Faith and Drama

Last night, I saw Ciara Ni Chuirc's new play Made By God at Irish Rep. The production features Briana Reeves Gibson as the Virgin Mary. Gibson previously worked on the national tour of Amazing Grace, a musical with a book by Arthur Giron, who passed away earlier this month.

Like Ni Chuirc's play, Arthur frequently delved into issues of faith with his writing. He is perhaps best known for his play Edith Stein, a drama about a Jewish woman who converted to Christianity, became a nun, and was ultimately murdered at Auschwitz. Faith is not an easy thing in Giron's work, but it is always worth wrestling with in the end.

I first met Arthur more years ago than I'd like to count, at a reading of his play Flight. He was the reason I applied to the MFA program at Carnegie Mellon, but he was just stepping away from it as I was accepted. Though I never studied with him formally, we stayed in touch, and he came to readings of my work when I invited him. He was always generous with his time and his feedback.

A few years ago, I bumped into Arthur at a reading directed by Kim Weild, who also worked on Amazing Grace. He was giddy because he had recently reconnected with a woman he described as his first love. They had both gone on to marry other people, but he couldn't wait to see her again and hear stories about how her life had gone. That was Arthur. He was always looking for the best in people and in life.

He grew up as Arturo Giron, but this was in the days when Latino playwrights weren't taken seriously, so he was advised to submit his work under the name "Arthur" instead. It worked, and his play Becoming Memories was a hit. Arturo became Arthur, and that was the name he then went by professionally. He didn't forget his Latin American heritage, though, which comes out clearly in his play The Coffee Trees.

Arthur had a special knack for introducing magical realism into plays about historical people. His play Emilie's Voltaire, for instance, tells the story of the Enlightenment philosopher's affair with the mathematician Emilie du Chatelet, using a stunning array of theatrical devices. It's probably my favorite work of his. Again, characters wrestle with ideas of faith, not in a simplistic way, but in a manner that reminds us what it means to be fully human.

I wish that Arthur could have seen Made By God, and that I could have heard his thoughts on the piece. The play deals with debates over abortion. In the present day, a Christian podcaster investigates the story of a pregnant teenager who gave birth and died in front of a statue of the Virgin Mary in the year that abortion was outlawed in Ireland. The set, designed by Lindsay Fuori, portrays the outdoor grotto that served as a shrine, and now looms over the lives of characters struggling with their own faith.

Though I can't know for sure, I think Arthur would have enjoyed the play, whether he agreed with Ni Chuirc's religious views and politics or not. To him, what was important was not that we arrived at a destination, but that we always remained on a journey. Faith, for Arthur, was not a prize to be won, but a life to be led.

There will be a memorial service for Arthur on Saturday at Trinity Church on the Upper West Side. If you want another way to honor his memory, though, you might want to check out Made By God.

Amazing Grace

A warning to all those planning on seeing Amazing Grace on Broadway: Bring extra tissues. You will need them.

A warning to all those not planning on seeing Amazing Grace on Broadway: Make plans. You are going to want to see this.

A few years ago, I ran into Arthur Giron, an old mentor of mine, at a reading of one of my plays he had graciously come to see. He told me he had been asked to work on a new musical about John Newton, the man who wrote the song "Amazing Grace." If you don't know Arthur, the author of Edith Stein and other amazing plays, he was the perfect person for them to ask.

"They said they wanted me," Arthur told me at the time, "because I understand redemption." This is a story of redemption, inspired largely by Newton's autobiography Out of the Depths. Newton was a pretty terrible human being, scorning his father, abandoning the woman who loved him, and worst of all, up to his neck in the slave trade, and enjoying every minute of it.

After hitting rock bottom, though, and miraculously surviving a storm that should have killed him, Newton felt God had given him a second chance at life. He returned to England and joined the abolitionist movement, and because he had once been a part of the slave trade, he was able to expose its darkest secrets.

Newton was also a songwriter, and in addition to Amazing Grace wrote scores of other hymns. It was another songwriter, Christopher Smith, who was inspired by Newton's story to write this musical. Though Newton's song is clearly the star here, Smith is no shabby composer himself. I particularly liked the witty "Expectations," sung by Chris Hoch as Major Gray, Newton's rival for the hand of his childhood love, Mary Catlett (played by the wonderful Erin Mackey).

Josh Young plays Newton, and is totally convincing both as a good-for-nothing wastrel and as a conscience-stricken convert trying to do what he can to atone for past sins he can never quite undo. He is particularly good in the second act with songs like "Testimony," but also when reacting to other characters. There is a particularly tense scene between Newton and his former slave Pakuteh (played powerfully by Chuck Cooper) where you don't know if Pakuteh will embrace Newton or throttle him, and indeed, Pakuteh probably doesn't know himself.

Director Christopher Gattelli, ably aided by associate director Kim Weild, spares no expense in this production. The costumes, sets, lighting, and staging are magnificent. The act one curtain certainly beats any falling chandelier or rising helicopter of Broadway's past, with the added benefit that this time the spectacle is actually used in aid of the storytelling, and not just as a showy add-on.

After President Obama sang "Amazing Grace" in South Carolina, it seems that interest in the show has been growing, so I recommend seeing it soon. More information here:

Amazing Grace the Musical

The Buzz From New Hampshire

I just found out that my old playwriting professor, Buzz McLaughlin, is heading up the MFA program at New Hampshire Institute of Art. While there are pros and cons to getting a Masters of Fine Arts--and I'm still ambivalent about my own MFA experience at Carnegie Mellon--Buzz is a magnificent teacher and a fine playwright.

He's also gathered some great faculty members to help him out up there, including Russell Davis, Arthur Giron, and Karen Sunde. If you're thinking of an MFA, it's worth a look.

New Hampshire Institute of Art MFA Program