Noah's Flood

"My blessing now I give thee here,
To thee, Noah, my servant dear,
That vengeance shall no more appear,
And now, farewell, my darling dear."

Playing God

I don't think I have ever been as deliberate about anything I have done as I was in portraying God.

At first it had seemed like a lark, a sophisticated joke even, a sign of God's sense of humor that I who have spent so much of the past year struggling with my own concept and theology of God should be selected to play God. It was an irony that was not lost on anyone who knows me well.

But soon, something that had seemed like a fun challenge, an intellectual exercise became almost a spiritual practice. It didn't take long for me to realize and accept the incredible responsibility involved in being asked to embody God.

I wanted to understand every line. I wanted to be deliberate about every action. I wanted to consider carefully every reaction.

It was important to me that God be played as a God I could believe in. It was important to me not to present a caricature of God. It was important to me that we somehow be able to better understand this Genesis God.

When we decided not to do two versions of the play, I lost the ability to portray an "Old Testament" God in one play and a post-modern Process God in the other. And that proved to be quite a gift to forming this character. It forced me to put all the natures of God into one character, just as I am forced to do in life. How do we reconcile a God who seems to select one family to save, a God who would wipe out almost all of humanity with the God of the rainbow, the God of promise and hope?

It was important to me that God's actions not appear to cause the storm, even though the lines would suggest it. And that was a suggestion that came from Lori Anne and direction that came from Melinda, too.

This was a God who is close to humanity. A God who abides among all Creation, even though many are unaware. This was a God who directs and leads and guides and hopes. This God hoped Noah would build the ark after a few firmly delivered nudges. This God hoped Noah's family would come together, but God left them to their own devices. This was a God who was never far away but who did not intervene. This was a God whose first reaction at the realization that the storm would swallow up the Gossip was to wrap arms of comfort around her and guide her home. This was a God who shared the heartbreak that the Servant was drowning. This was a God who held her in loving arms as she died and her spirit departed. This was a God who shared the shock at the storm's devastation. This was a God who brought light in the darkness. This was a God who could forgive any transgression -- and be forgiven. This was a God who could worship in partnership with humanity. This was a God who did not need sacrifice. This was a God humbled by individual transformation. This was a God whose thanksgiving for that transformation was the gift of promise, the gift of hope, the gift of the rainbow. This was a God who sees the potential for every member of humanity to be God's "darling dear."

This was my God.

Opening Night

Last night, I felt at home in the role of God.
Tonight, I couldn't even find the address.

It was a thrill to actually be facing an opening night, but I couldn't find God.

The day itself had been odd.

I hadn't slept well. And it seemed a very odd, almost surreal exercise to need to attend classes today. I would have liked to move from dress rehearsal to a day of rest to opening night.

Instead I had to interrupt creative energy with head-based, left brain discussions of theologies of religious pluralism, Paul Knitter's models of religious theology and James Fowler's stages of faith. Which stage do we think Noah is in? I say, Stage 3 -- Conventional -- "a stage where authority derives from the top down." And Noah's wife? I say Stage 4 --Reflective -- "a stage of angst and struggle, in which one must face difficult questions regarding identity and belief."

Then, I had to do a site visit in vocational discernment to a high-end assisted living facility, where the marketing director made it clear that they have to protect their assests by turning away people who aren't well enough to live there. It was depressing, even a bit disgusting. Maybe I should have channeled my ire at their callousness into my portrayal of God -- but then, I wasn't playing wrathful God.

We assembled at the theatre, put our props in place, finished our costuming and makeup, walked through our bow, the one thing we had not rehearsed and then hung out for what seemed like forever in the green room. There was lots of chat, all pleasant, but I found it an odd place to be to try to prepare for performance.

When we entered the set, I sat down to read as I had in rehearsal, and I found myself being distracted by the magazine. I kept going to head places, I kept being distracted by random thoughts or ideas triggered by text on the page. So, I started running lines in my head. Even my nervousness was head-based, I wasn't feeling it in my body as I sometimes do before I read scripture from the lectern. The lights went down and then came back up with a spotlight on God.

Noah's Flood had opened.

God's first speech is the one I have known the longest, and I thought it was the one I knew the best. But I tripped up on pieces of it. And, when you drop lines in rhyming verse, you have to figure out how to get to the next rhyme. You can't really just make stuff up. Once I had flubbed some lines, I was terrified of messing up some more. And I did, blowing some lines in each speech.

