Theatre and Theology: Addendum and Apocrypha

A few years back, I wrote a series of essays about theatre and theology, in preparation for my coverage of the (now-defunct) Spiritual Fringe. Since I’m gearing up to start writing reviews of yet another spirituality-themed theatre festival, I thought it might be worthwhile to revisit some of my thinking about the subject. After all, I’ve had two years – two more years of wrestling with my faith and my career, and I think I’m better equipped to articulate some of my thoughts again.

First of all, I consider my faith to be the center of my life and work. My thinking and writing about other subjects – politics, art – is a direct result of my thinking about more metaphysical issues. I suspect that this makes me something of an aberration within my profession – I would characterize the attitude of most local artists towards religion to vary from a kind of vague disinterest to outright hostility, with a few pockets of warm enthusiasm. Though I would argue that all of my plays have a religious subtext, there’s rarely anything explicit in the work. Yet another reason that I’m drawn to fantasy – metaphor is a powerful tool for examining ideology.

Yet I, like most, find the Bible-thumping fundamentalism of the neoconservatives to be actively repugnant, a fusion of religion and politics that capitalizes on the worst of both. So I spent some time exploring the more left-wing, social-justice-driven religious movements, and found myself kinda wanting to thump a Bible. Why? Aside from my own contrary nature?

I suspect that, in an age of globalization, the defining artistic movement is fusion – fusion between different disciplines and specializations, fusion between cultures. Religion has not been left untouched by this movement, and many of the more progressive churches have proudly absorbed many of the tenets of Eastern thought.

I’m no stranger to Eastern philosophy – and I suspect that, having seen China up close, I’m more willing than most to acknowledge the dark side of Confucianism. That said, I have a profound admiration for the writings of Lao Tzu and the Pali Canon. Attempting to summarize the whole of Eastern thought is a dangerous and foolish endeavor – roughly equivalent to, say, trying to sum up the single message of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam – but if I had to try to single out what’s drawn *me* to those particular texts, it’s the idea of the self as a self-created illusion. The bulk of our suffering is self-created, and the things that cause us pain are the things that we cling to unnecessarily. That’s a huge, towering, terrifying idea, if all of the implications of it are examined closely.

So I’ve been to the churches that consist of people lounging around on couches, and I’ve read the (could they be more ironically titled?) self-help literature – I’ve heard priests preaching the power of positive thinking, and watched their congregations practicing their healing affirmations. Now, some might say that a Catholic upbringing damaged me too deeply to properly appreciate these behaviors; others might say that it effectively armored me against what a seductive school of thought this is. But I can’t avoid the observation that Americans – the most self-centered people in the history of our species, and oh do I love us for it – have taken these texts, built a new religious movement, and placed the self directly at the center of it. These movements revolve almost entirely around self-affirmation – around making *you* feel better. And that’s not the fulfillment of Eastern thought – that’s its ultimate perversion.

And then the Bible-thumping minister in me rears his head, and says – religion isn’t supposed to make you feel good. It’s supposed to make you feel *bad*. It’s not supposed to tell you to be content with yourself just the way you are – it’s supposed to urge you to strive to be something much *better*. God forbid, maybe a little fire-and-brimstone would be good for us. Especially living in an age of apathy and affirmation.

And the end result is that it takes the philosophy of liberalism, and *tries to articulate it as a religion*. It boils down to little more than the welfare state with Jesus’ smiling face stapled on top of it. And, yeah, that’s every bit as repugnant as neoconservatism. More so, if only because it strikes me as being more dishonest. Affirming for me why I choose to avoid getting sucked into the two-party struggle. Right-wing, left-wing, no-wing; jackboots are one-size-fits-all.

So this is a big part of my struggle with religious theatre – it so often boils down to little more than political diatribe in the trappings of religion. I *have* to believe that meaningful fusion is at least possible, even if it’s almost impossible to find. In any case, I'll be exploring the ideas for the next month over at Womb with a View.

Paulino Verde Cabaret

Show's closed now...I'll be doing my best to put together some coherent thoughts about the experience in the next week or so.

