black odyssey

Finally.

Regular visitors to this virtual space will know Theatre Companion and I have been sorely disappointed with the new plays mounted by the Denver Center Theatre Company this season. Our most frequent question following these productions has been "Why?" Why, of all the new plays being churned out by all those MFA-holding playwrights throughout this great land of ours, produce these mediocrities? Why, if these mediocrities are the best a producing artistic director can find, not revive one of the classics from the great American stage canon? Why subject a hopeful theatre-going public to works which make a strong argument against any public funding for the arts?

Why, oh why?

It was thus with some trepidation I escorted Mrs. Curmudgeon, who holds a master's degree in  the classics, to the world premiere of black odyssey (now through February 16 at the Space Theatre). In Marcus Gardley's new work,

Classic Greek characters and themes meet modern African-American culture in this twist on Homer’sThe Odyssey. Centered on a black soldier’s homecoming, this compelling new play fuses modern reality, humor, and song with ancient myth.

One can easily imagine how this might go badly wrong: the Odyssey's narrative stretched to the breaking point along with the audience's patience for overly wrought Negro spirituals. Instead, the playwright and cast nailed it. Gardley's Ulysses, as did Homer's, tries to make his way home after a war only to find himself manipulated by the gods ("Deus" for Zeus and "Paw Sidon" for Poseidon) and faced by traps at every turn. (An actual chess board hangs over the stage and is lowered for the gods' debates.) By making his Ulysses Lincoln an orphan, Gardley superimposes on the quest for home a simultaneous quest for identity and personal history, a history which is interwoven with the African-American experience in these United States. In this way, Gardley makes Ulysses Lincoln a black everyman as the staging of his journey becomes an appeal to the African-American community at large to hold on to and perpetuate its historical memory.

The cast is stellar, drawn from across the country: nearly every actor has a deep background on stage and screen, and all have marvelous singing voices. (This probably reflects the fact there just aren't that many all-black professional stage productions around the land.) The play does have weaknesses: the symbolism of the statue from the Lincoln Memorial, which came on stage in the second act, was entirely lost on me, and while Ulysses Lincoln served in the U.S. Navy, he was involved in land combat operations and consistently refers to himself as a "soldier." As Mrs. Curmudgeon pointed out, Nella Pee's vacillating loyalty to Ulysses toward the end of his odyssey was a disappointing departure from the steadfastness of Homer's Penelope. (However, this vacillation was motivated by a desire to provide a father figure to her son, Malachi; sadly, the struggles of single motherhood are a common theme in the modern African-American experience.) Also, Homer managed to work in a dog.

Nonetheless, this production delivers the goods. Here's a new play which tackles a big, big American subject through the frame of an ancient and universal narrative and makes the mystifying particulars of both Greek myth and African-American culture accessible and pellucid to a broad audience. It's a triumph: finally, a new play worthy of many more productions. I look forward to taking my black daughter to see one someday.

Psalm 73:28

But for me it is good to be near God;

I have made the Lord GOD my refuge,

that I may tell of all your works. (English Standard Version) 

Psalm 73 is the first psalm in Book III of the Psalter, and thus may reasonably be taken for this section's introduction. Psalms 73-83 are attributed to Asaph. In Psalm 73, Asaph's trust in God is restored when he remembers the eschatological judgment the wicked will suffer, along with the comfort which the Lord's companionship brings to his people in this life and the next. In this context, the psalm closes with Asaph's declaration he will "tell of all [God's] works" as a discipline to maintain a right understanding of God and the world.

The verb translated "tell" in the ESV and "declare" elsewhere is r#EÚpAsVl, which can be glossed as "count, recount, relate." It's not the most common verb for speaking or singing, and suggests Asaph's "tell[ing] of all [God's] works" will not merely be an act of personal devotion, but a public recounting of God's works in a public setting. (r#EÚpAsVl may even suggest writing.) In its broader canonical context, then, Psalm 73:28 introduces the remainder of the psalms of Asaph, which, through direct citation or allusion, are particularly concerned to relate the Lord's history with Israel.

Calvin on what to do about the internet (Calvin's Institutes, Battles edition, p. 996)

"But let us pass over these triflers, lest... we seem to judge their ravings worth refuting."

The Legend of Georgia McBride

In The Legend of Georgia McBride, receiving its world premiere from the Denver Center Theatre Company (now through February 23 at the Ricketson Theatre), a down-on-his-luck Elvis impersonator accidentally finds work as a lip-syncing drag queen with the stage name Georgia McBride, and in the process discovers his true artistic talent and a way to support his young bride and their growing family.

Yes, that smoke you smell is Western civilization going up in flames.

My readers in the queer community (of whom I am sure there are many) may be forgiven for thinking my low opinion of this show was, to coin a phrase, predestined by the fact I am a reactionary old-school presbyterian curmudgeon. However, my criticisms were only reinforced by those of my more alternate lifestyle-friendly Theatre Companion, and generally had to do with a weak script and awkward performances.

