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Stage remains set for reporters
WINDOW ON MAIN STREET, BY BARBARA CHRISTIAN
Stage remains set for reporters
It's been an unusual few weeks, and it's made us feel like an old-time newspaper person.
In the space of a few days, in addition to the usual news from Village Hall, we wrote obituaries for three well-known locals, fielded questions about publicizing the 100th birthday of another and handled inquiries about submitting a birth and a wedding announcement, although not from the same couple.
None of it was "stop the presses" stuff, just life. In the old days, it was called the "marrying 'em and burying 'em beat."
It also recalls that line from Shakespeare about how "all the world's stage and all its men and women merely players" exiting and entering, etc.
But there is another stage work that describes the news business as well. Thornton Wilder's "Our Town" features a character listed in the program as the "Stage Manager." In its long history -- it was written in 1938 -- it's uncertain if a woman has ever taken that role. In the context of that time, it's not likely.
Male or female, it doesn't matter. We are convinced this Stage Manager fellow is really the reporter on the Grover's Corners, N.H., beat. That's the place in which "Our Town" is set.
You must know the play. But in case you don't, it offers a glimpse into the lives of ordinary residents of the town. The homey plot -- with all of its interwoven characters, events, sorrows and joys -- once was described as "deceptively simple." Very true. Real life is like that.
Each player and each event, no matter how minor, is given context by the Stage Manager, who stands to one side of the stage watching the action. From time to time, he interrupts the scene to fill the audience in on the characters' back stories and unfolding events. Isn't that the job of a reporter?
Bear with us here; we'll get back on subject shortly. Back in the good old days, the people who worked on newspapers were not specialists in a particular subject or area of expertise like politics, theater or fashion. Just like the Stage Manager, reporters told stories about everything, and, along the way, they learned a little bit about a lot of things, often finding out more about the people in the stories than was printable.
Let's just say our Stage Manager must have worked for the Grover's Corners Inquirer, because he gets to tell it all without threat of lawsuit or shunning by polite society.
In real life, news is a sobering business, because what is news in the present will become history in the future. That's why historical societies and libraries save newspapers and classify them as reference materials.
But we've gotten way off the track here. Bottom line, writing news is writing history without the Stage Manager's gift of being able to tell the audience how it's all going to turn out.
But really now, who wants to know what's going to happen next? It's a "gift" the Stage Manager is welcome to keep.
We'll leave the future perspective to the historians and content ourselves with the here and now and follow Shakespeare's lead. Sit back, watch our town on its stage, note the entrances, the exits and everything that happens in between.
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