The result was that I spent opening night THINKING the part of God, not ACTING it.

But the sacrifice scene was amazing. In many ways, I felt as if I was part of the audience. Even in rehearsal but especially during the performance, I did not feel that this sacrifice was to me, even though I was in the role of God. I was watching the transformation of these individuals and their humility and grace. By dress rehearsal I was in a mental space for the sacrifice scene. What it became, for me, was a time of worship between God and Noah's family. So, each time one of them dropped their head in a bow, I had God bow God's head, too. This was mutual worship, mutual transformation, mutual grace.

One of the gifts Melinda gave the cast in her direction was her voiced sentiment that the play would be what it would be. It was her way of trying to get us not to stress. Nevertheless, I felt horrible about blowing lines. Melinda told me she hadn't noticed that many flubs and that I must have covered well. And then, she gave me another gift. She said that the audience is rooting for us. The audience is with us and wants us to do well. The audience is graciously willing to receive what we offer. Two members of my home congregation drove up from San Diego to see the opening performance, and their reaction proved Melinda's words true.

There is grace, even for God.

Dress rehearsal

The responsibility of playing God hit me with full force tonight -- though I suspect it might be even stronger tomorrow.

Dres rehearsal felt like real theatre in ways other classes haven't.

Tonight, even though the rehearsal was bumpy, I felt in rhythm with the part and the play and the players.

At noon, we were still struggle to attire God. I was about to make another run to a chain clothing store when I looked down at one of my commuter colleagues in the commuter dorm and saw the most gorgeous purple shawl. And I just pointed. The commuters have watched me struggle for several weeks on outfitting God. So, when I saw Carol's shawl, I just pointed and said: That's what God needs. And she knew it to be true. She had brought the shawl to wear this weekend at a workshop. But she offered to loan it to me and it is exactly the look I was hoping for for God.

What's odd to me is that my God has become much more like the Divine Feminine. And, as someone who embraces the Divine Feminine, I find it funny that I had not deliberately sought to portray God that way. I even get to wear the necklace that my friend Molly made for me. Last year when I had lost God, I was struggling with an image for God and finally landed on something I could embrace. For me, the image of God was the Divine Feminine divided by infinity, combining my love of Spirit with my love of science. Divided by infinity is a concept I made up, but, to me, it implies eternity. That Divine Feminine going on and on and on forever.

I felt at home in the role of God tonight. And honored to be able to portray one of an infinite number of images of God.

Amen

Transformation

I began this day at the headquarters of the Cal-Pac Conference at a design committee meeting for this year's annual conference, a drama of a very different sort. Yet, the mission is not that different from the aim of these medieval dramas. We talked about how to set the whole conference experience in the context of worship. We talked about how to convey the theme of peacemaking in word and song and motion. We talked about how to keep the theological concepts we hold dear at the center of the assembly.

To me, that doesn't seem that different from trying to create a drama to convey an appreciation for the presence of God and the role of good and evil in the life of medieval towns and people.

I drove from Pasadena to Claremont and my first stop, even before unpacking at the commuter dorm, was Mudd Theatre. I went in and sat on the steps that are central to our set and tried to prepare myself for the next four days of rehearsal and production. I tried to rid my mind of extraneous concerns or even important concerns that were not urgencies. I wanted to steep myself in the theatre and reconnect with the play and the set and my role. It had been two weeks, and I had worked hard to learn my lines over spring break, but a key missing element was the stage and the other players. So, after a time, I walked through my linde and my blocking, trying to blend movement memory with my memorized lines.

At one point, Jack came into the theatre and we talked for a time about the class and the production. It was nice to get a chance to thank him for making this opportunity possible. I told him I still had a few lines I was struggling to understand and that I had found that understanding helped markedly with both memorization and motivation. During the course of the conversation, he told me that he missed the ending line as it is written in the Chester version of Noah's Flood. The play ends somewhat ambiguously with a blessing from God that concludes: "And now farewell my darling dear." Who is darling? Is it Noah? Is it the audience? And what of goodbye? Is God leaving? Melinda and I, both admitted literalists, had talked about our discomfort with the line and had changed it to: "And now farewell, all gatehred here." A neat, tight ending that seemed to bring an unmistakable conclusion. Jack told me that he liked the ambiquity of the original line. He liked the questions it raised. He liked that it might send an audience away with questions rather than with a sense of a tidy ending. Lori Anne had told me much the same thing the last time we rehearsed.

