The room is dark, or it should be. The overhead lights have been extinguished but the windows lining the eastern wall keep even the shadows lurking in the corners at bay. The windowpanes are streaked and smudged from sweaty hands, pressing prints into them as the line of college students stand shoulder to shoulder, waiting. Their professor stands a little back from them; he too is waiting, his eyes on his students, anticipating the silence.

        Slowly, a young man in a charcoal quarter zip and khaki pants steps forward. The shifting eyes of the assembled students suddenly lock onto the figure moving toward the center of the room, his own eyes focused somewhere beyond the room’s walls. He stops and his arms hang limply at his sides as the assembly holds their breath. With halting movements, the man’s right hand raises, his fingers contorted into a figure.

        Three.

        Immediately, a girl at the end of the row steps forward. She knows this young man; she knows what ensnares his heart, what weights him down, and she is ready to bear his burden, shoulder to shoulder. She steps into the center of the room, her eyes focused on her friend, and she offers a slight twitch of her lips. His own lips twitch back.

        There is movement from the other side of the room now. The young man now walking towards the two figures in the middle had stood with his eyes closed and lips moving for the moments leading up to the indicated fingers. He knows now that even though he does not know the particulars is this specific man’s net, he sees that this is his friend and that he knows that he can help lift the net from his shoulders.

        Finally, a third steps from the center of the line. He swaggers into the center of the room, a wide smile on his face as he cuffs the man on the shoulder and moves to stand beside the girl. He mimes straining to lift an imaginary weight from the floor, his face contorted, his mock-ragged breath heaving. Everyone laughs, including the young man. The newest addition “drops” the burden and smiles broadly; laughter was his intention. Now his face sobers and with a knowing look and a slight nod he turns to face the other man, waiting. No other person steps forward; they know that this is not their net to cast.

        The first young man knees begin to bend, his back hunched over, his hands shaking slightly. The others follow suit as each person gently takes hold of the invisible cords that have bound him in a slimy, suffocating embrace for too many months. The young man strains upward once more, muscles locked, chest heaving, eyelids shuttered against the people in the room. His companions watch him and each shift to take a little more weight, eyebrows furled, mouths set. They will not let the net drop.

        One. The quartet swings the net backwards, barely above their hips before letting it swing into the center again. Two. They sway again, and the net flies higher. Three. With one final heave the net soars back above their heads, lighter, before with a bellow that shakes the glass the four fling the net forward, out, away, letting go at the crux of the movement, and it is gone. Casted away, where it cannot wrap its grasping ropes around the young man ever again.

        This is the beauty of the arts through the eyes of Parker Ohman, a graduate student at Missouri State University and a first-year voice scholar. For Parker, the arts are more than just entertainment; it is a medium through which burdens can be lifted, and people, communities, and souls can be transformed.

        Parker attended Wheaton College in Illinois for his undergraduate degree studying voice and theatre. It was at Wheaton that he discovered the true value of the arts for himself and the impact they can have on the community at large. He now reclines in a north side Springfield coffee house across from me, his charcoal quarter zip rolled at the sleeves and his khaki-clad legs crossed as we look into his future.

        When Parker looks, he sees an ensemble of artists, one with singers, dancers, writers, and visual artists all coming together to create art to be taken into spaces that are missing creative influence. He saw an abundance of creative expression in spaces like Chicago and knew that bringing his own creations into those spaces would be valuable but taking it instead into barren communities would be transformative.

        “It’s my theory that communities that don’t have as much access to [the arts] there’s more of a recognition of how precious it is and how powerful it is, and there’s less pretense. I think art has a better chance of achieving its goal because there’s more of a natural receptivity to it in communities that aren’t trained to that it’s entertainment or a consumption experience,” Parker said.

        When Parker visualizes these communities, he sees neighborhoods not metropolitans. It is in the pockets of communities, the places where people work hard to provide for their families and may not have the time to seek out artistic experiences where Parker dreams of bringing creativity to. Public schools with minimal funding, homeless communities, nursing homes – all spaces where art has the potential to thrive if only the seeds are planted and tended properly.

        Art is not just an individual experience in Parker’s eyes; there is a magnetic value to it that inspires communal outpouring of love, connection, and story through the medium the group communicates in. He experienced this for himself particularly at Wheaton where theatrical groups wrapped him in the bonds of community while simultaneously freeing him from the nets that weighed him down. The artists looked beyond their individual ability and saw each other through the lens of Christ, valuing each other as they would prize a masterpiece.

        “It didn’t matter if I was having a happy day or a sad day, if I had stories in my life that I deeply regret or stories that I was deeply proud of. You were valued for your presence in the room; you were a person made in the image of God and who is worthy or respect,” Parker reminisced.

        As coffee continues to be sipped in this northside coffee shop, Parker looks into the future, anticipating the continued impact of the arts on his own life and dreams of pouring out into the lives of others, taking their nets into his own hands and using the creative world to alleviate burdens too heavy to carry.

        “[Art] is meant to share beauty, it’s to share truth, and to give people both an experience in the moment but also to look toward what people are taking from a performance,” he said. I think it we actually believe that then art can change lives.”