My Unitarian Sermon

--This sermon was given at the Unitarian Universalist Congregation of South County
on September 29, 2019 --

My name is Kevin Broccoli, and ever since I was eight years old, I have been described as
creative, which means, for most of my life, people have been asking me to do funny things at
parties.  This has included singing, which I’m not great at, telling jokes, also not my strong suit,
and explaining how it is I think I’m going to make a living doing what I do.

Usually if they ask me to do that last one, I offer to sing instead.

I make theater.

I started as an actor when I was elementary school--before I really even knew what that was. 
All I knew was that I really didn’t have any pride in myself, which may sound strange since
you might think a third grader doesn’t need to feel pride, but I would disagree.  It’s true that
a lot of kids probably feel invisible, and that’s certainly how I felt, until I walked out onstage
for the first time, opened my mouth, and people listened. And I thought--

Oh, so this is who I am.

You’ll notice I said ‘I make theater’ and that’s because I’ve done a lot of making over the
years.  It feels like making. I still act, but I also write. I have a small company. I work with
other companies.  I produce. I solve problems. Sometimes I make them and then solve
them. When I first sat down to write a talk on “A Life in the Arts” I really just considered
writing “It’s a strange life” and leaving it at that.

But there is a very real spiritual benefit in devoting yourself to something creative--whatever
that might be.

For me, I keep coming back to the reality of being seen.  Of feeling understood--or of
making the effort to be understood.  After that very first play I was in--and if you’re
wondering, it was Bambi and I played the Owl--who’s really the hidden star of Bambi--
I remember everyone looking at me differently.  My family, my teacher, other kids my age.

I still get that look every time I perform anything.  Sometimes people come right out and
say it--it being, “Where did that come from?”

I have a day job.  I work at a library.  I run a Book Club at the library.  In that Book Club is
a really lovely woman in her nineties who marvels at creativity.  She knows I’m a playwright,
and she’ll ask me at every Book Club meeting, “How do they do this?”

She means come up with characters.  Make up stories. Figure out what a fictional person
is wearing or what they’re eating or why they love who they love or why they’re doing
what they’re doing.  The very idea of make-believe is astounding to her. She told me
that when she was younger, she very badly wanted to be an artist, but that her parents
thought that would be a waste of time, so they wouldn’t let her go to an art school.  She
loved to draw. A few years ago, I bought her some art supplies for Christmas and she
was so happy. I thought it was because of the gift, but it turns out, she was just happy
that someone was encouraging her to do what she always wanted to do.  She was in
her late-eighties at the time, and nobody had ever done that before.

I’m very lucky, because I am surrounded by people encouraging me to do what I love, and
only a few people who suggest that I stop.  Granted, those people are usually called
“critics” and they get to write entire columns about how I really need to hang it up, and
I gotta say, some of them are very persuasive.  But then the following month, they’ll
say I’m a genius. The next month, I’ll be just “okay.” Then a genius again. Then maybe
“Why is he still at it?” History isn’t my field, but I’m convinced that the arts must have
been created first, and therapy came shortly thereafter.

So what is that spiritual benefit I mentioned?  How have the arts given me a life that
might have otherwise been less fulfilling?

For one thing, it has brought the most incredible people into my orbit.  When people
ask me what it’s like to run a theater, I tell them the most accurate representation I can
think of that exists in our culture happens to be The Muppet Show.  I have been the
Kermit and I have been the Miss Piggy.  A few times I’ve even gotten to be Stadler
and Waldorf, the two old men sitting in the balcony laughing at how insane everything is.

Theater people aren’t all that different from Muppets actually.  They’re not quite human
and yet more human than regular humans. They’re a little odd, but eventually, if you’re
around them, you stop noticing just how odd they are.  And the chaos that follows them
around soon becomes part of their charm.

The arts have brought people like that into my life.  People to encourage me so I don’t
find myself forgetting what it means to be seen.  To have a voice. To feel as though
what I say has value.

When social media first began exploding--and I think exploding is a good word for it--
there were a lot of think pieces all about why this was happening.  Why people were
suddenly so eager to put every thought and opinion out into the public forum. But
theater people understood why. People just want to be seen.  They want a minute or
two--usually more--where they feel important enough to pay attention to. We all need
that, and some of us spend our entire lives figuring out a healthy way to get it.

