This past Sunday Amy bought us tickets to see Beauty and the Beast at the Marietta Performing Arts Center (at Marietta High School).  She saw an ad for the show hanging up in Marietta Square and thought it would be a good activity for the kids to stay cool during an otherwise hot week.
 
What neither of us noticed until about five minutes before the performance started was that the troupe was a Christian based performance group.  I wasn’t entirely sure what that meant, but I had a few guesses that were confirmed prior to the performance.  Prior to beginning the show, the producer of the show asked everyone to pray to Jesus, and to pray for the actors (because we were informed, they were praying for us), as she led the theater in prayer.
 
I know that for those of you who take your kids to church basketball leagues that this experience is not all that unusual.  But for the Dorsches, this was a first.  My family sat respectfully.  None answered “Amen.”
 
Now, reflecting on the experience, I have to admit that there are two things I’ve been mulling over since:
 
First, I wondered whether anyone around me noticed there were Jews in the room, and whether that made them uncomfortable.  Although we live in East Cobb, I forget how close we live to the part of the country that thinks that America is a country where only Christian people live (and who may never have encountered a Jewish person).  Given that this is a Christian troupe, I would not have expected them to change their philosophy or their prayer because Jews were present.  Yet, I was visibly wearing my kippah during the performance, and do wonder whether anyone there even knew that a kippah was a symbol of a Jewish person at all.
 
The second thing I was curious about was how my kids would react.  They’ve never really experienced public prayer in that way that wasn’t Jewish.  Haley was oblivious to the whole experience.  Yet Zev later asked me if I had ever been to church, and how I behaved when I went (funny enough, at the time, I didn’t make the connection to our seeing the show).  I told him that I had been to church once or twice, and that I sat respectfully and listened without participating (the entire thing had been in Latin anyway). I imagine this will set the standard for his thinking going forward. 
 
All and all, the show was excellent.  The performance was fun.  And this morning at minyan, I told the minyan crew that I would keep the acting troupe in my prayers as they requested.