Street Theater

You're walking down crowded Fifth Avenue. The urban tension grips your shoulders and you daydream about getting away from it all for a few days. Suddenly, over the traffic's roar you hear a man screaming. "Help! Help! Help! I'm drowning! Help!"

Drowning on Fifth Avenue?

You turn your head, and your feet, toward whatever's going on.

"Oh, no! Marvin! Someone help! Please! My husband's drowning!" cries a tall blonde, her face distorted by grief.

By now you are part of a sizable crowd, all eyes and ears fixed on the unfolding drama.

An official-looking man in an olive suit struggles out from among the onlookers.

"Don't worry, ma'am," he says. "I'll save that poor guy! I'm a social worker! Saving people is my business! Look. The hungriest come to me. If they need a shirt on their back, they come to me. If the sheriff throws them out on the street, they come to me. If they need a-"

"Please hurry-or it'll be too late!" pleads the blonde.

The social worker tears off his jacket and "dives" into the imaginary lake. He swims to the drowning man, grabs him, then starts pulling him back to the shore. The victim struggles, and, reluctantly, the social worker subdues him with a punch. At this point, the drowning man slips out of his jacket. Then the social worker strokes his way back to land.

He yells, "Everything's OK! I told you I'd take care of him! Here he is, ma'am! I told you! I told you I'd save him!"

"Marvin? ... AAAAAAAAAHHH!! You fool! You didn't save Marvin! You saved his coat!"

Now another member of the company steps up and says, "The moral of this story is that while a social worker can alleviate a person's material problems (or save his coat), he can't begin to help the real person living inside the body (or the soul). Only by taking up a spiritual process can we do that. And in this age, the easiest and most recommended process is to chant the Hare Krsna mantra:

When the company performs The Drowning Man, people clap and shout "More! More!" "Many people think that street theater started with the antiwar skits during the Sixties," Sudama Svami noted. "But actually, if you study the history book of Indian drama, you'll discover that street theater originated five hundred years ago in Bengal, with Lord Caitanya Mahaprabhu. He wanted to show people about spiritual life and help them remember God-Krsna."