I practiced my lines and blocking some more and marveled at how much fun it has been to get to be in a play again after more than 25 years away from any kind of theatre. Over the few weeks of rehearsal, I have been surprised at the number of times I have had a sense of getting to relive memories long past. I thought of Virginia Jessee,
my speech and drama teacher through all four years of high school. I thought of Virginia's charm bracelet. She was one of the most devout Christians I knew growing up, but she had a huge superstition when it came to our plays. She had two charm bracelets full of charms, because the tradition was that the cast of each production gave her a charm to represent their play at dress rehearsal. She always worried that maybe the latest cast wouldn't know or would forget. So for the last week of rehearsals she would wear the charm bracelets and on stage we could hear them rattling. I swear she rattled them on purpose. I sat in Mudd Theatre and realized that I missed the soung of VJ's charm bracelets. And I wished she could be present for the performance. At one point, I thought about calling the daughter I knew best to see if she could bring Mrs. Jessee out, but I don't know the current state of her health or her mobility. And, I'm embarassed to admit this, but at the point I would have invited her, I still didn't have confidence in our production. Was it going to feel like a real production or was it going to feel like a class putting on a show?



It's also hard to be in a play again and not think of my father. I think he was my biggest fan in the five years I was active in school and community theatre. When I played Emily in Our Town in high school, the final speech brought tears to my father's eyes. When I did a solo performance of Emily Dickinson in the Belle of Amherst as a drama class project my freshman year in college, I honestly think he saw me not as his daugther but as that reclusive, eccentric and prolific poet. And he had always been impressed that my last role was as the Queen in Hamlet. My father had been a journalist and then a college professor, and at some point early in my original career discernment it became clear to me that my father didn't really want me to pursue either of those professions. I was also a journalism student, and my sophmore year in college, I had to decide whether to pursue journalism or drama. I chose journalism, and I always jokingly said that I chose it because I liked to eat meals regularly and I knew I'd have a better chance at that in journalism than drama. In truth, I loved them both. Years later, when it was clear that my father was very proud of my journalism career, I asked him why he hadn't wanted me to pursue journalism or teaching. I don't remember his answer to that question, what I remember clearly is his answer to the next question I asked. "Well, if you didn't want me to be a journalist or a teacher, what did you want me to do?" With only a moment's hesitation, perhaps a hesitation in realization that he had never made this clear to me, he said: "I always hoped you would give drama a try."

My father would have loved the fact that I have found a way to do just a bit more drama, and we would have had some great conversations about my great sense of responsibility over how to portray God. He would have loved even more hearing how playing the part made me face my own thoughts and notions of not only the image of God but of how God interacts with humanity, how God interacts with me.

This night was a full night of rehearsal, a progressive rehearsal beginning with God and Noah.

I have known and respected our Noah, Paul Mitchell, from a distance since I entered CST, but this class was my first chance to get to know him. Both Paul and I have been somewhat overwhelmed learning our roles and our blocking and our on-stage interaction, that in some ways I feel I only know him as Noah or as Paul trying to become Noah. But my respect for him has only grown. He so cares about not just his part but how it is conveyed and received, just as I sense he cares about worship. Without exchanging many words at all between us, we seem to work well together to recreate this depiction of one family's experience of God.

Mrs. Noah joined us an hour later. Jeri has been one of my closest friends and classmates since we first sat together in Hebrew Bible our first semester at CST. In the come-and-go housing that is the commuter dorm, Jeri has roomed with both Melinda and me. I'm certain Jeri gave an outstanding audition, but I teased her at the time telling her she was perfect for Mrs. Noah but she was not cast based on her audtion but based on her antics that Melinda witnessed last spring in commuter housing. And Jeri is perfect for Mrs. Noah. She is funny and feisty but also deeply caring of her friends and attentive to her relationships. I know that if she really were Mrs. Noah and the flood was a comin', she would stubbornly refuse to get on the boat if she couldn't bring me and her other dear friends along. Since I have come to see Mrs. Noah as representing all humanity, I have spent a lot of time thinking about God's motivation for saving her. Here's my conclusion: God picked Noah, but God knew all about Noah's wife when God picked Noah. If God had wanted a different kind of woman, God would have picked a different architect for the ark. God clearly values fiesty women; God clearly values those in humanity who are willing to question and to challenge. And God also values those who are open to transformation.

