"Stop waiting for leaders. Do it alone, person to person."
-- Mother Teresa

Faith, acting and theatre -- on the air

I enjoyed being interviewed live yesterday on Sandra Schubert’s Wild Woman Network radio show. We talked about faith and theatre, two on my favorite subjects, Broadway Blessing and my second book, Working on the Inside: The Spiritual Life Through the Eyes of Actors, which features interviews with Kristin Chenoweth, Dudu Fisher, Edward Herrmann, Liam Neeson, Phylicia Rashad, Vanessa Williams and many others. You can listen to the interview by clicking here.

Broadway Blessing, 2009

Lynn Redgrave, J. Mark McVey, Carol Hall, Project Dance, The Broadway Blessing Choir and other distinguished guests will be among the performing artists at this year's celebration dedicated to the people who bring us great theater.

On Monday, Sept. 14 at 7 p.m., the Cathedral Church of Saint John the Divine, one of the nation's leading religious and secular landmarks, is pleased to host the 13th annual Broadway Blessing, an interfaith service that has been bringing the theatre community together every September since 1997. Founded and guest produced by yours truly, Broadway Blessing was conceived as a service of song and story designed to seek God's grace on the new theatre season.

This year’s event will include theatre reflections by actress Lynn Redgrave, Broadway veteran J. Mark McVey singing “A Chance for Me” from the musical Amazing Grace: The True Story, singer/songwriter Carol Hall, actor Casey Groves performing a scene from "Damien" and Project Dance. The Broadway Blessing Choir under the direction of Bruce Neswick, director of Cathedral music, will perform a number of Broadway hits followed by a “sing-a-long”.  The Very Rev. Dr. James A. Kowalski, Dean, and The Rev. Thomas Miller, Canon for Liturgy & Art, from the Cathedral will be joined by Rabbi Jill Hausman of Congregation Ezrath Israel / The Actors' Temple and The Rev. Mitties DeChamplain of St. Clement's Episcopal Church as participants in the 75-minute program.

Past participants have included Marian Seldes, Frances Sternhagen, Boyd Gaines, Edward Herrmann,, Anna Manahan, KT Sullivan, Mary-Mitchell Campbell, J. Mark McVey, Tituss Burgess, Kathleen Chalfant, Billy Porter, Elizabeth Swados, Ken Prymus, Three Mo’ Tenors and Broadway Inspirational Voices.



Mr. Herrmann had this to say about it before making his second Broadway Blessing appearance: “It’s reassuring to know there are so many people out there you know that believe in God and want to take that part of their life and dedicate it to the theatre because theatre is a very spiritual endeavor.  They come from every conceivable denomination, which I kind of like. It’s like a study in architecture of all these different buildings. They come from all kinds of disciplines and it’s just great to be among them.  It’s an annual event, like with spring comes the first buds, now it’s fall and we’re here to bless our endeavors for the rest of the year and maybe some luck will come out of it, whether that’s internal or external.”


Broadway Blessing is free and open to people of all ages; reservations are not needed.  For more information please visit www.stjohndivine.org.

Broadway Blessing is made possible by the generous support of Masterwork Productions Inc., The Church of the Transfiguration (The Little Church Around the Corner), Creative Gifts Foundation, Theater Resources Unlimited (TRU) and other wonderful friends of the theater.

Etty

Anyone looking for an example of the power of theatre to uplift and inspire need look no further than Etty, the compelling one-woman bio-play written and performed by Susan Stein and directed with grace and simplicity by esteemed theatre veteran Austin Pendleton. The show played three performances last week, with a final one scheduled for tonight, at 59E59 Theaters. It then heads to the Edinburgh Festival Fringe next month.

Etty Hillesum (in photo) was a young Jewish writer and mystic who in letters and diaries chronicled life in Nazi-occupied Amsterdam and the Westerbork detention center. She has been seen by many as an adult counterpart to Anne Frank and, after hearing her words of faith and hope, I understand why.

