By Matty Beatty
Community members were captivated by a wide variety of performances at the Becket Arts Center’s most recent Member Show, an event where members of the Arts Center showcase their creative talents such as painting, carving, and much more. The Center has begun to incorporate more musical and performance art into their programing, hosting various local musicians and even improv classes. This particular event aimed to showcase members with more performance-based skills. Speaking with BAC Board member Paula Langton before the show, she expressed that although this new format for the Member Show was a risk, she hoped that it would “expand people’s imaginations around what’s possible for them in terms of expressing themselves through the arts.”
The intimate setting allowed attendees to stand up and share, popcorn style, their prepared or improvised performances. As the event unfolded, the sense of encouragement, community, and togetherness felt in the room was palpable and lingered even as guests started to depart, enthusiastically sharing their experience with one another in the parking lot and beyond. Whether it was through poetry, speech, song, or storytelling, attendees walked away knowing their neighbors better. A particularly special moment of the show was when a performer connected with a German-speaking woman in the audience, after asking if anyone in the audience could translate the German folk song he was singing: the two then sang and played guitar together, making his performance that much more impactful.
When asked to describe the event after the fact, Langton said it was “beyond my wildest dreams.” Based on the positive reactions from community members, the addition of performance arts into the Member Show was a risk well worth taking.