Noah's family joined us next. I have loved sitting atop God's ladder and watching each of these characters, each of these actors, each of these classmates. It has been fun to watch them have fun together. It has been fun to watch them grow into their parts. It has been fun to think of them as this wildly disfunctional family that God, nevertheless, has chosen to repopulate the earth! This night, we got the final blocking and concept of the sacrifice scene, and it is powerful. Because, like I said above, that which we call God, that which we call good within ourselves and one another, values all who are open to transformation.

Does God wear lipstick?

We've been wrestling with the question of what God will wear.

The original concept made sense to me. The play begins in a backyard, summer barbecue setting with everyone in casual, outdoor wear. God would be dressed the same as a sporty, REI type.

But the cast's attire changed to be all black with the suggestion of outdoor wear, an apron here, a ballcap there. So God as REI women didn't seem to read. I wanted to wear black, too, and add "priestly" suggestions, a scarf or a jacket I have that is trimmed in such a way to suggest "stole."

It took me actually wearing the khaki pants through one rehearsal for folks to see that it didn't really work.

But the question of what God will/should wear has not been resolved.

When we were discussing the costumes that day, there was a point where Melinda said: "You're being such an actress." And I took it in the good-natured way she intended but continued to try to make my point. Melinda said the jacket I wanted to wear was "too CST" by which I think she meant it was too much like something a CST professor would wear.

But here's my hope: When we studied these plays, we learned that the God figure or the good figure was often dressed as an archbishop. I don't want to wear a miter, but I do think there should be a priestly suggestion to God.

More than anything, though, I want God to look together and sharp, which I think is what Melinda was trying to suggest with her original idea.

Back in the day, when money wasn't tight, I'd just go to REI and outfit God and be done with it. Trying to clothe God out of my closet or the closet of my friends has been a challenge.

Today, I asked Molly what God wore when she was at CST and did the play. Their production was set in Africa and they wore African dresses. God was in purple.

So this week I began to wonder if we were going to wear theatrical makeup. Since none has been discussed, I decided we weren't. So, I started trying to decide how to apply my normal makeup. I rarely wear lipstick, but I know it adds color and makes a difference in photos. So I began to ask myself, does God wear lipstick. And, for some reason, that question made the whole "What will God wear?" discussion seem far less significant.

Of course God wears lipstick.

A long rehearsal and a pottle of malmsey

Here is a pottle of Malmsey.
Good and strong,
It will rejoice both heart and tongue.
Though Noah thinks us never so long,
Yet we will drink alike.
-- Noah's wife



This week's rehearsal was long and hard.

It was good work but it was tedious.

I was feeling more and more overwhelmed by the fact that this was the last rehearsal before dress rehearsal and we were just adding the finaly blocking.

We had begun working with some props and someone decided that we needed another empty wine bottle for the servant's tray. I was sitting onstage beside Jeri during a break from rehearsing the opening scene when this conversation began and Melinda was directly in front of us. I said: "We're planning to empty a bottle of wine later tonight, we can bring that one." Melinda said: "Really?" I said: "Yes, Want to Join Us?" She said: "Yes!"

That was just one little quiet aside in an evening full of details and direction. Lori Anne, who had coached and encouraged from the side aisle last week, came to the center aisle tonight and followed the script to prompt us for our lines. She would prompt us but also encourage us, trying to assure us that we were very close to knowing our lines. I was struck by two things. It was a side of her I hadn't seen. And, also, there was an earnest humility in her willingness to sit with the script and prompt us.

As the evening progressed and ill-defined tensions rose, Melinda walked up to me at one point, leaned in and said: Were you serious about that wine?

So Jeri and Melinda and I headed to commuter housing after rehearsal and drank wine and talked about he play and talked about seminary and we even talked about real life. Melinda has been doing a great job as director, but it was wonderful to get to just be with her as a friend. All of us have more hectic schedules this semester than last year when we all lived together in commuter housing and were slogging through Christian Tradition together. It was nice to get to just relax a bit and enjoy one another's company and laughter.