Dressed in a plain maroon dress and looking into the eyes of the audience, Stein becomes Etty solely through her words, spoken straightforwardly and confidently, but with no dramatics. Neither does she employ any action, yet she commands the stage, which other than herself holds only a folding chair, a glass of water and a large suitcase.

“I shall simply lie down and try to be a prayer,” is Etty’s response early on the to the 1941 German occupation of her country.

She might have been trying to be a prayer, but she wasn’t trying to be a saint. She talks freely of her affairs, and, later describes the abortion she gave herself to protect her unborn child from the growing Nazi threat.

The role she did see for herself was that of witness. A house mate comments one day on how lucky they are to have been chosen to live in that slice of history. Lucky they might not have been, but Etty is determined to find meaning in the experiences and refuses to hate her enemies.

“Every atom of hate we add to the world makes it that much more hostile,” she says.

She chooses to go to Westerbork to work for the department of Social Welfare for People in Transit. “The barbed wire is a question of attitude,” she says.

She keeps her spirits, and her humor, by quoting poetry and talking to God. “I’m not challenging you, God, but every now and then send me a line of verse.”

Rather than turn away from the horrifying conditions around her -- babies dying of pneumonia on the floors of transport trains, the mass of people herded into cattle cars headed for concentration camps, their hands reaching out from between planks in the side -- she watches every detail, documenting them in her head and discussing them with God. “Your lessons are hard, God,” she says, without bitterness or accusation.

Before she leaves for Westerbork, a friend warns her that a detention camp will not be a place to develop spiritually, that it will create a hard shell over her. But she has other ideas. “A hard shell shall not fit me. I shall remain defenseless and open.”

Amid the horror, she still believes she can make a difference. “You cannot help us. I shall have to help you, God.”

She helps prepare the babies and mothers who are about to be transported to the concentration camps. She does it caringly, all the while knowing they are likely going to their deaths. One day after watching more than 1,000 herded into trains for transport, she says sadly, “One more piece of our camp has been amputated.”

Surprisingly she says she loves Westerbork for its opportunity. “I’m not finished with you, God. Not by a long shot.” She maintains it is possible “to believe in a terrible end and God.”

And she vows to look up everyone she prepared for transport when the war is over, or visit their graves. “Will I be able to describe it all one day? I think I work well with you, God, that we work well together.

If I don’t survive, she says, how I die will show what I am.

She did not survive. Red Cross records say Etty died at Auschwitz on Nov. 30,1943. The letters and diaries she kept between 1941 and 1943 were published in The Netherlands in 1981, before being translated into English in 1983.

I left the theatre yesterday deeply moved, and still feel that way. Although I had never heard of this extraordinary woman until Stein and Pendleton brought her to life for me, they allow her spirit to survive Auschwitz and be shared with us. I wish them many blessings for their performances in Scotland.

The Power Within Your Reach

By Norman Vincent Peale

When I receive a call for counseling, the people who seek my help usually have some clear-cut reason for their unhappiness: marital difficulties, broken relationships, emotional problems, financial worries. All very specific, very real.

But there are also some whose complaints are harder to pin down. These people are beset by nameless fears and anxieties. They feel isolated and inadequate. The life-force in them has grown dim. They know they are living far below their potential, but they don't know why. There is something parched and arid about them, like plants deprived of water. And indeed this is their trouble: They are living in a spiritual drought.

These people remind me of a story from sailing-ship days about a vessel becalmed off the coast of South America. Week after week went by; the wind did not blow; the ship could not move. The sailors were dying of thirst when another schooner drifted close enough to read their frantic signals for help. Back came the answer: "Let down your buckets!" When they did, they found water fit to drink beneath their keel. Far from the coast though they were, the freshwater current from the mighty Amazon River surrounded them. All they had to do was reach for it.

I like that story, because I have spent my life trying to persuade people that the love of God surrounds them at all times, and the way to "let down their buckets" into this limitless reservoir is to apply the insights and principles set forth so clearly in the Bible.

There is nothing obscure or complicated about this message. It tells us that God designed us to live joyous, productive, successful lives. To achieve such lives, he knew we would need his help, and he promised that this flow of power would be available to all who would follow the instructions He set down very plainly. You can choose to accept that blueprint for living. You can choose to ignore it. The choice you make has everything to do with the transmission of that power.