The arts have taught me that there’s no shame in going after what you want.  When
you’re an actor you have an objective. You have something that you want, and other
actors and your director and everybody really is always asking you “What do you want
and what are you doing to get what you want?”  And while sometimes that’s a tangible
thing like a necklace or a house or a new car, usually you’re prompted to go deeper
than that. To think about the bigger things you want--like love or power. And what you
find is that it’s very useful to engage in thinking about what it is you want, because the
belief is that in constantly remembering what you’re after, you remember just what kind
of person you are and, more importantly, who you want to be.

In fact, we’re often told when we act that it’s fine to want the house and the car and the
money, but that it’s not “interesting.”  That’s the word you hear a lot. Nothing is “good”
or “bad” but things are “interesting” and “less interesting.”  It’s less interesting to want
material things.  It’s more interesting to want the approval of another person.  The
affection of a parent. The trust of a friend. A connection to a total stranger.  We’re
told that while there is a driving force inside you that moves you toward an identity,
you find little pieces of that identity in others, and little pieces of them exist within you. 
You have to rely on other people to help assemble the Great Puzzle, and we call that
assembly Collaboration.

And if you fail over and over again in finding that identity, the arts teaches you that the
failure is very interesting.  The art comes out of the failure. Often it’s not very good art,
which means you frequently fail at failing. So what do you do?  You keep failing. It’s the
only thing that makes sense. A theater teacher once addressed a group of students--I
was one of them--and said that while he was very proud of all the students who had
worked hard and never faltered and gotten 100’s on everything and straight A’s and
accolades and all that, he was equally as proud of those of us who had struggled.  It
was the first time I had ever heard someone say, “It’s okay to struggle.”  We believe
the art is in the struggle. It’s in failing. Success is lovely, but...it’s less interesting.

The arts have taught me that words are important, but they’re meaningless if they don’t
come with a corresponding action.  When a character says one thing, but does another--
audiences get very confused. In that way, the bar for what an audience will believe is
higher when they’re watching a play than when they’re watching the news.

It’s taught me about compassion.  I grew up in the Catholic church, and we were always
asked to imagine life in someone else’s shoes.  Then I started acting, and suddenly, I
didn’t have to imagine. I’ve put on all kinds of shoes over the years and asked myself--

What does this person want?

In other words, who are they?

And what you learn very quickly is that--we all want the same things, and our differences
only exist in the ways with which we attempt to sort out how to get those things and put
together the person we think we’re supposed to be.

Ultimately we spend more time identical in our failure than we do separate in our success.
  And that’s--very interesting.

The arts have taught me how crucial it is to be a person of the world.  To look when others
look away. To learn. To ask questions. To approach every interaction with the knowledge
that everyone is trying to get to the same place I am and that part of my job as a scene
partner or someone behind the scenes or as another human being on this planet is to
help them get there without worrying about how much they’re helping me.  Theater is
about what you’re giving to the other people in the room. If you’ve ever done theater--
especially with me--you might sometimes get the note--

“You’re in your head right now” and that’s just a fancy way of saying, “You’re not giving
anything.  You’re being selfish. It’s only about you right now.” Try having somebody
yell that at you for three hours a night after work and eventually it might start to sink in.

Like failure, cost is a necessity.  Everything in theater costs you something.  And you
learn what you’re willing to pay very quickly.  You get to do this behind the safety of a
character, but pretty soon, you start thinking of all the ways you pay for things in your
day-to-day life.  How you let somebody talk to you has a cost. How much you give of
yourself emotionally to someone else. How much it takes to be vulnerable, to show
sadness, to say what it is you really want to say, to sing--singing costs you a lot.  It’s
not about not trying to spend anything. Being stingy is not interesting. It’s just about
examining the cost and whether you’re paying enough or too much.

When I found out I was doing this talk, I had just decided to re-read one of my favorite
books on creativity, and there’s a story in it I’d like to leave you with, if I may, because
while it’s about the freedom to create and to be creative, it’s also about how we move
through the world with acceptance for ourselves and others around us, and I find
myself coming back to it more and more often as I see so many people deal with
impostor syndrome and elitism and the feeling that their spirit isn’t enough.  That who
they are isn’t enough.

The story is from “Big Magic” by Elizabeth Gilbert, and if you have the book, it’s the
Lobster Story.  If you haven’t read it yet, read the whole thing and you’ll find the story.

Thank you for inviting me here today.  I hope you found it...interesting.