The Only Make Believe Gala Honored Anna Wintour and the Power of Theater

The Gala was in honor of Dame Anna Wintour, who was awarded the James Hammerstein Award; Adam Meshel, the Head of Legal at Citi, who received the Founders Award for his lengthy service to the organization; and Shenoda Saeed and King Monroe, two participants in the program at the Harry Moore School. Shenoda, now 15, had performed with Only Make Believe since the age of four, and proudly proclaimed on stage his love of dancing. Before leaving the stage, he made sure that the audience gave him a rousing round of applause and took his bow with a grin.

After remarks by Executive Director Tamela Aldridge and Director of Programming Christopher Wilson, the evening proceeded with performances by Chris Jackson, who sany “Feelin’ Good”; Josh Groban, who sang “Bridge Over Troubled Water”; a song from the little known 1969 musical Coco written by Andre Previn (about Coco Chanel), performed with gusto by Brad Oscar; dancers from the contemporary opera Fire Shut Up in My Bones, choreographed by the extraordinary Camille A. Brown; and a duet between Darren Criss and Lena Hall of “Suddenly Seymour.” A highlight in the performance was a deeply moving rendition of “Dear Bill,” a ballad from Operation Mincemeat, performed by Jak Malone—at the special request of Wintour.

Before Wintour took the stage, she was introduced by married couple director Sam Gold and playwright Amy Herzog, themselves fixtures on Broadway. (Together they worked on the recent adaptation of Enemy of the People, and Herzog is the author of the stunning Mary Jane, an exquisitely moving work about a mother managing the care of her very sick child.) Their favorite performance of all time, they said last night, was one that took place in the children’s wing of a hospital that was treating their daughter, where a “definitely unlicensed” adaptation of Frozen was put on by the physical therapy department. There were costumes possibly purchased from a Halloween store, and “these PTs were giving it everything they had,” said Herzog. “And as theater professionals, we really wanted to say to them …”

“Don’t quit your day jobs,” finished Gold. All joking aside, he continued, “We can tell you that the kind of joy through theater that Only Make Believe is dedicated to creating makes an enormous difference to sick and disabled kids, and to their families,” he continued.

It was precisely that difference that Wintour articulated when she took the stage and spoke of her own experience as a ten-year-old, witnessing Sir Laurence Olivier in Coriolanus at Stratford. “Seeing him in that role,” Wintour said. “I was hooked for life.” Her point, she continued, was that “theater is the most natural art form for a young person’s imagination. And indeed, for a young person’s hope.”

“Being here with all of you tonight gives me hope,” Wintour continued, “in the prospect of joy and community for a generation of children growing up in hard circumstances in a hard time. And it lifts my spirits about the future of this extraordinary art. If theater is to continue to survive and to grow over the decades ahead, it may be because a new generation, the generation that is now children, recognizes the value of the stage as a human instrument.”