Hello chums...

(This is from a review I made after watching Murder in the Cathedral, which was performed by a cast of Biola alumni in La Mirada. I saw the play on the night of May 5; review was written the night following.)

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Most days I will meet the darker things in life with silence and a black flannel shirt. How very male of me. How very strong.

But it is good when this barrier is breached.

I do not cry often, not for many more things than history, or beauty, or death. As a human, yes I mourn, but it's stuck inside, water in a glass that begs to be spilled. The tension leaves through the ribs, and your heart is free to beat again.

Last night I saw a play in a dismal church tucked away on Cordova Road. My ticket was yellow. We entered a gymnasium, converted to the image of a medieval cathedral, and a dark state of mind, by shadows and the vague touch of candlelight. Murder in the Cathedral. T. S. Eliot's homage to the 12th-century martyr Becket.

I have not wept for a work of art, not to the point where I could weep no more, as I did last night.

The cast, led strongly by Jonathan Wright, was nothing short of brilliant, performing cohesively like units in a body and interacting with the shadows. Three men and three woman can create an image of a saintly story.

The play is set on the floor, the audience surrounding in a circle and divided into quadrants. The "fourth wall", between actor and audience, is never erected. The interaction which ensues is brilliant. Obvious.

It's almost too good to believe that the story, of Becket's arrival as a Christian, is true.

There are no conceits to the play, and the cast understands its text, which centers on the moment in which Becket becomes a true priest, a figure of Christ who, like Christ, goes to death without remorse, for he will rise again.

And through his death, the Church, represented by Kat van Elswyk (a mentor from Wheatstone), is purified.

I have nothing but praise. Murder in the Cathedral, performed by the THI alumni, is the best play I have ever seen.

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What I've been thinking of after the play:

- To what extent can any man represent Christ?
- How important is "the resurrection of the dead" in Christian theology? Philosophy?
- How strictly Euro-Catholic is Becket's story? Can America produce a Becket?

-Christian

Artisans (sort of)

While I haven't been pounding away at the African drums since Wheatstone, I have been working on a bit of film writing. Finished the first draft of a short screenplay that a few friends of mine were planning to shoot with me over the summer (before college claimed them, God help them).

You can find it at m' personal blog, claviger54.blogspot.com

(I'd give the usual disclaimers as per my poor prose style, but I'll suffice to say that, yes, I know it's poor... not shooting for an Oscar, just trying to see where my strengths and weaknesses are)