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.