The Little Town with a Website

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What if?

Monday night we partnered with Heritage Park in a Christmas celebration fundraiser called Christmas in Alberta through the generosity of Dick and Lois Haskayne. I've been encouraged to share what I shared that evening by way of story/conversation. The event took place in Gasoline Alley, a beautiful facility with a glorious collection of restored antique cars, trucks, gas pumps and signage.

Let me mention

one or two things about Christmas.

Of course you've all heard

that the animals talk

at midnight: a particular elk, for instance,

kneeling at night to drink, leaning tall to pull leaves

with his soft lips, says, alleluia.

That the soil and freshwater lakes

also rejoice,

as do products

such as sweaters

(nor are plastics excluded from grace),

is less well known.

Further: the reason for some silly looking fishes,

for the bizarre mating

of certain adult insects,

or the sprouting, say

in a snow tire

of a Rocky Mountain grass,

is that the universal

loves the particular,

that freedom loves to live

and live fleshed full,

intricate,

and in detail.

from Feast Days, by Annie Dillard

We’re standing in a building full of old wonders that have been restored to their new and shiny glory. Some of these old trucks and cars were just rusty heaps used to ferry crops, kids, husbands and wives through the day-to-day of their lives. There was probably a moment of wonder when Dad and Mom drove the new car or truck into the yard. Everyone went for a ride. And then gradually over the years, the extraordinary became ordinary, denting and scratching and wearing itself out in the everyday of a family’s life. There’s a row of tractors across the street from the Opera House in Rosebud. Every showtime intermission people gather round them, remembering hard times and good times - all contained in the machined and painted bodies of those old farm implements. It’s as if the past meets the present like presents from the past breaking through time, making them all young again. What if camels from 2000 years ago really did appear on the off-ramp to Chinook Mall? What if there really are angels on the hills surrounding Rosebud? What if all these restored cars and trucks that drove people to Christmas Eve church services and turkey dinners could speak the conversations that happened between people on those magical nights? What if there really was a child born of a Virgin? What if it could happen again? What if every child born is part of that same mystery, born to walk into some kind of wonderful divine destiny that nobody knows, except maybe the Creator of Life. What if every mother and father’s hopes and dreams are met in their children on the day of their birth, on Christmas day and all the other days that they wait at the bus stop for the return of their children from school, sitting at High School and College graduations, walking down the aisle on wedding days, picking up after brand new grandchildren, and more. What if it’s all some kind of mysterious life dance where the Creator of the Universe gives a cycle of days and nights, years and lives lived in houses and neighborhoods with pots and pans, cars and trucks, camels and mangers and shepherd staffs. What if all of it lives on in some kind of glorious aurora borealis of light that comes and goes at will - breathtaking reminders of mysteries we don’t understand, not even scientists who go home to their houses full of pots and pans and dishwashers full of after Christmas dinner celebration that work because someone figured out the magic of electricity and motors and those plastic arms that swish water around so that everything comes out clean. What if everything we see everyday is a miracle?

We Rosebud folk believe in such stuff. We’ve met people who have actually seen angels. We tell stories about people whose lives have been changed from the inside out. We make food in a kitchen filled with pots and pans and gadgets that hold mysterious combinations of spices and flavor that mingle with the bounty that comes from farmer’s fields where giant machines gobble up stalks of grain and spit out the seeds into big bins leaving the straw behind to rot into the food for next year’s crop. At night, in the fall, you can see mysterious slow moving lights all across the prairie. They move in concentric circles, two at a time, always in concert. And when you’re in the Rosebud valley looking up at the hills above, those lights move with purpose against a starlit sky. It makes it easy for a person to believe in Wise Men and camels and a heavenly light that moved over the earth - and maybe even angels appearing in the night sky, bearing the good news about a child who will change the world for the sake of love.

Annie Dillard’s Feast Days ends with ...

God empties himself

into the earth like a cloud.

God takes the substance, contours

of a man, and keeps them,

dying, rising, walking,

and still walking wherever there is motion.

Morris

Gifts and Glories and Remembrance

It’s been a week since The Gifts of the Magi opened on our stage. The word “glorious” comes to mind as I think of the company of performers and technicians and audience that have come together around this classic story by O. Henry. There’s a song that Jim sings in the show called “How Much To Buy My Dream”. It’s about living on the edge of it all, holding out for hope and love and life. In our staging, the song takes Jim home to Della - his wife and the love of his life. It’s the day before Christmas and to Jim, she’s the brightest light in the world right now. ... (You'll have to see the show to get the rest.)

