The world smiles with bright, shiny teeth

Though this is not practice, this e-mail demands inclusion. It's one of those things that both hits someone like a sledgehammer with humility and showers one with blessing at the same time. From Jeff, my old drama prof and current director:

To the cast and crew of "Married and Ravenous in New York":

Thanks to all of you for a wonderful show this afternoon, and congratulations on a tremendous showing at the awards ceremony!

As you know, sixteen shows were entered in this year's district one-act festival. I was very proud that you earned one of those Superiors, but only three of them could be chosen to go on to the Florida State Thespian Festival, so imagine how much prouder I became when the judges named our production as one of the three!

And then there was the icing on the cake ... Jake Harrelson's being named to the festival's All-Star Cast for his performance as Irwin, Alex Johnson's winning the festival's Best Actor prize for his performance as Dr. Stanley, and our wonder-working backstage gang's taking the award for Best Technical Crew.

We owe a *huge* debt to Miss J.B. for her set and for her training of our crew, so make sure that all of you thank her the next time you see her.

Of course, there has to be a special shout-out to our playwright (and Stanton alumnus) Adam Darragh, who is also getting a copy of this e-mail. Adam, we couldn't have done this without you, and you should know that the judges specifically praised your script when they met us in the critique room, mentioning how clever and funny it is.

I am tremendously happy for all of you, and I thank you for the contribution that each of you made in representing Stanton at the festival.

Here's looking forward to more performances at school in two weeks, and again in Tampa in April!

Living hardcore in quaint Pickering

I'm torn about marriage and subsequent counseling, but I'm positively confounded about how the inevitable werewolf can eat a cat and cause trouble without the police catching him. There is joy in the air as I learn that, not only is my play getting performed by the Stanton Thespians, but it is already in production. This means the rewrites have to happen fast, before they perform at the District Thespian Festival on the 15th. Yet my biggest conundrums are ethical, and there are two of them: one, does the werewolf have to vomit into a trash can after he has eaten the cat whose silver collar turns him back to human form, and is that deliciously twisted or just plain gross? two, he eats a bag of organic produce, and the wife has to tell the NYPD something, so can she blame it on hippies? With my often-bare feet and shaggy hair, I'm half-hippie myself, but will my audience understand that? I like hippies, and want to make the joke work, but don't want them seriously associated with not shaving, or werewolf attack, or, for that matter, organic produce.

Yet while there is snow everywhere, like the odd rain in Spain, it cannot usurp the warm homes of Pickering Methodists! We eat with Peter Cross and family, whom I know from 2003 when my youth choir visited his church in Bolsover. The Methodist connection brings us to Margaret and Lorrie, an old missionary couple who put us to work on a jigsaw puzzle and have read Gilead and other of my favorite books. Peter Halsworth puts us to work in his new office making notes about ministry videos for him, and he recognizes, like us and Bishop John Shelby Spong, that Christianity must change die (for irrelevance to our lives is spiritual death for certain). York, also, is cool, as is Avatar, which must be seen on the big screen even when poor in a different country.

We are living with Tony and Ruth Leeming, a wonderfully kind couple who, completely casually, treat us like kings. Apparently, they retired from the Bed and Breakfast trade four months ago, so it's normal to have multiple-course breakfasts with different sets of knives and spoons around the perimeter of the place-mats. Ryan is building a snowman to rival Adam Hunter and the others who posted pictures of their individual snowpeople on facebook, and my thoughts are also sadly away from this quaint, little town, toward "Married and Ravenous in New York" (the new title) getting its world premiere soon, and its special nights from January 28-30 at my old high school of Stanton College Prep, where you will see my mom and Anna at least that I will be living vicariously through. If you see them, love them, for when you love my fam and friends, I feel the love too.

Bram Stoker, though Irish, imagines Transylvania

The werewolf is described, in one part, as a stinky, shaggy-haired hippie with long fingernails and grooming issues. Don’t worry, when it snarls at me it’s perfectly harmless: it lives in Manhattan. In fact, it’s currently sitting in a fireside chair in the office of Doctor Stanley as the werewolf and his wife try to work out how they can constructively raise a child when, every month, the husband turns into a werewolf. This is my play, ideally debuting in Jacksonville next year, and the day has seen some great rewriting.