First, however, a note of praise for the DCTC's production department, which throughout this season has showcased each play with admirable staging choices. The Ricketson is a traditional proscenium-arch stage: for this show, set pieces were moved into the foreground of an otherwise bare stage with a full view of a mildly-cluttered backstage. Scene and costume changes, accordingly, took place in full view of the audience. (The open backstage design is, of course, something of a conceit; actors went off into the wings for changes into different characters.) This understated design suggests appearance and is extremely malleable and introduces identity as a theme in the play.

Unfortunately, the script fails to live up to the set design. The dialogue is often realistic and occasionally amusing, and the characters, by and large, believably human. None of what they go through, however, is sufficiently compelling to be put up on a stage. Casey, our young hero, discovers he's pretty good at lip-syncing while wearing a dress. While some may find this kind of act amusing, it's certainly not art, and so the play fails at its ambition to explore the nature of artistic striving and triumph.

The first scene of the second act features a faux Rosa Parks moment in which a gay drag queen chastises Casey for dressing up as a woman onstage while being straight in real life. This might have been an interesting development had the unusual dichotomy of a straight drag queen exploiting the queer community for personal gain and ambition been explored, but instead the theme was dropped immediately. In fact, the play eventually devolved into litte more than a stage version of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert. Fun for those looking for that sort of thing, but really: worthy of a professional production in the capital of the Rocky Mountain Empire?

The performances were extremely uneven. Matt McGrath, who proved remarkably good at tap-dancing in heels, struggled with his lines as drag queen Miss Tracy Mills (although he did much better as Casey's older brother Beau). A week into the production, and still not off book? I wondered if he was at fault when late in the second act Jamie Ann Romero flubbed some lines as well; perhaps the script was still being worked on. Not sure if that's better, at least from the audience's perspective: isn't that what previews are for?

Leaving the Denver Center for the Performing Arts complex, I noticed playbills for one of those "women-only" productions which present songs and skits designed specifically for the estrogen class. Were I a woman, I would be offended by such attempts to pander to my gender, treating me as a mere representative of a class and not a person with a unique experience and narrative. I think The Legend of Georgia McBride might be similarly offensive: a lazy effort at play-writing confident it will find ticket-buyers among a small minority thrilled simply to see drag queens on a real stage in a real theater.

Apparently, I need to coin a drag equivalent for "blaxploitation."

The Lost History of Global Christianity

This lecture by Philip Jenkins, featured on last week's Beeson Divinity School podcast, does precisely what good history is supposed to do: it offers a radically different way of seeing the world simply by pointing out what has always been on record. He gives a brief summary of the influence of Christian patriarchs in China and the ancient Near East, and points out ways in which Christianity influenced the emergence of both Buddhist and Muslim Scriptures. An eye-opening thirty-seven minutes which offer a number of avenues for further study and reflection.

How to attain certainty of election (Calvin's Institutes, Battles edition, p. 969 [vol. 2])

Perhaps because I struggled with assurance of salvation in my early 20s, I have had occasion to counsel a number of similarly afflicted persons during my ministry. They, like I, have tended to make the mistake John Calvin addresses in 3.24.4 of his Institutes.

Rare indeed is the mind that is not repeatedly struck with this thought: whence comes your salvation but from God's election? Now, what revelation do you have of your election? This thought, if it has impressed itself upon him, either continually strikes him in his misery with harsh torments or utterly overwhelms him. Truly, I should desire no surer argment to confirm how basely persons of this sort imagine predestination than that very experience, because the mind could not be infected with a more pestilential error than that which overwhelms and unsettles the conscience from its peace and tranquillity toward God. Consequently, if we fear shipwreck, we must carefully avoid this rock, against whcih no one is ever dashed without destruction. Even though discussion about predestination is likened to a dangerous sea, still, in traversing it, one finds safe and calm–I also add pleasant–sailing unless he willfully desire to endanger himself. For just as those engulf themselves in a deadly abyss who, to make their election more certain, investigate God's eternal plan apart from his Word, so those who rightly and duly examine it as it is contained in his Word reap the inestimable fruit of comfort. Let this, therefore, be the way of our inquiry: to begin with God's call, and to end with it.

In other words (as the broader context of Institutes 3.24.1-5 makes plain), those who have responded to God's call in the proclamation of the Gospel of Jesus Christ should realize this is because they were chosen by God to do so: from one's experience of calling comes certainty of election.

At long last, relief

My globe-trotting youngest sister gave me a bar of soap for Christmas which carried this label: 

I must admit that, while I appreciate the clove scent, I'm glad to finally have done with my firmtuse.

Penultimate thoughts on the BSA membership requirements change

John Frame taught me to never claim I had reached my final position on anything, but I have pretty much gotten to where I think I'm going to end up with regard to the membership standards resolution the Boy Scouts of America began implementing on January 1, 2014. (Click on the label "Scouting" for my previous writing on this issue.)