Today is Remembrance Day, and something about that song, this day, and a John Steinbech quote all come together in the words “glory” and “glorious”. (And, just so we’re clear, when I read the word “man” in this explosion of thought from Steinbech’s East of Eden, I hear “person”, meaning women and men.)

“Sometimes a kind of glory lights up the mind of a man. It happens to nearly everyone. You can feel it growing or preparing like a fuse burning toward dynamite. It is a feeling in the stomach, a delight of the nerves, of the forearms. The skin tastes the air, and every deep-drawn breath is sweet. Its beginning has the pleasure of a great stretching yawn; it flashes in the brain and whole world glows outside your eyes. A man may have lived all of his life in the gray, and the land and trees of him dark and somber. The events, even the important ones, may have trooped by faceless and pale. And then - the glory - so that a cricket song sweetens his ears, the smell of the earth rises chanting to his nose, and dappling light under a tree blesses his eyes. Then a man pours outward, a torrent of him, and yet he is not diminished. And I guess a man's importance in the world can be measured by the quality and number of his glories. It is a lonely thing but it relates us to the world. It is the mother of all creativeness, and it sets each man separate from all other men. ...

At such a time it seems natural and good to me to ask myself these questions. What do I believe in? What must I fight for and what must I fight against?

Our species is the only creative species, and it has only one creative instrument, the individual mind and spirit of a man. ...

And this I believe: that the free, exploring mind of the individual human is the most valuable thing in the world. And this I would fight for: the freedom of the mind to take any direction it wishes, undirected. And this I must fight against: any idea, religion, or government which limits or destroys the individual. ... If the glory can be killed, we are lost.”

There was an article in the Edmonton Journal this morning about children laying poppies on each and every military gravestone in a cemetery in Edmonton. There was yet another story about a soldier and his newly minted bride, marrying while he was on leave in 1945. A statement in that article brought me full circle and back to The Gifts of the Magi and the marriage at the centre of the story.

“Love was then as it is now - an act of involuntary hope, a gesture from the heart that we promise to carry into the future.”

- Robert S. Jahrig -

There is something like an explosion of heart that happens when we wake up to the glory in each other. Marriages happen. Children happen. Families happen. Deep and lasting friendships happen.

Some 60 or so years ago, my wife Jo’s uncle died hours before troops landed on Normandy beach. He was a paratrooper and Mother’s son from Saskatchewan, the result of “an act of involuntary hope” between a working class husband and wife. His Dad was a traveling salesman, an ordinary Joe, not unlike Jim Dillingham in The Gifts of the Magi. Who knows what Morris Ellefson’s dream was, but he wrote to his Mother words about God keeping them all hours before he climbed aboard the fateful plane that took him to a much too early eternal glory. He and other ordinary Joe's like he and his Mom and Dad carry a shine that on this Remembrance Day seems particularly glorious.

Morris

Twirling and Gliding in Time - The Gifts of the Magi opens Friday!!!

The Gifts of the Magi is rehearsing on stage now, and we open in just a few days. This is juggling time. The addition of a set that twirls and glides as an extension of the story takes time. In our note session at the end of Saturday, Deanne Bertsch, our choreographer, flew me a paper airplane with requests for more time. Bill Hamm has musical nuances he needs to rehearse Monday. And I have a list of scenes, moments, transitions and more to work that can’t possibly fit into Monday. So, we’ll set out to do the impossible.

A show is a giant orchestration that involves so many details - all of which are important. And that’s what makes this time coming up to opening so exhilarating. Everything we do is exponential. It all adds up to more than the sum of the parts. The movement of a set piece becomes story - a physical manifestation of something going on in the heart of a character in the play. A staging problem must be solved, and it leads to a deeper understanding of the story. It’s like Michael Angelo’s sculpting of stone. He stated that the sculpture was inside, waiting to be released. Well, our stone consists of lights, sound, musical instruments, set pieces, and above all - emotional people in motion. And we’re in the process of pulling the story out of all of those elements.

In the end, it’s about the people who make the technical elements, the people who speak and sing the words, and the people who come to participate by receiving the story - the audience. The theatre is ultimately an orchestration where an audience interacts with performers who are staged in a living story-telling environment. Every audience becomes as much a part of the story as the performers themselves. It’s all wonderfully mystical and communal.

But we’ll have to wait for preview and opening to add them to our orchestration. Right now we have to alter the dance step that happens when the New York brownstone apartment scoots our street carolers up and around the stage during a traffic jam. Bill may have to rearrange the piano part that Sarah plays so that it times out for Soapy the beggar to arrive across the street, avoiding the cars that are whizzing by him, in time to catch the penny one of the carolers tosses him from the middle of the street where he is trapped with a woman he does not know, who has just slapped him after he saved her life from an oncoming cab. That moment could take a while. And we only have 34 hours of rehearsal time left before opening!

