Thursday, October 28, 2021

Quote of the Day (Cherry Jones, on How Theater Makes People ‘Feel Less Alone’)

“The plays I love and the parts I love are the ones that make people feel less alone. That’s a huge part of great art for me – human beings comforting one another with their shortcomings. That’s what theater does so brilliantly....The celebration of an extraordinary life is not going to make you feel less alone. But the examination of a flawed life or a life gone wrong or a life almost extinguished by shortcomings then brought back from the dead, that’s what makes us feel less alone. I’ve listed all of my shortcomings to you. Now if you would tell me all of yours, we’d have an evening of consolation and laughs. And that’s the theater.”—Tony Award-winning actress Cherry Jones, quoted in Alex Witchel, “Cherry Jones, at the Peak of Her Powers,” The New York Times Magazine, Sept. 22, 2013

The image accompanying this post is a detail of a photo of Cherry Jones taken on Apr. 18, 2009, by Kathleen Tyler Conklin, when Ms. Jones was in Paris, TN, her hometown, to raise funds for the Heritage Center and the Lee Academy of Arts.

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