During World Religions in Dialogue the next day, I blocked God's final speech myself, drawing the final scene on a note card and writing lines in at each stop. We had blocked this scene in general the night before, but the movements hadn't seemed to match the words, and the rehearsal was too busy for anyone, really, to pay attention to that level of detail.

Mad God or Sad God

We spent more time blocking the show tonight, learning our movements and places in relation to one another.

I have been impressed since tryouts with Melinda as a director, and experiencing her vision as she takes us through blocking has enhanced that.

I have several questions about God and God's interaction with humanity. (That seems like an understatement of my current personal relationship with the notion of God, but what I'm actually talking about here is the God of this play.)


My greatest question can be stated simply: Is this God a Mad God or a Sad God? Is this the stereotypically wrathful "Old Testament," Charlton Heston in the Ten Commandments God? (You're saying to yourself, no, he played Moses, BUT he was also the voice of God.) Or is this God the one who cries with us at life's tragedies, the God of Marjorie Suchocki and other process theologians.

I also wonder, for the purposes of this play, what kind of universe are we creating. Does God interact with the humans? If yes, are the humans aware of this interaction? Do they see God or just experience the presence of God?

After class, I worked with Melinda for about an hour on God's blocking.

We ran through the first speech:

I God which all the world hath wrought
Heaven and Earth and all of nought
I see my people in deed and thought
Are set foully in sin.

Melinda suggested that God is disappointed and weary.

Man that I made I will destroy
Beast worm and fowl that fly
For on the earth they do me annoy
the folk that are thereon

Here, Melinda had me look down on Mrs. Noah, who is seated beneath me, to look down on her in disgust as representing all of humankind.

And then, a change of heart, and true compassion still mixed with annoyance for the next lines, where Melinda directed me to sit next to Mrs. Noah and put my arm around her shoulders:

It harms me so heartfully
The malice now that can multiply
That sore it greiveth me inwardly
That ever I made man.

Melinda's direction went something like this as she gestured to the place where Mrs. Noah sits and I looked there too:

You're so disgusted, like a parent, you're so upset by what she has done, and then, in the next second, you look again and say: but she's so adorable.

And seeing Mrs. Noah reminds me of the Mister, which leads into God's speech:

Therefore Noah, my servant free
A righteous man art as I see
A ship soon thou shalt make thee...

Time traveling into this journal from post-production, I can say that I now look on this night of one-on-one work with Melinda as foundational for the character of God. This was the night where I had to think not about all those who perished but about the good in humanity represented even in the flawed character of Mrs. Noah. Part of my motivation as God -- even though I was trying to play God as a Process God -- was why save Mrs. Noah? And the answer became because she questions, because she balks, because she represents all of us, hearing the story of Noah and asking all of our why questions. More than Noah himself, who's a little too obedient and single-minded for my tastes, Mrs. Noah came to represent humanity.

Katrina and the Waves

When director Betty Bernhard visited our class last, we began to ask her questions about the reality of our circumstances. We're a class of non-actors, though some of us have high school or college experience. We have only three weeks to rehearse, which sounds like a lot until you realize that's only one night a week. It became very clear that it would be a challenge just to pull off one show well, much less two.

The other thing that happened was that Betty threw out an offhand comment on wondering what it would be like to set the play within the modern context of Hurricane Katrina. There was some excited buzz as we talked about this during class and during breaks.

We had a chance in the latter part of class to run through the lines together for the first time. I was surprised by how difficult the rhymining lines were and how hard they seemed to follow what with God directing Noah to take along some binding slitch and all those specfic instructions about cubit measurements and how many clean and unclean animals to take along. If it's hard for us to follow after reading it a couple of times, I wonder how an audience will do.

We got an email from Melinda, our director, this week telling us that the production team has decided that we will do only one version of the play. It seems challenge enough simply to do one version well in the time we have. Since I was to play God in both productions, I wasn't affected as much, but I sympathized for the other actors who would have two parts to learn. For me, though, it means I need to rethink how I portray God. My plan was to show two very different natures of God. An more traditional "Old Testament" God for one and a more Process Theology God for the other. Now I need to find a way to blend both natures into one, but then, that's how I have to relate to my own concept of God. I have to reconcile that God of the Hebrew Bible with my post-modern sense of being led, nudged, sometimes cajoled by the sometimes-gentle, sometimes cajoling and invading nature of that which we call God into my life.



