By Retta Blaney As a student at Yale University 62 years ago, John Wulp was chatting with professor and literary critic Paul Pickrel at an Elizabethan tea. Pickrel mentioned that he had just read The Book of Margery Kempe and found it hilarious. Wulp, who had no background in faith, could not imagine how an autobiography by a 14th-century English mystic could be that … [Read more...] about Comic Tribute to a 14th-century Mystic
theater
An Hour of the Millennium
By Retta Blaney Actress Abigail Killeen first heard of the 1988 Danish film Babette’s Feast during a sermon in lower Manhattan in the 1990s. Curious, she watched the movie and enjoyed it. “As a young woman in my 20s at the time, I thought it was beautiful but it didn’t pierce my heart the way age does for us.” Fast forward to 2007, when the movie was the subject of a … [Read more...] about An Hour of the Millennium
Rowan Williams, Playwright
The Shakespeare Project of Chicago will stage Shakeshafte, a play by the Rt. Rev. Rowan Williams, the 104th Archbishop of Canterbury. Both performances will occur at libraries in Chicago and in Niles. Michael Lenehan provides background in the Chicago Reader: Lancashire, England, c. 1580: Two men sip wine in a stone-walled room whose dark and dampness are relieved only by a … [Read more...] about Rowan Williams, Playwright
Degrees of Separation
By Retta Blaney The U.S. Senator from North Carolina is an unquestioning supporter of all things red, especially on God and guns. His convictions are challenged, though, after a shooting at his sons’ elementary school leaves 29 dead. After the funeral for one of the victims, he admits in response to a blogger’s question that the killings are enough to make him doubt God’s … [Read more...] about Degrees of Separation
Discomfiting Theater
By Retta Blaney More than a decade ago, playwright Bruce Graham read a newspaper feature about a transit bus bound for New York City’s Rikers Island Correctional Center. Graham started thinking about the people who rode buses like that to the remote areas where prisons tend to be located. A self-described liberal, the 60-year-old South Philadelphia native was also pondering … [Read more...] about Discomfiting Theater
A Legendary Truce
By Retta BlaneyActor Alex Gwyther spent a night in a replica of a World War I battlefield trench outside London because he wanted to enhance his one-man play. By morning, though, exhausted from having slept little on the chicken wire in the “officers’ quarters,” he was no longer thinking about his acting skills.“What really struck me was I was dying for a bacon sandwich and a … [Read more...] about A Legendary Truce
Love and Death
By Retta BlaneyBrush Strokes may be the only musical to begin as a conversation at a church convention, when the Rev. Stephen Chinlund met the Rev. Herbert G. Draesel, Jr., his partner in creativity.Based on a play by Chinlund and backed by Draesel’s music, Brush Strokes will premiere Sept. 14 at Hudson Guild Theater. Jim Semmelman, a longtime television stage manager of The … [Read more...] about Love and Death
Still-Amazing Grace
By Retta Blaney“I am not what I ought to be. I am not what I hope to be. But by the grace of God, I am certainly not what I was.” — John NewtonChristopher Smith had never heard of John Newton when, with a little time to spare and in search of some air conditioning, he browsed through the children’s section of a library in Fort Washington, Pennsylvania, looking for inspiration … [Read more...] about Still-Amazing Grace