I already know what I want for my fifty-fifth birthday, coming up in March 2024: tickets for me and my husband to see Beetlejuice the Musical at Atlanta, GA’s Fabulous Fox Theatre. I’m already familiar with the story. I’ve listened to the Original Broadway Cast recording, and the songs are tuneful and fun and at times even poignant. So I know it’s going to be a wonderful time, a perfect celebration for a woman who has loved live theater in general, and musicals in particular, nearly all her life.

This past weekend, Beetlejuice the Musical made the news, and not in a good way. Colorado Congresswoman Lauren Boebert and a male companion decided to take in a Broadway touring company performance of the show in Denver. They took advantage of the darkened theater to indulge in heavy petting, raucous singing, and vaping, eventually becoming so disruptive that the ushers asked them to leave. They resisted, and in the end, theater security had to escort them from the building — but not before Boebert, in a tantrum any sane person over the age of sixteen would be embarrassed by, gave the easily recognizable Narcissist’s Call: “Don’t you know who I am?”

When the news broke, social media went wild. Plenty of folks expressed outrage and called upon Boebert to resign from Congress, noting that some politicians have been hounded from office for less disgraceful behavior. But Boebert had her defenders, their most common point being some variation of “who among us hasn’t made out in the back of a darkened theater?” As might be expected, these reactions split along political lines, with those who share her views defending her behavior and those who disagree with her politically demanding her resignation. Yet my frustration with her, indeed with the whole incident, has nothing to do with politics. This is not a political blog and I have no plans to turn it into one. I don’t speak on this kerfuffle as a Democrat, Republican, Independent, Libertarian, Constitutionalist, or what-have-you. I speak as someone who loves and values the theater.

The theater is in my blood. I can’t remember a time when it wasn’t a part of my life. My father taught history at a small community college in a tiny south Georgia town, hardly an expected cultural mecca. Yet this little college in this little town had a secret weapon: an amazing theater department, which regularly put on productions that infused that lazy community with life and energy, giving them something to look forward to every season. My father, an excellent actor, played everything from Moliere’s titular Miser to the cold-blooded Judge Danforth in Arthur Miller’s The Crucible to the equally cold-blooded but more tuneful Edward Rutledge in the musical 1776 to the cantankerous Sheridan Whiteside in The Man Who Came to Dinner to the the noble Duke Theseus in Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. My mother also excelled on the stage, playing, among other things, the wise, funny Mrs. Paroo in The Music Man and the harried, ultimately tragic Edith Frank in The Diary of Anne Frank. My sister and I often found ourselves at rehearsals when babysitters could not be found (and when babysitters were found, they were often theater majors). When we were little, we spent our time running through the hallways and playing in the empty classrooms, but as we grew older, we began to pay attention to the shows being rehearsed. Peterson Hall, the home of the productions, became a kind of second school, teaching us about Shakespeare and Greek mythology, the Salem Witch Trials, the signing of the Declaration of Independence, the Holocaust, and the Ed Sullivan Show (this last when Mom and Dad played Mr. and Mrs. MacAfee in Bye Bye Birdie) — only twice as much fun as school has any right to be. Whenever the chance arose, we too auditioned and acted.

When I look back over my life, this stretch of time — from age six to about fourteen — has a glow about it, a glamor. So much of my happiness was bound up with the theater, rehearsing plays, performing in plays, and of course watching plays. Even my memory of the smell of freshly painted sets holds magic for me. As such, I have a bone-deep understanding of the value of the theater, and open, unashamed disrespect for the medium hits me where I love. As both an audience member and a performer, I want people like Ms. Boebert and her defenders to understand one crucial point:

A live play is not a movie.

Movies may be great works of art, and watching a good movie at a theater can be a wonderfully immersive experience Yet a movie differs from a play performance in a couple of key areas. First, when you watch a movie, what unfolds before you is removed from you in time and space. The actors aren’t going to look out from the screen and see you or speak to you, and the audience has no impact on the performances they give.

Second, a movie is a finished product. It will exist forever in its present state, as long as it is maintained. If you see a movie, fall in love with it, and go back to see it again the following week, you’ll be seeing exactly the same movie, even though a second viewing generally prompts a deeper look. Likewise, when you rewatch a movie you loved as a child and find it isn’t as good as you remembered, the movie hasn’t changed; you have. Again, as with the factor above, the movie isn’t influenced by the audience’s response. It is itself, whether we love it or loathe it. Hurl popcorn and/or empty soda cans at the screen, and the movie goes merrily on.

On both these points, live theater is quite different. The actors are performing, and the action is unfolding, in the same time and space as the audience, which creates (or at least should create) a more intimate and collaborative connection between the audience and the play and performers. Unlike a movie audience, a live theater audience can influence the performance, and no two performances of the same show are exactly the same. I learned this when I played my first role at the age of ten, one of the fairies in A Midsummer Night’s Dream. I picked up on which moment in Shakespeare’s comedy were expected to rouse a vocal reaction from the audience; I learned the phrase “Hold for laughs.” When the audiences responded to us, when we sensed they were with us, we fed off their positive vibes and ended the evenings on a natural high. But when we had a “dead crowd,” we were usually exhausted by the end, having given all our energy while getting nothing back. In both cases, we acted our hearts out, but we “crushed it” hardest when our audiences vibed with us. How does the song go? “What is it that we’re living for? Applause, applause!”

