Miracles After Easter
A friend says, “You can tell you’re in Mississippi when the churches outnumber the bars.” That’s generally true, but in Fondren, bars might have an advantage of one or two. I don’t think we’re heathens so much as maybe just really thirsty.
The Little Bird has been kind of struggling lately. Because she’s so smart, it’s hard for her to make friends. I’m not nearly as smart, but I have the same trouble. In her mid-thirties, she’s really wondering where she fits in. What part of the world does she belong to? When I was her age, I had the same problem, only I was kind of a jerk about it.
It’s hard for young people to get their first home now. It’s one of the issues I take very seriously. With help from her real dad, she found an opportunity to get a really nice house back in Brandon, where she’s from.
“Will you still love me if I don’t live in Jackson anymore? She asks.
“Child, you could move to Jupiter, and nothing would change.”
She’s not a child. She’s a lady. A really remarkable one, too. I missed her as a child because I’m faithless and stubborn, so in my mind, a child she will remain until I’ve done my penance.
In the confusion of her move, her little cat, Blue, went adventuring. Basically, he ran off, but I recontextualized it so Little Bird would feel better. The cat’s not in peril. It’s seeing the world.
John Maxwell creates plays about the Southern Experience and the Bible. The bible is the framework that holds the Southern Experience, so they go together. Most people were first exposed to John through his one-man play, “Oh, Mr. Faulkner, Do You Write?” My first exposure to him was “BeBe Travels the Globe.” I think that’s the right title. It was on Mississippi Public Broadcasting. John was either still at Ole Miss or had just graduated. I was still pretty little, but he was very young. Someday, ask him to tell you the story about a fan seeing him in a boat on the reservoir.
John’s done maybe five or six biblical plays. His strength is that he takes these stories you’ve heard a million times and reconceptualizes them in language and situations where you can understand them on a personal level. One thing he really excels at is making you understand the confusion and self-doubt the disciples and apostles must have felt. His play about Peter I still think of.
His most recent work is “An Easter Tale.” Which deals not with the Easter events themselves but with their effects. Performing it in churches around town, I had planned to see it at Galloway Memorial United Methodist Church, but God himself opened up the heavens that day, and I decided to catch the next showing at St. Luke’s in Fondren. Generally speaking, if there’s a question about whether or not I should build an ark, I like to stay inside. I’m decent with a sail, but forty days and forty nights is a long time in my schedule. At St. Luke’s today, it was sunny and so beautiful. Everything that could bloom, did bloom.
Directed by Cliff Bowen, the play features:
Ward Emling as Peter
Erick Julian Weeks as John
Clay Rouse as Andrew
Grace Reeves as Mary
Adam Kilgore as Thomas
Bob Crisler as Matthew
Matthew Bishop as James
Mac Mitchell as Judas
Kristine Callahan was the assistant director
Diane Rouse was costumes and props
It’s hard for me to experience a play as just an audience member. As a theater artist for forty years, I tend to experience plays, even really good plays like John’s, through the deconstruction of their parts.
Sometimes, I like to close my eyes or lower my head and let the actors go away, and the characters come forward. Once upon a time, I was working with a guy from Canada who said that I really should light Equity actors differently from non-Equity people. Between us, I couldn’t stand the guy. I thought he was a fake. In every aspect of art, there are pozers. Rather than discuss it with him, I just said something stupid and dismissive like “thanks for your input.” Bullshit really.
If it were somebody I respected as an artist, I might have argued the point.
First, I don’t light actors. I light characters. Once you start lighting actors, you’re breaking the fourth wall, which, as a technician, you especially shouldn’t do unless it’s part of the design concept. That’s a lot of words you may not understand. Just trust me. Don’t do it. What you see on stage are characters, not actors. I don’t care if it’s your thirteen-year-old nephew.
Second, I can see letting seniority count in the green room and the dressing room, but once you’re on stage, everybody is equal, and everybody is subject to the design concept, not their paycheck.
A lot of John’s plays are put on in found spaces. Church sanctuaries and fellowship halls in particular. These places usually don’t have much for technical effects. Usually, they just have a top light, and if there’s any light on the actor’s faces, it’s bouncing off the walls or the floor. These are things most architects, and very few theatergoers, consider.
John likes to write in spaces for obvious lighting cues, to be performed in spaces where there is no light board. I love him. Nobody is perfect. Watching the show today, I thought, what could be done that these churches might have that would have the same impact as a lighting cue?
Nearly every church has a piano or an organ. Instead of a lights-up or lights-down cue, why not play a simple up or down chord on the piano? It would have the same effect, but achieved in a different way. I wish I’d gone to the earlier performances now, because I would have suggested it. I’m kind of anxious to see what it’d be like now.
When I can’t write or paint, I text the Little Bird. “The well is dry. I’ve broken it.” It’s something she understands. Like me, if she’s not creating, then something is wrong. She writes like a jazz saxophonist or a cellist. Doubting herself and the collapse of her magazine, she hasn’t been writing. The magazine isn’t her fault. Keeping a magazine going is a monumental task. I’ve started and shut down two magazines. Still, she took it as a very personal failure. When it happened to me, I did too.
When Blue ran away, I started to worry about my girl. She’s strong, but she feels everything, the entire universe, and everything in it. She accidentally posted a cover letter for a new story on her Instagram. A story she’s written for publication. “Send me a copy.” I’m pretty sure she knew that was coming.
We have an agreement. She’s never to apologize—ever. She apologized for how bad she thought the story was three times. Of course, it was brilliant. To make herself feel better, she got dressed up and bought tickets to the small circus performing in her neighborhood. She wanted to go alone and relish what she thought was her failure. Planning to surprise her, I text and say I’m on my way. Apparantly they were having two performances. One at five and one at seven. She went at five and I was going at seven, so I turned around.
“Can I buy you dinner?”
“Maybe next week. I’d like to just be alone and take all this in.” This child, my blessed friend, is seriously hurting, and there’s nothing either the Poor Knight or the Great Beast can do.
I decided to paint in acrylic rather than watercolor that night. Because I was distracted, I forgot to prime the surface with gesso. The painting turned out ok, but you can tell the surface wasn’t right. At least I can.
When I paint, I tend to visit another planet. Even though my phone was in my pocket, I missed the beep. Cleaning my brushes and making tea. I sit at the computer and see the video she made for me.
The video of her little cat, now home again, eating everything in the house!
Everybody who reads my stories has been praying that Little Bird’s little cat be restored to her. They’ve been sending me all sorts of advice on how to lure an adventure cat back home.
My Easter Miracle is that Little Bird’s Little Cat was reunited with her. She’s writing again. All the things I couldn’t do for her happened through God’s finger.
I worry by nature. It’s hard for me to just trust prayer. Some people are really good about it. I’m not. I needed a friend who understood what it’s like when I write. God sent me the child of one of my oldest friends. I should have known something was up. I can only write and read at all because her grandmother figured out what might be keeping me from it.
