For the past few months, my friend Emily and I have traveled through time. We danced to 30s standards, fell in love in an age of innocence and found our lives forever changed by a day of infamy.
 

The whole thing started last year when Emily and another classmate, Micah, decided they wanted to write a play based on the experiences of the greatest generation. They went to C. C. Young, a local assisted living facility, and spent several months interviewing a group of seniors about their lives during the 30s and 40s. From that conversation, they put together a story of two young people discovering themselves—and each other—in the midst of economic and political turbulence.
 

This fall, they asked me to direct the project. We explored the past and learned how many things have remained the same. We discovered that the fears and aspirations of young people have changed little over the last 70 years.
 

Just as the show became ready for performance, Micah left to study abroad in London. Emily and I didn’t want to wait another semester to share our story, so I stepped in and took Micah’s place. We got a new director and a fresh perspective from our friend Jessica and went back into rehearsal. On Monday, we showed the result of our effort to a packed hall at C. C. Young.
 

Before the performance, I was nervous. What if we’d misrepresented these people’s experiences? How would they react to a group of kids coming in and acting out the difficult lives some of them had lived? Would our two generations have enough in common to have a conversation about what binds us together?
 

My fears couldn’t have been more misplaced. The audience loved it. Men and women cried when they heard Franklin Roosevelt’s famous call to arms. One woman stood up and shouted, “Good!” after I sang “I Wonder Who’s Kissing Her Now.” After the show, another told us, “The memories came flooding back.”
 

They also gave us some very good feedback about how to improve our performance. The costumes weren’t suggestive enough. We didn’t drop enough clues as to the exact year we were in. My singing was out of tune. Emily, Jessica and I will be back in the rehearsal studio soon to take this advice into account.
 

We in the arts sometimes forget why we do the things we do. We get caught up in making big political statements or pushing the bounds of the avant-garde. We judge our work by how many times it gets shown in the big museums and concert halls.
 

But art shouldn’t be confined to Lincoln Center or the Louvre; it should be a conversation with our community. It should be in schools and parks and retirement communities. It should spill out of the theaters into the streets. It should be everywhere and about everything.
 

I’ve performed the great works of the canon before. I’ve done Shakespeare and Moliere, Wilder and Williams.
 

None of them have been as rewarding as the hour I spent on Monday at C. C. Young.

Nathaniel French is a junior theater major. He can be reached for comment at [email protected].