A story from Sault Ste Marie

We had an audience of twelve - a lovely, intimate, warm, interactive audience. After the show, I met a 94-year-old man, a retired vicar, in a wheelchair, who had come to our show. He sang along with the music he recognized and after the show I went down to meet him.

He said he liked it very much, only he didn't understand the singing and the dancing. Not the he disliked it, only that he couldn't quite understand what was happening. I told him that it was alright that he didn't understand it, that confusion was a valid response to some of our scenes, and that some, especially the movement piece, weren't meant to be understood in a certain way but simply received as one does individually. He nodded and smiled, and gave me the impression, in a very friendly way, that there was something about the world that he understood and that I hadn't quite. But he liked me, and asked me to help him with his coat and hat.

Later my billets told me that he had come on his own to our show - arranged for the parabus to bring him and pick him up, had organized his trip entirely on his own. I marvelled at this independent spirit, this 94-year-old man, to whom coming to our show was so important that he arranged for himself to be brought there, alone.

I wish now that I had asked for his name.