PERFORMANCE ART WILL WHIP ‘EM INTO SHAPE

It’s hard to believe, but it seems that adults in this country are in better shape now than our kids. Isn’t that something, since it’s youth that we all are so enamored of? It certainly conjures up visions of kiddies slouching in front of the TV, doesn’t it, watching somebody else do the action, wolfing down fistfuls of popcorn and chips, guzzling chock-full-of-sugar pop, can after can.

Well, I got curious and turned on TV one Saturday morning to see what they might be looking at, what might be causing the collapse of the physical stamina of our youth. But it turned out kind of hard to tell since there was hardly a human person in sight a kid could make into a role model. The programs were all filled with fuzzy and furry cartoon characters in all manner of shapes--round, square or sausage-like--with bulbous bellies with noses and teeth to match.

So I turned my attention to the commercials in-between, to find out what kind of products the grown-up companies might be laying on the young folk. And sure enough, the pitches were almost entirely food--uh, no. Strike the word food. Stuff. Stuff-to-put-in-the-mouth--bubble gum, ice cream, candy-that-won’t melt-in-their-hands. Oral satisfactions with sugar added.

A sedentary pursuit, and constant empty caloric temptation. A lethal combination, wouldn’t you say? What a mistake it was when we turned our children into the leisure class. That was only in this century, you know. Up until then, the young had to work their little buns off from the minute they were able to stand on their tiny feet, the laboring class tots sent off to the fields, the mines, the stables.

Freud came along (then Spock and Bombeck) and explained how small fry have separate libidos and ids from their elders and mustn’t be rushed into things, must be carefully nurtured and given time to develop, learn who they are, etc., etc., etc. (And etc.)

Well, all that sounded good. Sounded so right. And so the kiddies got kicked out of the workplace. Yet, just like that, they lost their paying jobs (except for home chores), which is why we don’t come across them in action at banks, today, or on assembly lines or construction sites. Why if we send for a plumber, no kid ever shows up.

However.

There is one workplace where you will find younglings. One place where, in spite of their universal banishment from the earning-power arena, children are allowed to participate. A line of work in which they are still--and always have been--welcome.

And that is in the performing arts.

Yes, any place a performance is in progress, you might very well find some little people on the job. Turn on your TV set and--except for cartoon-time--you’ll see what I mean. Kids run rampant across our little screens, all ages, all shapes, sizes and colors. They are in sitcoms and dramas, soaps and commercials and music videos. At the movies you’ll find them on the big screen, doing everything from singing and dancing to sobbing their little hearts out. In the legit theater, indoors and out, big and small, you’ll find them up on the stage. You’ll find them under circus tents balancing on tightropes, find them in concert halls seated at their pianos, bowing their violins, at the ballet, up on their tippy-toes.

And getting paid for it. Damned well, too. Under the auspices of some kindly union that is seeing they get all the same benefits as any other age group--medical, pensions, all that stuff. And is that so bad? In this material world?

I used to feel kind of sorry for kids who were working on movie sets. Thinking they were maybe being deprived of their childhoods by being there and not out somewhere doing normal kid stuff. But I’m not so sure about that, anymore, since we’ve heard and seen and read what happens to those left on their own with nothing to do but hang around the house, or the street corner. I’ve begun to think maybe it’s the other way around. That it’s the performing children who have rather fulfilling and forward-looking lives, always busy developing their growing brains by memorizing lines all the time, stretching their imaginations for the different parts, which helps widen their horizons and understand worlds different from their own.

And even more important. The responsibility of it all tends to keep an actor--big or small--in the best of shape. Because they’ll lose all the goodies coming their way if they don’t. And even a child can understand that.