More troubling for me was the part of Melinda's email that said the production team had decided to set the play in New Orleans before during and after Hurricane Katrina. While I think there could be some profound ways to tell the Noah story as God's judgment on the abandonment of entire neighborhoods and people by governments who decided not to provide proper levees -- for that "sin" -- I don't think that's the way we would go. Also, it seems difficult to me to take a play that relies on humor to convey its message and layer that on top of the devastation of Katrina. And, I still have vivid memories of being in Louisiana on a work trip just three weeks after Katrina and listening to people who earnestly believed that the Hurricane was God's wrath coming down on the lifestyle of the city of New Orleans. They were quick to name not only the debauchery of Mardi Gras but also their sense that this was God's commentary on homosexuality. It was chilling to work side by side with these folks in the name of the same God and be called to that work for such different reasons. It would be very difficult for me to deliver some of God's lines if they were set in the context of judgement of New Orleans. Early on, God says: "I see my people in deed and thought are set foully in sin." And talks about "man, who through fleshly liking is my foe." The other thing that troubles me a little is that this was just decided. We didn't discuss as a class how to set the show. Now, in normal productions, the cast and crew would just be carrying out the producer and director's vision, but our charge in this class is to study medieval drama and then consider how to put one on.

These concerns, it turns out, were shared by others because we spent a good bit of the openig of this week's class in a full-on debate about the merits or not of setting the show in a Katrina context. Melinda's email made some good theological points, particularly that setting the play in the midst of the Katrina devastation "fits our motivational thrust: Why is Noah/Noah's Wife and family saved and not The Gossip and others? ... (and) it fits Beth Leehy's point of the Medievals wrestling with the plague and us wrestling with a Hurricane - uncontrollable major devestating events of which we have no control ... " We didn't resolve much in the discussion, which got a bit heated, but we do seem at least in consensus to move forward in a contemporary context.

We began blocking the play tonight. I had forgotten that this is how I used to learn lines in my high school and drama days. Theres's something about walking and talking that helps build a play into muscle memory. Though, three rehearsals won't be the same as three weeks of rehearsals.

Melinda's email had also asked the cast to consider the final sacrifice scene and come prepared to talk about what sacrifice his or her character would make to God.
We didn't get to this discussion tonight, and she hadn't asked me, but I kept finding myself wanting to speak for God and say what God wanted. I think God wants the people on the boat -- the people on the ark that is Earth -- to make whatever changes they need to make in their hearts and in their lives so that we truly know peace. That's what God wants.

Directing is to ministry...

"An artist is someone who draws attention to what is praiseworthy in the universe."
-- William Ball, stage director

Betty Bernhard, acting and directing professor at Pomona College, shared that quote with us tonight during a lively guest lecture on directing.

Her talk was practical and philosophical, and, truly without belaboring the point, she kept drawing parallels between directing and ministry and, at one point, between the director and God.

Much of her advice for directors would also be good advice for ministers. Rather than belabor that point myself, I'm going to capture some of her advice for directors and invite myself and anyone else who reads this simply to insert the word "minister" for "director" and consider the similarities.

For example, the director should tell the stage manager never to run from Point A to Point B during the dress rehearsal because it alarms the actors. The director, too, must maintain a presence of calm no matter what disaster may be unfolding.

"You have to be very calm even if it's killing you."

Actors need praise. They thrive on it. They live for it. As a director, Bernhard said, "you must discipline yourself to give praise."

The director serves as the host of the play much the way a minister extends hospitality to a congregation, she said.

And, with some excellent vocational discernment advice, she said: "Don't do a play that you don't really love."

The same principle applies to the people in the production: "Don't talk anyone into doing anything on your show that they don't really want to."

The director needs to make sure that the play and the players speak with and to the audience, not through it.

Directors have moral, ethical, spiritual and financial responsibilities for the show.

Directors have to be very enthusiastic.
Don't be a director if you don't have great stamina.

I asked her who chooses to be a director, who feels drawn to directing: "People who are good at seeing the big picture. People who are good with deadlines."

Bernhard cautioned us against a scarcity mentality telling us not to feel limited by what we do and don't have. "Follow God's example and create a universe out of what's lying around."