I am what might be called a "double protestant." With the rest of presbyterianism, I trace my lineage back to the Protestant Reformation (and before that, to the Apostolic Church and, even earlier, to the Garden of Eden itself), when our fathers took a stand against the errors infecting the Western Church and were excommunicated for their troubles. The "double" part comes from the 20th century when liberalism overtook many protestant denominations in these United States. When they came to power, the liberals (whether presbyterian, Lutheran, or episcopalian) showed the orthodox the door: sometimes cordially, and sometimes not so much. As an Orthodox Presbyterian, I am acutely aware that many Christians will be asked to choose between loyalty to ecclesiastical institutions and to the apostolic faith. Though born some 34 years after the founding of the OPC, I personally had to choose to leave the churches in which I had been reared in order to find one in which the Biblical Gospel was still preached. I understand loyalty to tradition and family, but I also understand they must be trumped by faithfulness to our Lord and Savior.

Thus, I know what those moments of existential crisis look like, both from personal experience and from observing that of others. For Scouters such as myself, this is one. As I have previously observed, the membership requirements change which allows boys professing homosexual identity to join Scouting units need make no immediate impact on my work as a Scouting leader. (And if I keep on working exclusively with Cub Scouts, it will never make an impact.) If I really wanted to, it seems I could even charter units which would in effect, even if not in stated policy, preserve the old (and when I say "old," I mean "as of seven months ago") membership requirement that a Scout be morally straight. However, a new course for the Boy Scouts of America has been charted, and it's the same course of moral perversity and destruction on which the broader culture has been embarked for quite some time now. I might be able to keep myself and the kids under my leadership secure for a number of years, even a decade or two, but we will nonetheless be associated with a national organization which has repudiated the values on which it was founded. Like it or not, my role as a Scouter makes me morally complicit, at least in that sense.

At the same time, this change came quite suddenly and caught me entirely unprepared. My den is currently working on their Wolf badge, and these second-graders and their parents have made it clear they continue to look to me to lead them through their Cub Scouting experience. I feel abandoned and betrayed by the national leadership, but I will not abandon or betray my Cub Scouts in turn.

While I hope and pray for reform in the Boy Scouts, I know my career as a Scouter is effectively over, and that grieves me. A year ago, I was telling Mrs. Curmudgeon that after I lead my current den (of which Thing 2 is a member) through their Webelos years, I might volunteer to serve as a permanent Tiger Cub leader. It turns out I'm pretty good at recruiting kindergarten boys into Cub Scout packs, and their parents into taking on leadership positions in said packs. Sadly, that's not to be. So long as Thing 2 continues on as a Cub Scout, I will probably continue on as his den leader. Once he's done, though, I'm done.

I wish I knew what could replace this part of my life. I've not had the time or energy to take on a leadership role larger than den leader, but I have assiduously earned three knots as one. I believe in the Boy Scouts of America just about as much as anyone else, and the recent membership requirements change hasn't changed that. While I am a double protestant by existential necessity, this experience has taught me greater sympathy for those who've found themselves unable, despite their better instincts, to make that second protest.

Look, Ma, the apocalypse!

Mrs. Curmudgeon and I were recently asked to fill out a survey about the services our 4 year-old has been receiving from a publicly-funded institution. Towards the end, as is common, the survey form wanted some demographic data, including question 31 to the right. I have a hard time deciding which choice regarding my 4  year-old's gender engenders more anxiety: "Transgender," "Don't Know," or "Other (Specify)."

"Don't Know." I can't make this stuff up.

What preceded Jesus' silence

Peter Leithart's "Truncating the Politics of Jesus" puts me in mind, curiously enough, of a student-directed production of Godspell back in my university days. My directing professor nailed its failure eloquently: "This show was more about singing and dancing than it was about the Gospels." (This was a public university, by the way.) At this remove of years, I don't think the young, evangelically-minded director was to blame; instead, Godspell itself envisions Jesus as a likable fellow who enjoyed good times with his twelve best friends and others. The problem with this conception is that it makes the Crucifixion utterly inexplicable: what religious or civil authority would want to kill off someone whose most provocative action was to do little more than ask what's so funny about peace, love, and understanding?

Sadly, this quietist version of the Gospel has come to dominate American evangelicalism, which continues its historical trend of affirming the interests of the broader culture in general and the agenda of those currently in power in particular. As Leithart helpfully observes, Jesus himself was neither meek nor mild: "What preceded Jesus’ silence in Pilate’s Praetorium were several years of inflammatory non-silence. ...If we don’t follow Jesus at the beginning, we’re unlikely to have an opportunity to follow him to the end." You have to take up your cross in order to submit to your crucifixion.

Contrary to expectation, age has not mellowed my preaching: more and more frequently, I find myself stridently declaiming against current public policy and mores, and against the silliness of too many of my co-religionists. To borrow a line from the evangelicals, it's what Jesus would do.

Lego clarifies

Turns out the penguin and polar bear got to know one another at a zoo. Thanks, Lego!