush a little, before it’s all said and done.

The Palace has for more than a century staged some of the most dazzling, beloved and entertaining shows you’ll see, this side of Broadway. We are fortunate to have a professional theater right here in the Queen City.

Equal time for the sexy guys in this production of "The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas."
Equal time for the sexy guys in this production of “The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas.”

⇒ Click this link to get your tickets now for closing weekend of The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas.


7 Reasons Why Theatre Makes Our Lives Better
  1. Theatre does no harm. Theatre is one of those human activities that doesn’t really hurt anyone or anything. For this reason alone, the more time and energy we as a society devote to theatre and the arts, the better off we will be.
  2. Theatre is a sophisticated expression of a basic human need — one might call it an instinct — to mimic, to project stories onto ourselves and others, and to create meaning through narrative and metaphor. We see this expressed in children when they act out real or imagined characters and events. We have evidence of theatre-like rituals in some of the oldest human societies, long before the foundations of Western theatre in Ancient Greece. So theatre matters, in essence, because we can’t help it. It’s part of what makes us human.
  3. Theatre brings people together. For a performance to happen, anywhere from a hundred to a thousand or more people need to gather in one place for a couple of hours, and share together in witnessing and contemplating an event that may be beautiful, funny, moving, thought-provoking, or hopefully at least diverting. And in an age when most of our communication happens in front of a screen, the gathering function of theatre is, in and of itself, something that matters.
  4. Theatre models for us a kind of public discourse that lies at the heart of democratic life, and builds our skills for listening to different sides of a conversation or argument, and empathizing with the struggles of our fellow human beings whatever their views may be. When we watch a play, we learn what happens when conflicts don’t get resolved, and what happens when they do. We develop our faculty for imagining the outcomes of various choices we might make in our personal lives and our political lives. In South Africa theatre played a role in the struggle against apartheid; in Czechoslovakia, a playwright became the leader of a new democracy. If our own representatives and senators in Washington went to the theatre more often, it’s likely we’d all be better off.
  5. Both the making of theatre and attending of theatre contribute to education and literacy. Watching the characters talk back and forth in the theatre is tricky; it requires sharp attention, quick mental shifts, and nimble language skills. It teaches us about human motivation and psychology. In historical plays we get lessons in leadership and government. In contemporary plays, we learn about people and cultures in different parts or our own country or in other countries. Studies have shown that students who participate in theatre do better in school. Making plays together also draws kids out of their shells and helps them learn to socialize in a productive and healthy way.
  6. Theatre as an industry contributes to our economy and plays a special role in the revitalization of neglected neighborhoods.  Wherever you plant a theatre, often new audiences started flooding in, new restaurants open, jobs are created, the city improves sidewalks, and neighborhoods that were once grim and forbidding became vibrant hubs of activity.
  7. Finally, theatre influences the way we think and feel about our own lives and encourages us to take a hard look at ourselves, our values, and our behavior. Generally speaking, isn’t this one of the things we go to the theatre for, to measure our own lives against the lives we see depicted on the stage, to imagine what it would be like if we had those lives instead? And isn’t it a very short step from there to saying, gee, maybe there’s something I should change about my own life? And it may have nothing to do with the message that the playwright wanted to deliver! Maybe the play is about a fierce battle over a family dinner that breaks the family apart over irreconcilable political divisions — but maybe you watch the play and say, gosh, wouldn’t it be nice to at least have a family dinner once in a while, and so you decide to plan one for next month.

 

About this Author

Carol Robidoux

PublisherManchester Ink Link

Longtime NH journalist and publisher of ManchesterInkLink.com. Loves R&B, German beer, and the Queen City!