For now, I just wanted to drop a quick mention that I'll be performing as part of the Paulino Verde Cabaret -- it's a showcase being put together by dancer Paulino Brener to raise money for his green card. It's a good cause and a great lineup -- featuring dance from Patrick Scully, Jennifer Ilse, and Vessela Kouneva, puppetry from Masanari Kawahara, harp playing from Nicolas Carter, poetry from Tanja Katieb, and singing from Gabe Heller.

Given the nature of the cause, I've decided to do a piece from my travelogue Descendant of Dragons. I frequently showcase pieces from my plays -- in fact, many of them are written with that intent specifically in mind -- but I'm strangely reluctant to tour anything from this one, despite the fact that it's my most successful show. Or perhaps because of that fact -- my mixed feelings about it are still very much in force. There's some level on which I'm baffled by, and resent, its success. There's also a level on which I don't want to keep trotting out the same tired crowd-pleasers every time I get a gig. I performed it (or pieces from it) in Des Moines in July, Minneapolis in August, Rochester in December, and I'll be remounting it in Minneapolis in May-June. Is that overkill?

Maybe I'm psyching myself out about this too much. It's not as though I'm not writing -- I'm creating new material for the Rockstar and Vilification Tennis shows in February (more about those as they get closer), hosting the Rockstar show in March, and planning on writing and performing two full-length solo shows from scratch in April and May. But finding that balance between trotting out older, sturdier material, and forcing myself to create new stuff -- figuring out what percentage of what audience has already seen what, which material is tired and which has some new life in it -- I'm performing frequently enough now that it's a whole new balancing act I never anticipated. And I don't want to get stuck in a comfortable rut.

In any case, the show's tomorrow (Sunday) at 3pm at Patrick's Cabaret, $10.00 suggested donation. This falls on that list of "shows I'd be seeing even if I wasn't performing in it" -- it'll be a good time.

Logorrhea: Rochester Preview

So, the out-of-town preview's always an iffy thing. I'm a big believer in the Not Opening in Minneapolis Until Our Material Sucks Less school of thought, and I have family down there, so it remains a good excuse to drive down, see my folks, and do a few performances.

I can't help noticing that even as our audience in Minneapolis has grown, our audience in Rochester has dwindled, which I suspect is at least partly symptomatic of an evolving style on our part. I've joked that I'm the most conservative artist in Minneapolis, and the most liberal artist in Rochester. It's amazing the degree of culture shock that can take place over a 90-minute drive. And I'm saying that as someone who's been to China.

That said, this ranks among our more successful previews, and I'm pretty sure it's because of the variety-show format: it's the only show we've really done without some complicated, cerebral layer to penetrate, or that requires you to know who, say, Snorri Sturluson is in order to get a punchline. It's pretty much wall-to-wall jokes: with a variety of approaches and in a number of styles, but primarily designed to entertain.

And I guess it's comforting to get some affirmation that we still know how to do that, because otherwise you -- well, you're Jerry Lewis trying to be Chaplin. And nobody wants that.

Picture Post

We survived -- er, completed -- a full-cast run-through a while back. To paraphrase the King of Hearts, we were successfully able to begin at the beginning, go on till we came to the end, then stop, which is a pretty fucking amazing achievement considering the eclectic mix of what we're doing, and the constraints that we're trying to do it in. Our stage manager, Erika Loen, also happens to be one of those transient photographers-about-town, and snapped a number of photographs.

A big part of what's so thrilling about this project for me is cramming together such a disparate group of personalities and disciplines in my apartment, and seeing what they come up with, as evidenced by the following:


Tara King, one of the dancers from Mad King Thomas, alongside Dean Hatton. Dean's the one in the shorts.


And look! Here's one of the Brothers Quetico, garbed as Bragi, the Norse god of poetry. Folk art is the new regular art, indeed.

Erika was kind enough to contribute the following notes:

When stage managing a show for Maximum Verbosity it is important to remember three things:

1) Feed the actors.
2) Never worry about being overdressed. You will be. Period.
3) Bring your camera.


Eleven days 'til opening. Gulp.

Thoughts on Collaboration

So here's a cell-phone snapshot of Monica, one of the dancers of Mad King Thomas. She's literally chopped up one of my scripts into pieces with a pair of scissors and surrounded herself with language fragments, trying to re-arrange them in some sort of dramatically dynamic way. I find this to be a pretty accurate metaphor for the whole project.

