We started with a light left on

Before I ever set foot in a theater, I was in a very low place. A bad breakup had knocked the wind out of me, and my view of life was not great. It was the ordinary kind of trouble life throws at you, but it landed hard.

I realized I had two choices. I could sit there and let it swallow me, or I could go looking for change. So I chose change. On a whim, I went to audition for The Wizard of Oz.

I had never been on a stage. I had been a musician my whole life, a singer and a guitar player in lots of bands. I picked up a guitar at about ten years old and I have never put it down. Almost thirty-two years later, I still play nearly every day. My childhood was hard, and music is what carried me through it.

So after the breakup, I decided to audition for the Tin Man. Anyone in theater will tell you that was a foolish thing to try. First timers start in the ensemble, or backstage moving set pieces, or running lights, or working front of house. Nobody walks in as a complete unknown and lands one of the most iconic roles ever written.

But the Tin Man was never just a role to me. The Wizard of Oz and The Sound of Music are my two comfort movies. When I am sick or down, that is what I put on. And for me, the Tin Man represents resilience. His limbs get chopped off, so he gets new ones and goes back to work. It happens again, and he goes back to work. Even when his body is cut in half, he finds a way to keep moving forward.

That is me. I keep moving forward no matter what life throws at me or how people hurt me, and I try to do it with kindness and love in my heart. I do not let it make me bitter. I have the Tin Man's heart tattooed over my own heart, as a reminder to always be true to myself. To be kind. Loving. To keep moving forward, and to surround myself with friends, as the Tin Man did with Dorothy, Scarecrow and the Cowardly Lion.

I got the part. The director was a man I had never met, and he gave a complete unknown a chance. I have never forgotten it. I made friends in that first show who are lifelong friends to this day, and I have been doing this ever since.

From that time, I have been involved in countless productions, and I have loved every one. Most recently, I played Colonel Mustard in Clue. The Clue cast was special. We were professionals about it, we knew that show inside and out, and because there was no weak link (if anything, I was the weak link) we were free to have fun together on stage. On closing night, the actor playing Wadsworth threw in bits just for us, and we broke more than once. That is what theater is.

It is adult summer camp. You spend eight, ten, twelve weeks with a group of people, living in a world of imagination. When the show ends, those people go on living in your imagination for the rest of your life. When I run into them around town, I feel fondness, respect, and love for them because of what we shared in that short run.

In my first week or so of Fiddler rehearsals, I walked in and saw the back of a man's head. I knew it right away. I called out, “Is that Aaron?” He was my childhood friend, and I had not seen him in almost twenty years. His daughter was in the cast. Nothing bad had ever happened between us. Life had just taken us different ways. We stepped out into the lobby, and within minutes we were telling our silly old jokes as if we had never been apart.

Theater brought us back together. I am close with Aaron and his wife now, and I am part of their family's life. For that whole run I called his daughter by the wrong name, and she never corrected me. Now she has a nickname for me that is not my name either. That is what community theater does, and it is why I do it. It is for the people.

Aaron helped me co-write my very first script, Apocalypse Pending, a farcical comedy with the spirit of 70s and 80s British humor and a little of the 90s we grew up in. Then I wanted him beside me for what came next: Ghostlight Theatricals, a place where we could write more plays and support community theaters and school theaters.

We all know that some of the big, wonderful shows can be out of reach for a small budget. So here is the idea. Bring one of ours into your season, a fantastic show written by theater people for theater people, and it frees up room for the bigger title in another slot. We are not trying to get rich or bleed your budget dry.

I want to offer more than a script. If you need it, you can have a ready-made set design with a materials list and clear build notes, costume designs, social media posts where you plug in your theater's name, merchandise you can sell for a little profit, posters for the front of your building and for storefronts, postcard mailers, sound and light cues, and audio files. All of it in one package.

If you do not need it, that is fine. Build your own set. Use your imagination. I never want to take that away from community theater, because creativity is part of what makes it what it is.

What matters is the community you build around your theater, the people and the relationships. So let me support your theater. Let me be a part of what you do.

Jarrid Davis
Founder, Ghostlight Theatricals