On a more personal note, I continue to be surprised by how excited I am to be doing a play again after decades of not. It has been very telling to realize anew that theatre is, indeed, one of my loves.

I recently heard someone describe a bright young woman who changed her major from psychology to engineering, gave engineering a noble try and then decided to switch back to psychology. Those who knew her well said that when she talked about sociological situations, particularly in work settings where a psychology degree might help in a human relations job, she would light up in ways she rarely did when she talked about engineering. That's good discernment.

I light up these days in this class. And, I light up when I talk about it. But, I'm not changing my major, because I also light up when I talk about ministry, and I light up when I talk about worship, and I light up when I struggle with theological issues in scripture. And, I no longer light up nearly as much when I talk about journalism.

My hope is that as a minister, I, too, can be someone who draws attention to what is praiseworthy in the universe.

Morality Play

For more than a week in the early days of the semester, my husband would come upon me reading and I would look up from my book and smile broadly. This isn't the usual reaction he sees when I'm reading for school. But this semester, I got to -- had to, really -- read a brilliant work of fiction: Morality Play by Barry Unsworth.

The novel is a mystery of sorts about a traveling troupe of players in the Middle Ages. Our professors assigned it for its historical accuracy in detailing the nuances of everyday life in those times.

I was fascinated by how the players put on their plays with a small ensemble and a ragged array of costumes. They also had symbolic masks and sometimes carried symbolic props. What most drew my attention, though, was the complex set of hand signals the players used to communicate with one another as the play was in progress as well as the common set of mimes and gestures known not only to the players but to their audience as a kind of shorthand to establish character and motivation.

The play we will do, Noah's Flood, was done when the productions were put on by guilds and were more elaborate.

Prof. Lori Ann Ferrell was in class for the first time this week and led our discussion of Unsworth's novel, trying to get us to consider what it told us about medieval times and then trying to get us to consider how we would apply what we had learned to our own production.

At the beginning of class, our director, Melinda Teter, explained that she had cast the play two ways for two different productions. The first would be a standard portrayal of the play, the second would cross genders with men playing the role of women and women playing the role of men. All the roles change in the second production except God. God remains constant.

Nevertheless, I began to wonder if the second play might allow us to think creatively about the nature and essence of God. Is it possible to tell the first story as it is written -- with an angry God deciding to wipe out much of creation and start over -- and tell the second story with a God who is less directly involved? A God who doesn't intervene.

And what does God wear? There has been some talk that a group of dancers on campus might be persuaded to dance in with multi-colored streamers to represent the rainbow. And the flood, too, could have rising waters that dance across the stage. Maybe God is wrapped in the streamers that will become water and the streamers that become rainbow and hands the streamers to the dancers as a way of bringing the flood, as a way of placing the rainbow.


Credit for this photo goes to National Geograpic. To learn more about it go here

And how does an actor play God? So often, good acting involves freeing yourself to become one with your character, letting your character embody you, becoming, if only for a time, this other. Can you do that acting as God? And what about this wrathful Old Testament God, how does an actor with a different theology of God portray that God?

I'll have plenty of time in the next few weeks to consider all of these things because the person Melinda cast as God is me.

My seminary friends and a few in San Diego know that events in my life in the past year have challenged my thoughts on the nature and essence of God -- though I still hold tight to the Gospel message of Jesus and the loving guidance of the Spirit. These friends are taking great pleasure in the fact that, having lost God at times in the past year, I now have to find God within myself.

Auditions and the return of theatre

When the ancient Greek culture disappeared, so did theatre.

As we learned in the second week of class, it was centuries before formal theatre returned, even then it wasn't fully embraced again until Shakespeare's time. As Prof. Coogan said: "That's a long time with no theatre."

Which is not to say the world was without drama. Life is drama.

The early church was opposed to theatre, which helps explain why there was not a rapid rebirth. Yet the church kept drama alive. As our BBC documentary noted, the church, each day, kept theatre alive in "the mystery and drama of holy communion." The Mass itself was religious drama.

Over time, the church began to tell its most sacred stories in drama -- the story of the nativity, the story of Christ's passion, death and resurrection. Those dramas were told on the church steps, but soon the religious dramas left the church. They became the province of the people and theatre was reborn.

