DO WE? MAYBE. MAYBE NOT. DOES IT EVEN MATTER?

  Attended a most wonderful performance of the Broadway show, Tina. Wow!!! Wow again. Chock full of talent, especially Tina as the child Anna Mae- what a voice- and adult, Grandma, and on. The audience was 150% positive, not a seat empty, and rocked and roared along with Tina. Yet amusing and entertaining as it was, there were serious moments which demand perusal and musing.

Front and center was Tina's life as a child and adult as to hope, violence, and love. A brutal father, a mother who fled for her life, leaving Tina behind, only a beloved Grandmother to rescue her, followed by more brutality and abuse from a husband for almost two decades, followed by a rough time after divorce. It took many years for her talent to be recognized, respected and rewarded. 

 Noticeable during the performance was the buy in of the audience as they rocked back with verbal shock at the domestic abuse, at the desperation, and cheered and clapped when a woman struck back, remained defiant. Another such moment was when a record executive stated there was no room in their company for an "old n''''r woman" As one, the audience gasped their shock and dislike of that sentiment and choice of words. It cheered her moments of love and optimism, her determination to succeed, and went wild at curtain call and beyond. Misogyny. Racism. Domestic abuse.

What else? Towards the conclusion of the performance, one of my favorite songs, sung by the children of the Thunderdome, "We Don't Need Another Hero" was presented. Herein is the question or questions of the day, the year, the decade, for eternity. Sadly, but firmly, the children, "the last generation ... the ones left behind", pleaded their causes, their desperate wish. Asking not for parents or glory or wealth or even a return to what was and might never be again, even denying the need for a rescuing hero, there was a plaintive plea and recognition of the new limitations in the world.

"We don't need another hero
We don't need to know the way home
All we want is life beyond the Thunderdome

Looking for something
We can rely on
There's gotta be something better out there"

There is great tragedy within those words and wishes. Acknowledgement that no,

 they are not children anymore, left behind, parents, adult authority gone, no one to

 fend for them, alone, with only their own selves to rely on. No pie in the sky here,

 only a desperate plea to find, to live in a world somewhere away from, divorced

 from, the world of the Thunderdome.

And yet, beneath that haunting plea, there is also the eternal optimism to be found in the human soul, that there can and will be a better time, a better place, that things will definitely get better - only when? When? From Rita Moreno's haunting "There's a Place for Us - someday, somewhere, sometime", to Bonnie Tyler's defiant, demanding "We Need a Hero", always there has been this hope for 'better', for a rescuer. For a hero. Unfortunately, heroes are few and far between. Too often we hare after the supposed 'hero' only to find it was a false hope leading only to more tragedy. 

The missing in action hero is to be found within ourselves, within the indomitable courage and strength of humans. Yes, we despair of it all at times, too many times, but it is in there. The heroes we need, seek, long for - it is us, we the people.

We need to be, in fact are, our own heroes.

These Thunderdome children ask not the way home for they know home is no longer there. All they want is a life "beyond Thunderdome', a better place. One where they can serve as a light for others to follow. 

These yearnings are not restricted to children of an apocalyptic movie. No, they are, they live, they populate our fractured world. Be it food insecure, dehydration, kidnapping and slavery, a bullet, a machete, a country reduced to rubble, constant warfare, the children of the Thunderdome have found space within our own Thunderdome. 

We have a world where every day children die, are brutally killed, caustically ignored as they lay dying, as they struggle with mammoth effort, with strength beyond their little bodies and giant hearts, to climb, to flee towards a future for themselves. They are the brave ones separated from parents, denied place and welcome in a new country, denied refuge, become "lost" within the system. 

This is all our doing. We are the antiheroes in our own Broadway performances, only our actions and decisions have an effect in reality, most definitely not make believe. There are strong, severe consequences in real life, real time, enacted upon real bodies, of men, women, and children, the most heartbreaking of all.

WE need to be the heroes we can be, should be.

 We definitely need a hero, more than one, and these heroes are right here!

If only we would acknowledge that and act upon it. 

If only.