Anyone who observes people closely knows that certain attitudes and certain actions are destructive. Fear, hatred, anger, self-doubt, cruelty, dishonesty, selfishness, promiscuity. These negative forces can reduce the flow of power to a trickle, or in some cases shut it off altogether.

So when spiritually enervated people come to me, I try to offer some suggestions designed to unblock the flow of power in their lives. Here are four of those suggestions .

1. Have a heart-to-heart talk with your conscience.
A remarkable thing, the human conscience. Some people claim they have none, but this is not true. God built a sense of right and wrong into us whether we admit it or not. A wise Frenchwoman, Madame de Stall, once wrote, "The voice of conscience is so delicate that it is easy to stifle it, but it is also so clear that it is impossible to mistake it."

It has been my observation that one of the most common causes of depression, spiritual anemia and alienation from God is a repressed sense of guilt festering in the unconscious mind. Being human, we all make mistakes. And often, being human, we try to sweep them under the rug. But this is just asking for trouble, because the penalty is a feeling of unworthiness, a loss of self-esteem, a decline of confidence. Countless unhappy people go through life dragging these chains when what they need to do is face up to the transgression, acknowledge it, make amends, ask God's forgiveness, then forgive themselves.

Your conscience will tell you when you need to do that, if you will just listen to it. Give it a chance!

2. Harness the healing forces in gratitude.
"Be thankful for it!" I sometimes say to a dejected visitor. "For what?" he will reply glumly. "For something you're taking for granted," I tell him. I might reach out and touch his hand. "What's that?" I ask. "It's my hand," he will say, surprised. "So it is," I agree, "but look at it. What an amazing instrument it is! How endless the shapes it can assume, how remarkable the uses it has! Suppose you didn't have the use of your hands. Or your eyes. Or your ears. Suppose you could never see a sunset again. Or hear a symphony orchestra play.

"To an amazing extent," I tell him, "appreciation for what you have can lift the depression that comes from dwelling on what you have not. Your mind can hold only one idea at a time. So you can cancel out the gloom of a minus by making yourself focus on a satisfying plus."

3. Reverse your affirmations.
This third suggestion is one I sometimes give to visitors who come shrouded in gloom and despondency. Their evaluation of themselves is always low, right down on the floor. "I'm no good," they say. "I'm worn out. I just can't cope." To these unhappy souls I sometimes offer these three words: "Reverse your affirmations."

When they ask me what I mean, I reply that the thoughts in our minds dominate and determine the realities in our lives. Wise men and women have always known this. The Bible puts it succinctly: "As he thinketh in his heart, so is he." My dictionary says that the word "affirm" means "to state positively or with confidence, declare as a fact, assert to be true." Almost by definition, then, there is great power in a ringing affirmation.

Years ago a French psychotherapist named Emile Coue urged people to say to themselves, "Every day in every way I am getting better and better." Some critics accused Coue of encouraging egotism. Others said his message was based on an impossibility: raising oneself by one's psychological bootstraps. But Coue had hold of something just the same: the power of affirmation to change lives.

My disconsolate visitors need a new image of themselves if they are to escape from the prison of self-doubt that is part of their spiritual drought. As a first step, I urge them to focus on the concept that God made them, and being the Master Craftsman, he made them well. Therefore the good, or at least the potential good, in them far outweighs the bad. "Affirm this," I say to them, "every single day. Accept it. Believe it. Let this conviction saturate every fiber of your being, and ultimately, astonishing things will happen. I guarantee it!"

4. Listen to what God said.
This suggestion is really the simplest and most effective of all. When someone comes to see me, I point out that they have come to me seeking help, and I am glad to do what I can. "But you know," I say, "2,000 years ago a person walked this earth who was the sum of all wisdom. He spent three years talking to ordinary people with problems just like yours. He said that heaven and earth would pass away, but his words would not—and they haven't. They're available everywhere, as close as the nearest church, the nearest bookstore, the nearest library. How to live happy, useful lives? Be good. Be honorable. Be loving. Be kind. If you think you have troubles, why not listen to what he said? His words will fall like cooling rain on the parched and withered areas of your soul."