We miss the afternoon milking because of the muse and Ryan’s much-needed nap. The next day, we make up for it by heaving the entire pile of goat/horse/dog (but not pig) manure and straw and wood chips over several feet into our neighbor’s field, where he will eventually spread it as fertilizer over the entire acreage. Though it is not often this way, it appears to Ryan and me that the fields cannot keep pace with the animals, as the pile grows higher and higher.

We aren’t asked to finish the project, and are beckoned to come down every now and again, our time obligation to Phil and Chris being done, but we finish it because it’s nice to have it done and because now there is room for several more levels to our nutrient-rich, stinking ziggurat.

A moment of departure for Father Ted: Father Ted is a Catholic priest living in the Irish countryside, the leader to his parish – the old, alcoholic priest, who tends to fall down the stairs and the young, naïve and gullible priest – and the upstanding figure that keeps the town community in line. He is a serious man of faith, which is never brought into question, though anyone who sees him realizes his flaws, many of which are quite silly. “Father Ted” is a TV show; syndicated, it’s still one of the most popular shows in Ireland.

Phil and Chris feel obligated to introduce us to it, “To show us the true Ireland.” This “true Ireland” involves, in the first episode, such quintessential moments as a local couple knocking on the parish door and, when Father Ted answers, presenting him with a very inviting Eastertime gift: “Father,” they say, “we thought you’d love a Lenten fruit basket.” He takes it and thanks them and gives a big smile. They say, “That’ll be eight Euro.” And our hosts laugh gregariously.

At the cornerstone of “Father Ted”, however, are plots that could only be made in Ireland. In one episode, Father Ted bets the parish heating bill on a sheep fair and, when his bet is scared by a terrifying beast, he takes it into the parish, gives it a spa treatment, puts on relaxing chant music, etc. and the sheep recovers (albeit with a few more twists and turns). First, we watch “Cigarettes, Alcohol, and Rollerblading,” in which the leader of the rival parish (who is Newman to Father Ted’s Jerry) calls Father Ted and says, “At our parish, we’ve given up smoking, drinking, and skateboarding. And, in the spirit of sacrifice to our Lord, will you give up something similar in solidarity?”

Not to be beaten in the “giving-things-up competition”, Father Ted cuts his cigarettes in half, buries the older priest’s liquor in a cave along the Cliffs of Moher, and forbids the younger one from rollerblading, to much chagrin. Unable to do this on their own, they call a Lenten enforcer: a nun who enjoys sacrifice to the extent of sadism: she pours ice into the tub, wakes them up at five AM, and feeds them only simple porridge; oh, the joys of Lenten remembrance!

In any case, when Father Ted visits the rival parish, he first peeks into the window to find the three rival priests in the library, affronting our hero by smoking a pipe and drinking a beer while pulling the other on a skateboard! They didn’t give up a single thing! Additionally, the nun winds up gorging herself on chocolate while Father Ted is gone, breaking her Lenten vow! A deal is made, and the chocolate is forgotten in order to hold the rival parish accountable to their vows with the fury of a nun scorned: the last scene is the three rival priests running through the countryside in their boxers, screaming, chased by a nun in full habit, wielding a huge tree branch as a switch, a penance stick like a vicious, Catholic firedrake.

I am greatly intrigued by the film and television portrayals of men and women of faith. So often they are either judgmental or so on-the-nose unrealistic that I cannot relate to them. I’m not saying that “Father Ted” is on par with the faithful reality of Dead Man Walking, but it says a lot about a culture to have a popular sitcom that both deeply respects religious leaders while recognizing their humanity and having fun with it.

Our English hosts have been in stitches the whole program, and tell us how “to a T” this is of the Irish. I can’t vouch for that, but can say that the Irish language also has a prominent role in the show. I’m not talking about Gaelic, however. Ryan and I were rather surprised when, in “Father Ted”, one of the parishioners would lament, without censoring, “f***ing hell,” whereas, in “Scrubs” reruns from the States, the word “bastard” is censored. Different strokes for different folks, and though it jars us, we came to learn about our brothers and sisters across the sea. Little did we know that, to our standards, our Irish brothers and sisters are pottymouths, and perhaps, to their standards (though I don’t quite know what they are yet), maybe we are too.