A Moment of Glory

Queen Milli of Galt closed last night. And as with most closings, there was a nagging wish in everyone to hold on to the magic just a little longer. Performers left the stage after playing a scene, noting they would never play that scene again. The Stage Manager called the intricate lighting and sound cues for the very last time. Costumes were hung up, props carried off the stage and the set went back to the shop where it was so carefully created. Actors, Stage Managers and friends gathered at our house to ease out the rest of the evening - a bit like a wake where family and friends gather to hold on the story of a life for a little while longer. And like a good Irish wake, the house was filled with conversation and laughter and the thankfulness that comes from having lived out something glorious together.

It seems the moments that matter never last forever.

There are so many moments in Queen Milli of Galt that still hold me captive: Heather Pattengale as Milli in the moment that I dubbed “The Fish Ballet” swimming towards Prince Edward’s astonished face; Karl Sine as Prince Edward saluting a little boy in the classroom; Heather Pattengale as Milli and Alysa Van Haastert as Mona laughing themselves silly as only best friends do; Steve Waldschmidt as Godfrey trying to calm Edward down in most every scene; Emma Cobb as the journalist taking a bold step into Milli’s garden; and of course, Marie Russell as Mrs. Milroy in the moment where she realizes she will be the Queen Mother!

These moments live in memory now, aided by photographs, just like most of real life does. A play performed live is the most complete, elegant and authentic expression of life. It is impulsive, communal, funny, sad and inspiring. And it comes to an end, just like all the most significant moments in a life. And I love the theatre for that, hard as it is to see something beautiful like Queen Milli of Galt come to an end.

And, of course, as in real life, there is always a new story waiting in the wings. The Gifts of the Magi is about to be born in just under two weeks. And it too has the promise of glory!

Queen Milli of Galt shimmering on stage

Queen Milli of Galt opened on the weekend, and the response to the show is wonderful. There is no greater joy than sitting in the back row on opening night, watching actor and audience respond to the story and to one another. A brand new creation shimmers on stage, and what is so wonderful about the theatre is that that new creation is never the same. Each night it bends to the response of the audience, the moments between actors, the discovery of a nuance in a line, or a new timing that sparks laughter or tears. The theatre is the most glorious of art forms. It combines the skills of so many people - craftspersons, technicians, writers, designers, performers, musicians and composers. It is precise in it’s creation, yet filled with spontaneity. And the audience is the final participant to be added to that magical mix. I would even go so far as to say that in the grand scheme of things, people participate in a kind of creative destiny together where what is offered is received and altered by each participant. It is all so gratifying.

There’s a Paul Simon song I’ve been listening to of late called Dazzling Blue.

Maybe love’s an accident, or destiny is true

But you and I were born beneath a star of dazzling blue

The mystic in me really believes in the notion that the experience we share in the theatre when the lights go down and the faces of the front few rows of audience are caught in the glow bouncing off the stage is a reflection of something called love. It’s that place where we’re welcomed to be whatever we feel.

There’s a brand new story on our stage, and it was invented for each one of everyone who comes to participate.

- Morris

Queen Milli of Galt - What a script!

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Heather Pattengale as Milli and Karl Sine as Prince Edward

We’re on stage and a week away from opening Gary Kirkham’s Queen Milli of Galt. What a script! The playwright deftly moves from scenes that are so funny that they’re cracking the actors up in rehearsal to scenes where tears are streaming down their faces. The writing is so deft that the story lifts off the page with an ease that is reminiscent of the best dramatists and humorists of the theatre. I love this play!

The cast gathered together around this show is superlative. They're generous and funny and almost always on time! Rehearsals are pure joy. The set shimmers in Becky Halterman’s lights. Scenes transform seamlessly from one emotional moment to the next, supported by Luke Ertman’s evocative soundscape. Somehow we’ve climbed inside the world of the play with a courageousness that looks a lot like faith in something bigger.

And the story really is about something very big, yet small and intimate. It’s about holding out for love, that “something” that passes between people, inviting them into the possibility of moments of joy. And I think our production might just be an incarnation of joy released through the love of creating something ridiculously funny, yet powerfully poignant in the same breath. And that certainly is something worth pouring the energy of cast, stage management, designers and this director’s waking moments into.

Finding a moment ... or is it finding Heather's light ... or both