The Gospel of St. John puts it plainly. Speaking of Jesus he wrote, "But as many as received Him, to them He gave . . ." Gave what? Gave power. If you are trying to escape from a spiritual drought, why not reach for that power?

It's right there, waiting.

Dr. Norman Vincent Peale, author of the bestselling book, The Power of Positive Thinking, cofounded GUIDEPOSTS in 1945 with his wife, Ruth Stafford Peale. He died on December 24, 1993.

Vanities, A New Musical

What sinks this musical version of the 1976 play Vanities is the main ingredient that separates it from the original -- the music. This frothy story spanning the lives of three best friends, from their high school cheerleading days in 1963 up to 1975 when they are in their late 20s, should have been ripe for musicalization. Actually, it still is. It just needs a better songwriter.

David Kirshenbaum’s music sounds the same in song after song, and his lyrics are so over-rhymed that I began trying to guess what word would end each line, based on the one that had ended the previous line. Anticipation, contemplation, sophistication. It was like playing the word games on NPR’s “Weekend Edition Sunday.”

Director Judith Ivey and music director is Bryan Perri seem to be trying to breathe some life into the limp songs by allowing the women to shout them out at painfully high volumes. Far too few are sung relationally, rather one or the other of the women usually takes center stage and belts out like a contestant on “American Idol.” I kept thinking, “Oh, no, not another song.”

And then there’s Dan Knechtges’ repetitive choreography, which at times made me think of the von Trapp children singing “So Long, Farewell” in the movie version of The Sound of Music. I kept expecting to hear one of the women sing about “popping out to say cuckoo.”

I had liked the play version when I saw it in the early 1980s with some of my women friends at a small community theatre in Annapolis, MD. It’s an enjoyable little show, in spite of the clichéd story line and stereotypical characters. Jack Heifner wrote the play and has written the musical’s book.

Lauren Kennedy as Mary is the most fun character because she’s the rebel, and she gets to wear the best clothes. I especially liked the orange and pink mini dress that reminded me of Twiggy and Marlo Thomas in “That Girl.” Joseph G. Aulisi has done a nice job with the costumes.

As Kathy, Anneliese van der Pol is more appealing at the end as her more mature self than as the hyper-organized small town Texas schoolgirl in the beginning.

Joanne (Sarah Stiles) is the character who is really hard to take. Actually she’s a caricature, the virgin who dates the same boy for six years, marries him, becomes a stay-at-home mom with three children and a house in Greenwich, unaware that he’s having multiple affairs. She is screechingly annoying in most of her scenes, especially the one on Kathy’s Manhattan penthouse terrace (attractive set by Anna Louizos) in which she gets drunk on champagne. Acting drunk can get over the top if not well handled, and Stiles does not handle it well. “We’re singing the same old music,” she shrieks at one point. Sadly the whole show feels as if it’s singing the same old music.

Originally scheduled to play Broadway’s Lyceum Theatre, the producers, citing the troubled economy, wisely decided to open Off-Broadway at Second Stage. The show arrives here having been produced at TheatreWorks in Palo Alto, CA in 2006. It also was showcased at the 2006 National Alliance for Musical Theatre (NAMT) Festival of New Musicals and seen at Pasadena Playhouse in August 2008.

Vanities, A New Musical is scheduled to run through Aug. 9. at Second Stage Theatre, 307 W. 43rd St., off 8th Avenue. Tickets are available by calling (212) 246-4422, (800) 766-6048 or online at 2ST.com.

Move On

This one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth unto those things which are before, I press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus.
Philippians 3:13,14

“Every person, if he is to have mental health and live successfully, must move away from past failures and mistakes and go forward without letting them be a weight upon him. The art of forgetting is absolutely necessary. Every night when you lie down to sleep, practice dropping the day into the past. It is over, finished. Look confidently to the future with God.”
-- Dr. Norman Vincent Peale