Community Moment

Once again last weekend, the Mud Season Talent Show at Chandler Music Hall showed what a terrific place is Central Vermont. Producer Betsy Cantlin and her dozen or so supporting cast members—working out of sight behind the scenes—are deserving of admiration and tons of thanks. Once again, the audiences streamed in, filling the old hall nearly to bursting. The Talent Show has become one of the great coming-together events of the year, something like the fireworks on the Fourth of July.

The Talent Show is about talent, of course, but it’s really about something even more important. It’s about people of all ages and all walks of life coming together to appreciate each other. It’s about people daring to be adventurous and vulnerable in front of their friends and neighbors, taking the risk to indulge a hidden part of themselves—which means exposing themselves, too.

One thinks of 89-year-old John Sayward singing the nearly-lost RUHS school song, of a 16-year-old boy in a dance routine, of two teenage girls in a quiet, sensitive love song, of Randy Leavitt challenging the audience to step back 150 years to feel what it was really like to sail aboard a clipper ship—and then leading a song about it. And talking about being vulnerable: Is there any more difficult task than to emcee such an event? Lew Crain did a marvelous, funny, job thoroughly in the spirit of the Talent Show.

This year’s show included performers from several towns outside Randolph, and even more young performers than usual; the multi-generational aspect of the stage show has always been one of its strengths. Storytellers are mushrooming, too; there were three this year, with the marvelous addition of Dwight Boyce of Brookfield.

As good as was the talent on stage, however, the star of the Mud Season Talent Show is really the audience. The roaring, sometimes raucous affirmation it gave to every act—even Crain’s weaker jokes—is what lifts this event out of the ordinary. The tone established from the beginning of these shows has been enthusiasm, acceptance, and great good humor. Those qualities are just what it takes for someone somewhere, perhaps a shy singer or dancer, to get up the nerve to go on stage next year! Thanks again, Betsy and crew.