Working in the professional theater can be tough for a conservative believer, where, for about 2,500 years, the reputation of Theater People has not always been the most virtuous.  They are fun people, to be sure.  And not that it’s bad to work among a worldly crowd of artists, just that it’s extremely difficult to keep one’s bearings in that world, where the moral codes are experimental (at best) and lewd (at worst).  Only the wisest, humblest, most talented, and most self-possessed believers can work in a world like that without completely losing themselves to it, or compromising with it on ideologies and issues.  That’s what I was thinking, vaguely, after reading this article about a theater director who resigned after it was revealed that he donated $1,000 in support of Proposition 8 in California, to ban gay marriage. 

“That a man who makes his living exclusively through the musical theater could do something so hurtful to the community that forms his livelihood is a punch in the stomach,” [one Broadway producer] said. “He didn’t just vote for it. One thousand dollars is a lot of money for an artistic director of a nonprofit.”

The gay community is no small player in the world of professional theater, and this director’s clear advocacy against gay marriage is confusing, and angering, a lot of people.  When the Church talks about Christians reclaiming and working in the arts, this is what can happen.  It’s not just about working with a bunch of pagans.  That can be fun and rewarding.  It’s about philosophies butting up against each other like tectonic plates.  It’s not easy.  That director, a Mormon (not the issue here, people), probably worked his whole life to get a coveted artistic director position at a prominent theater, and now he’s done, at least in that world.