Words cannot express how thankful we are that you are here tonight to see our production of Beauty and the Beast! After the year we’ve just had, just being able to do this is an overwhelming blessing, and I cannot wait for you to see the results of the hard work this small but mighty cast and crew have put in over the past three months.
I read recently that this particular show is essentially a story about transformation, which is a theme that we at DCA can relate to all too well since the events of the first week of March 2020. Just as the Beast and his castle servants find themselves in what seems, by all foreseeable circumstances, a hopeless situation, our DCA community knew the pain of what looked like insurmountable loss as we looked upon the destruction wreaked by the tornado that hit our campus in the early morning hours of March 3rd, 2020. And then, just as we were gearing up to return to satellite locations for classes--and rehearsals for what would have been the 2020 spring musical production of Beauty and the Beast--the pandemic forced all of life as we knew it to shut down. Suddenly, all of mine and Ms. Cook’s scrambling to find alternative locations for rehearsals and a new performance venue came to a halt, and it wasn’t long before it became a reality that the 2020 spring musical was not going to happen.
I remember the heartache of having to contact all our cast and crew to tell them of the show’s cancellation. It was especially hard to break the news to our seniors. Scripture promises in Psalm 34:18 that “the Lord is near to the brokenhearted and saves the crushed in spirit,” and we all needed His consolations during that time as we struggled with disappointed hopes and wondered if our school would ever see this particular show, that we had already put so many rehearsal hours into, ever make it to the DCA stage.
But just as tonight you will see the Beast and his castle servants undergo a transformation from despairing loss to the joy of newfound hopes, we found our own new sense of purpose as we were able to return to classes on campus last August in our restored middle and high school wings. And not only that, we were thrilled by the news of a rebuilding plan for the rest of the school that will include a new dedicated performance space for our fine arts programs--that’s right, a real AUDITORIUM!--something that we have dreamed of for our school since its inception 50 years ago. That’s right, at this moment, you are an audience member--Lord willing--in the last spring musical put on in our high school gymnasium! (Wow, I loved typing that sentence!)
And so it was with newly transformed, hopeful hearts that we began the process of casting, rehearsing, and producing Beauty and Beast all over again in January of this year. And what you will see tonight is the culmination of all that hard work coupled with the Lord’s faithfulness in bringing hope and healing to our DCA campus, not just for our fine arts program, but for all of our various academic and extracurricular programs, albeit in slightly different, socially-distanced, modified circumstances. We serve a God with the power to transform even the darkest situations into good for the accomplishment of His glory and purposes, and I hope you will be left with an even stronger conviction of that truth once our show is over tonight.