While trying to schedule and organize a cast this large (and by large I mean larger than, like, five people) has been a bit of a headache, the rewards of collaboration have been a pleasant surprise. It's confirmed what I've been suspecting for a while -- that the core group has simply become too insulated -- and working with artists who are challenging us to plow outside of our comfort zones has been a lot of fun. If I derive no other benefit from this project, it's that it's already causing me to reconsider many aspects of my existing scripts -- I'm confident that many of the gags and structural tricks introduced by our collaborators are going to work their way into further rewrites.

One interesting aspect of this project has been the conflict arising between artists of different disciplines: on one side we have a group of actors, who are very protective of the text, and on the other side a group of dancers/mimes/musicians, who regard it primarily as a means to an end. Striking that balance between textual depth and audience enjoyment is something that we've been struggling with since day one, and one thing I've been devoting a lot of thought cycles to lately.

In It's a Meaningless Life (closing this weekend, by the way!), Joe Scrimshaw opens with a story called "Christmas Carol: Year Two." It's very clever, well-constructed, with some truly inventive turns of phrase. Over the course of the past couple of weeks, he's been playing with the material, gradually introducing more scatalogical jokes here and there. Which I enjoy, but I find myself wondering: how much of the work we put into what we do is just for, well, us? All of the careful effort we put into interesting narrative and layered comedy -- are audiences just sitting through that politely until we get to the laugh lines? It's a discouraging thought.

Undressed: Liar Liar Pants on Fire

Well, I'm just as perversely pleased as a proverbial Punch and Judy show to alliteratively announce that I'll be one of the pusillanimous performers at the preliminary production of the Rockstar Storytellers. And if that dapper display of devilishly daring diction didn't dazzle you, well, tough. It's 5:30pm on a Tuesday and it's all I've got.

It's a hell of a line-up: slam master of Minneapolis Allison Broeren, who burst onto the Fringe scene this year with All the Things I Never Told My Mother; New Yorker Courtney McLean, who's recently moved to Minneapolis after touring such hits as Normal-C and Super Glossy; fellow Liberal Media Elite blogger Rik Reppe, creator of the one-man shows Staggering Towards America, Glorious Noise, and Santa Man; local storytelling heavyweight Amy Salloway, fresh off the successes Does This Monologue Make Me Look Fat?, So Kiss Me Already, Herschel Gertz!, and Circumference; and, y'know, me. All ably hosted by the extraordinary Allegra Lingo, in the greatest team-up since the Justice League of America fended off an attempt by Appellaxian invaders to turn the Earth into their own personal royal arena, equipped with deadly elemental battle-suits.

Ahem.

It's hard for me to talk about any kind of coherent "process," since we're still trying to figure out exactly who the hell we are and what we're trying to accomplish. It's a supergroup, though, and we're going to start finding out this Sunday at 7pm, at the Bryant-Lake Bowl. Be there or be mercilessly ostracized.

It's a Meaningless Life

Apologizing again for this space seeming to be reduced to little more than a platform for shameless self-promotion, but I have yet another project coming up: I'll be performing as part of the Scrimshaw Brothers' latest brooding masterpiece, a laid-back comedy showcase entitled It's a Meaningless Life. The line-up consists of Joe Scrimshaw, Josh Scrimshaw, Sarah Scimshaw, Tim Uren, Pablo, Alan Berks, and, bizarrely enough, me.

I'm a bit more starry-eyed about being involved than I should probably admit in a public space -- I'm a pretty big fan of just about everyone who's on board. Not dissimilar to how I'm feeling with Logorrhea, where I find myself in the surreal position of *directing* people I've been admiring from afar for years. Seriously, I can't stop freaking out about this. What the hell is going on in my life? I find myself holding my breath, awaiting some horrific karmic retribution. If I had a puppy, he would probably be dead now, having been brutally, senselessly slain by white supremacists in an act of random sinophobic canicide.

The murder of my hypothetical mongrel companion aside, this is one of those shows I'd be eager to see, regardless of whether or not I was involved in it. It's a solid line-up of some of the funniest folks in the Twin Cities, and it's opening this Friday. Plays at 10pm every Friday-Saturday night until December 22nd at the Minneapolis Theater Garage. Opens on the Independence Day of the Isle of Barbados, so make of that what you will.