The Great Falls Forum kicked off its 2003-04 season Thursday.
By Daniel Hartill
Staff Writer

LEWISTON – Put aside arguments that the arts make communities richer and their children better scholars.

Such claims are true, but too small, said teacher Eric Booth. The arts make people better thinkers.

To show what he meant, the 52-year-old New Yorker invited people to imagine with him. With the words, “what if,” the former Broadway actor created an imaginary stage where a windowed wall existed.

The scene in the windows – the parking lot outside the LePage Conference Center at St. Mary’s Regional Medical Center – became a fictional setting, a panorama invented by a set painter.

“All it took was this tiny invitation,” Booth said a moment later. For each person there, the view of the world changed.

That’s what art does, he said.

On Friday, Booth planned to host L/A Arts’ anniversary banquet at the Hilton Garden Inn in Auburn, wearing a tuxedo and sneakers, he said.

But on Thursday, Booth was the guest lecturer at the Great Falls Forum, a lecture series sponsored by the Lewiston Public Library, the Sun Journal, St. Mary’s Regional Medical Center and Bates College. The topic: “From Enrichment to Essential: Why America Today Needs The Arts More than Ever.”

In a place without the arts, town meetings are punctuated by few ideas, he said. People don’t want to move there.

Character flattens.

Modern society has made things worse, he said.

During the Reagan administration in the 1980s, communities throughout the country cut back arts programs, said Booth. Especially in elementary schools, children began learning without music, painting or dance.

Yet, those activities create different kinds of active thinking, what Booth calls “response ability.”

In the arts, people learn to adapt to images of the world, new ideas, concepts of life, love and death.

“They are the skills that make a community work,” said Booth. “We change the way we listen to one another.”

Booth has spent a lifetime in the arts.

A direct descendant of the infamous John Wilkes Booth, Eric Booth grew up in Manhattan. In his 20s, he acted with Rex Harrison, Mary Tyler Moore and Anne Bancroft on Broadway. Meanwhile, he taught and wrote.

He has written four books including: “The Everyday Work of Art: How Artistic Experience Can Transform Your Life.” Now in paperback, it was selected for the Book of the Month Club.

Besides his writing and other interests, Booth currently heads a mentoring program at New York City’s Julliard School.

dhartill@sunjournal.com