The Grand Rapids Civic Theater, formerly called the Isis Theater and the Center Theater on Monroe Street. Photo courtesy of HistoryGrandRapids.org.
Colored Lights
I suspect it was a piece of green gel that was the harbinger of my destiny, a warped, emerald green lighting gel caged in a battered frame that I picked up off the floor of a theater in Grand Rapids, Michigan.
My parents were involved with the community theaters in town and as a young child I was free to roam the vast corners of these grand old theatrical structures while my mother, who was a grade school teacher by day, rehearsed on stage or worked the box office, or my father, who was a corporate lawyer, built or painted scenery. Long past their glory days, some of these buildings were former vaudeville houses or movie palaces while others were concert halls or decaying ballrooms in decaying hotels. This was the early sixties and most of these buildings were soon to feel the impact of the wrecking ball, as were hundreds of other theaters across America, in what came to be known as urban renewal.
They were all adventuresome treasure caves to a kid like me, and I recall I was around five when I picked up this discarded frame of green gel, holding it up in front of my eyes and suddenly seeing the world in a whole new way. Life’s possibilities seemed endless. Everything was bathed in a wash of green which immediately theatricalized even the most mundane of objects. After scouting out and experimenting with other colors, I found that I could change moods and emotional values depending on which color I chose to spy through. Much like the green light beyond the end of Jay Gatsby’s pier in a novel I was to later read, this new vision, unbeknownst to me at the time, seemed to embody my hopes and dreams for the future.