With that backdrop -- and with the admonition from Prof. Coogan that he could point to 19th century documents warning us Methodists to steer clear of the evil influences of theatre -- we launched into production planning and auditions for the medieval mystery play we will stage this semester from Noah's story.

My friend Melinda Teter is the director. Melinda entered seminary when I did, leaving a career in production with the LA Opera. It was a joy to see Melinda drawing on her gifts and expertise from her former vocation in service to her new path.

In our first year, I think many of us who came from other professions thought we needed to submerge those talents or distance ourselves from them. I delight now as I watch each of us acknowledge those past crafts and learn how to use them in seminary and in ministry.

It was fun, too, to watch Melinda direct each person who auditioned. Offering encouragement and praise while seeking to draw more energy and passion from each performance. (I also got the sense that she was also testing how well each person responds to direction.)

It had been years since I had auditioned for a play. I felt a wonderful sense of freedom in realizing that I truly didn't care what part I got or whether I got a part at all. In fact, I told Melinda I would happily just be a part of the menagerie.

We each read speeches from the voice of God and from the wife of Noah. And I had fun reading both. I had fun considering "God's motivation". And I had fun as Noah's wife scoffing at Noah and his little boat.

I realized anew the power of story, the power of words, and the power of drama to bring story and words to life.

I had forgotten what it feels like to walk onto a stage and, for a time, become someone else. I had forgotten both the freedom and the sense of responsibility to be true to character.

But I have never forgotten that "all the world's a stage and all the men and women merely players."

The Bacchae and the Beginning of Class

I haven't been in a theatre class since 1979.

And I shouldn't have been surprised, but I was surprised when I attended the first class of Medieval Religious Drama and realized how excited I was to be studying theatre again.

Many things make this class attractive:

1.) The professors are both legendary. Jack Coogan has been part of the Claremont faculty since Noah studied theology here. His gentle but wily spirit, his humor, his passion for worship and the arts all make him a delight to learn from. Lori Anne Ferrell is a brilliant historian, also with a passion for her subject. I don't know her, but I know her work. A few years ago she curated a show at the Huntington Library called The Bible and the People and I was astounded both at the content and the presentation.

2) In addition to studying about medieval mystery plays, we get to stage one!

3) It fulfills a graduation requirement for a worship class related to some art form.

4) Several of my good friends are enrolled.

5) It's not Augustine or Schleiermacher.

6) It's drama. Drama. I get to play again!

On the first night of class, after Jack walked us through the plan for the course and our requirements, he told us that before we could study the medieval plays, we needed to understand the history of theatre before them.

He showed part of a BBC series that discussed the origins of theatre. In all my high school and college drama classes, I had never learned the origin. I knew about the Greek comedy and drama masks, but I didn't know that theatre started with the Greeks. The video connected the beginnings of drama to much earlier religious celebrations that involved choruses of people singing and dancing to honor a god. Theatre began, the narrator said, when the first man stepped from the chorus and began speaking solo. The documentary went on to discuss three known Greek playwrights and their works, focusing at length on Euripides and his play, "The Bacchae."

I sat in the darkened Mudd theatre astounded. Long before the narrator mentioned The Bacchae, I could recognize the play in many of the images. As a high school drama student I had played Choryphaeus, the chorus leader, in a summer drama workshop production at The University of Texas. Even then, I knew we were not grasping the full meaning and depth of the play. We got that it was about drunkenness and we were definitely tittilated by its raw, yet sometimes sensual, overtones, but that's about all we got. It was fun playing wild women. It was fun imagining and making wild costumes. It was even fun chanting in unison. But, 30 years later, I felt an odd sense of satisfaction that, among my theatre education, I got to perform in one of the first plays. I had lived this history, at least for the moments that I had been overtaken by the role of Choryphaeus and transported to Euripedes' world.

Now, I get to experience another important era of theatre and learn about the people who wrote and played these parts and the people for whom they played, traveling from town to town bringing biblical stories to life.

Here are a few photos from that long-ago Bacchae summer:


At the drama workshop, we learned many facets of theatre: costuming, lighting, set design, blocking, directing. And makeup. Check out the body language of the instructor. You can tell by his hand that he wasn't thrilled with my work! But check out my classmate. She did a great job.



At least our director, Stephen Coleman, was easy on the eyes, though he was tough on us, too.








A trio from the chorus in full costume and makeup. That's me in front.









The Company