Another thing I learned, as one experience on stage followed another, was that even the “dead crowds,” though they might be less vocal, still valued what we gave them. They came to the theater to see a show. If people had no interest in paying attention to what was happening on stage, they didn’t come. That seems so obvious, but apparently, nowadays, it isn’t. Boebert’s behavior showed very clearly that she didn’t care about the show she was at the theater to see, and for me, the biggest mystery in this whole brouhaha is why she chose to go at all, when she and her companion could have saved money by going to a movie instead — preferably one of those “so bad it’s good” movies that no one makes any solid emotional investment in.

Boebert, I’ve heard, is going through a divorce at the moment and is in an emotionally fragile state. I won’t judge her for that; I can even sympathize. Nor will I judge her for things others on social media have mentioned, her lack of formal education (which shouldn’t be an excuse not to crack an occasional book) or her wardrobe choice on the night in question. But for displaying contempt for the art form I love, I will judge her, and harshly. I will judge anyone who does that, whatever their political stances may be.

A movie house may be a palace, but a theater is a temple. Treat it as such.

I’ve found one of “those lines” again, a passage from a book that resonates with me so perfectly and precisely that I feel the author is speaking directly to me. It appears in the thirteenth chapter of Shannon Chakraborty’s swashbuckling Arabian Nights fantasy The Adventures of Amina Al-Sifari, when the title character, a middle-aged sea captain called out of retirement to rescue a young woman from the clutches of a power-hungry sorcerer, is bonding with her former navigator’s wife, Nasteho, over their mutual need to raise their children with love and care yet still hold onto something of their own.

“Our hearts may be spoken for by those with sweet eyes, little smiles, and so very many needs,” Amina tells Nasteho, “but that does not mean that which makes us us is gone. And I hope … part of me hopes anyway that in seeing me do this, Marjana [her daughter] knows more is possible. I would not want her to believe that because she was born a girl, she cannot dream.” (184)

Amina’s conflict here is not my conflict. I’ve written in this space before about my decision not to become a mother and the factors that went into it, so I don’t need to go into a great amount of detail on the matter again. Yet a character doesn’t have to represent me fully in order to speak to me, and and it brought me joy when I heard Amina put into clear, common-sense language something we’d all do well to understand: motherhood does not, and should not, swallow a woman’s identity whole. She doesn’t stop being a person with interests, ideas, and, yes, ambitions of her own, and any demand for full self-abnegation is unreasonable. Amina wants to be a good mother to her daughter, and her love for Marjana and desire to protect her is a major driving force throughout the narrative. But part of that, as she says, lies in showing the girl that she can do anything, be anything, she chooses. One of the crucial tasks of feminism lies in making certain that the question we start asking our children when they’re around five years old, “What do you want to be when you grow up?”, is just as relevant for little girls as it is for little boys. Thanks to Amina’s example, that question will be plenty relevant for young Marjana, and that gladdens me.

This isn’t the only thing I love about Chakraborty’s heroine, who has one a spot among my favorite characters in the fantasy genre. First, even though Amina is a bit of a rogue and doesn’t always, or even often, play by the rules, she has a strong moral sense, being fiercely loyal to her seafaring companions and strongly protective of the young woman she has set out to rescue. She might initially take on the rescue mission out of a desire to protect her family, whom the girl’s grandmother vows to destroy if Amina doesn’t do what she wants, but she quickly sees that the villain — a truly loathsome piece of work — must be stopped, for the greater as well as the “lesser” good. For all her flaws, she is a hero, always delightful to see in this Age of Grimdark.

Also, Amina sometimes gets in over her head. Sometimes she’s at a loss to see how she’ll get out of certain situations. Yet she remains tenacious, determined, and above all, resourceful (as I’ve mentioned before, one of my favorite traits in a heroine). The fact that she sometimes needs help makes her Crowning Moments of Awesome (TV Tropes) all the more rewarding.

Furthermore, despite her non-traditional calling, Amina isn’t a “Not Like Other Girls” kind of woman, which pleases me in particular because it would have been so easy for Chakraborty to go that route, as other authors have done with female characters who play “masculine” roles. While I do wish Dalila the Poisoner were not the only woman in her crew, at no point in the narrative does Amina express contempt or even disapproval towards women who have made different choices. Nasteho could have been just the wife of Majed the navigator, begging him to stay home with his family and reject the dangerous mission — after all, haven’t we seen this hundreds of times before? — but instead, she and Amina become friends. Amina’s developing bond with Dunya, the girl she rescues, also plays a vital role in the story; as we learn more about Dunya, we see Amina evolving into the kind of mentor we all wish we could have.

In short, Amina Al-Sifari is well worth spending time with, and she’s surrounded by an engaging cast of supporting characters. The world is both richly detailed and agreeably lived-in, and the plot engrossing, as these characters we care about face ever more dangerous obstacles. Five rollicking stars.