Nothing Short of a Miracle

If Irene Silbert was praying for a Christmas miracle last Friday, she certainly wasn’t letting on.

Not that there wasn’t good reason for praying.

It was 3 p.m., nearly half of the 27 children in front of her were behaving as if they’d just been injected with concentrated amounts of sugar, and the last several months’ worth of rehearsals would be culminating in the first of four public performances in just a few hours.

First there would be “The Nutcracker Christmas,” a shortened version of E.T.A. Hoffman’s story about a toy that comes to life. Next would be “Hershel and the Hanukkah Goblins,” in which two students save a town from evil creatures.

But the plays, Silbert knew, would have more importance than just as the Simi Valley Cultural Assn.’s first Christmas program, which were directed by Silbert. They also would show the community what the nonprofit organization had accomplished in the year since its formation--and since the city had leased the old courthouse to it for drama, art and music classes for kids.

It was an important point, too. The next Monday, the Simi Valley City Council would vote on whether to reduce the association’s rent and save it from almost certain bankruptcy.

The question before the council would most likely boil down to value: Was an arts organization in the city worth subsidizing?

*

“OK, I need all the kids in ‘Hershel’ to sit down now and stay quiet so the ‘Nutcracker’ kids can run through their play,” Silbert said to the children, most of whom were shaking their feet, kicking the backs of chairs or talking animatedly to each other.

She shook her head. “I have several children on medication,” she said quietly to a parent.

“And no gum on stage!” Silbert added loudly after a distinctive crack came from the back of the room.

The children in the first play jumped onto the stage. One of them was my son, who was playing the role of a bratty brother. Like many of the children, he’d started out in the program with no prior exposure to drama and only a vague notion of what went on in putting a play together.

Also like many of the children, the full scope of all the things that could go wrong--the sound system sputtering, the lights blinking, the missed entrances--was lost on him.

Those were worries better left to Silbert and other parents like me who were looking on. “I think I’m more nervous than she is,” one mother said to me as she nodded in the direction of her daughter.

I knew what she meant.

As various children came onto the stage--several of them turning crimson when they forgot their lines--giggles and screeches came from backstage. Silbert opened the stage door.

“I need you all to be quiet when there are actors on stage,” she said in a measured voice.

This, I thought, was a woman who would have calmly told passengers on the Titanic to gather their coats because they might need them. With less than three hours until the performance, the iceberg seemed well in sight.

*

The lights dimmed and the music began. The children--their costumes put together on a shoestring budget by the creative hand of parent Jackie Rogers--came one by one onto the stage.

Marchen, the little girl who dreams of the nutcracker, and her brother, played by my son, then stood alone. I held my breath. Miraculously, the three lines that had tripped him up all afternoon came easily now. But the miracles didn’t stop there.

A little boy who had been walking the wrong direction on stage all afternoon walked the right way. A little girl who had repeatedly yelled “Line!” to Silbert sailed through her part. When the lights went down for a scene change, the children all assumed their proper places. And the audience, which would have cringed earlier in the day, was laughing and applauding.

“This has given her so much more confidence,” Mike Hebert said after the show about his daughter Lindsay’s drama experience.

“It has so much more to offer kids than TV or movies,” said Chris Bliss, who brought her three children to see the show for the pure entertainment value of it. Costumer Rogers agreed. “Are 95% of these kids going to grow up to be actors? Probably not,” she said. “But it’s just nice to think maybe you gave them a love of the theater that they will take with them the rest of their lives.

“That they will grow up to support the arts.”

*

On Monday, the Simi Valley City Council let the Cultural Assn. know it wouldn’t have to wait that long for support.

The association had poured thousands of dollars into converting the former courthouse into a theater and had been unable to pay the monthly $1,350. By a vote of 4 to 1, the council decided to reduce the organization’s rent for a six-month period beginning in January.

“To me and the other members, it made no sense to be the hard-nosed landlord,” Councilwoman Judy Mikels said. “This gives them some breathing room to get some fund raising going.”

I can’t speak for other parents, but to me the council’s decision was a big, wonderful Christmas present.

Watching the confidence, the sense of accomplishment and the pride on my son’s face--and the faces of so many other children--was the kind of gift that would never fit under any tree.

Of course, Irene Silbert probably took the news in stride.

After what she’d seen, what was one more miracle?