theatre – Ruminations

Return to This Random World

A Rumination from my dramaturgy of Steven Dietz’s This Random World directed by David Lee-Painter.

I find myself returning….

This spring I got to attend a wonderful production of TRW at Post Falls High School directed by Payton Edwards. Then last week, digging through some records I found the introductory note I’d written for my dramaturgy packet. The note is below. I rather enjoy that TRW is never far from me to prod me into reflection.

*This Random World* company studying the script.

One of the things that immediately struck me about Dietz’s script is how much we miss when we’re narrowly focused on our own lives. We’re not even aware of all the parts we play in other people’s lives–Even some people we never meet. But with a slight shift of our gaze, we might see different things or things as if new—in ways we’ve never looked at them before.

The idea of randomness resonated. We, as creatures on this planet, are trying to control our world and that belief of control can be very important. It can be humbling to discover how much is really just randomness or dumb luck at work.

The second title or subtitle of the play is: The myth of serendipity. Myth is commonly thought of as a falsehood when it is actually a truth manifested as story. A narration. This Random World looks for the truth of serendipity. It visits the Forest Where Lies are Revealed where we are brought closer to the truth.

When I began my research, I thought the second title referred to serendipity as a myth. But I’ve come to believe Dietz is using it to comment on the main title. This Random World is the truth of serendipity.

Dietz has crafted a compelling story and at the same time has dismantled it by denying scenes where we expect certain characters to meet. This puts us in & out of the story at the same time—like Schrödinger’s cat. It permits us to study the world he has created and juxtapose it with our own.

As Dietz wrote, one of theatre’s most profound gifts are participation and reflection. And This Random World gives us plenty of opportunities to do that.

Notes on games of chance...

The Drunkard’s Walk: How Randomness Rules Our Lives is a 2008 popular science book by Leonard Mlodinow. It became a New York Times bestseller and a New York Times notable book. It is a book about humans’ ability to create patterns—even when the patterns are not there. Adapted as a survival skill, our pattern-making is not infallible and at times can lead one to the wrong conclusions.

Some of the main lessons:

We wrongly over-attribute successes and failures to people’s actions rather than luck’s role.
We should judge people by their character and talents rather than their results.
We are not as in control as we think.
What IS in our control is the opportunities we take advantage of and how we improve our own skills toward the best odds.

Along with the aforementioned book, Mlodinow has written for the New York Times about randomness and the human need to feel in control:

We should judge people by their character and talents rather than the results of their efforts.

Randomness causes much of success and failure, and much of that is outside our control. What is in our control is the number of opportunities we take advantage of and how we cultivate our own skills to give us the best odds.

Along with the aforementioned book, Mlodinow has written for the New York Times about randomness and the human need to feel in control:

It struck me then that I have Hitler to thank for my existence, for the Germans had killed my father’s wife and two young children, erasing his prior life. And so were it not for the war, my father would never have emigrated to New York, never have met my mother, also a refugee, and never have produced me and my two brothers … The outline of our lives, like the candle’s flame, is continuously coaxed in new directions by a variety of random events that, along with our responses to them, determine our fate.
“What Are the Odds?”

REFERENCES

Mlodinow, Leonard. The Drunkard’s Walk: How Randomness Rules Our Lives, Vintage Press, 2008.
Mlodinow, Leonard. “The Limits of Control,” New York Times, June 15, 2009.
Mlodinow, Leonard and the Editors. “What Are the Odds?” New York Times, May 22, 2009.

Verbatim Theatre-Walking Steven Home

Yesterday, I was fortunate to attend an online workshop with Gregory Hinton to get a taste of verbatim theatre writing–creating playscripts from oral history interviews. I’ve worked with oral histories as a researcher with Palouse Anthropology and I’ve written plays but I’ve never combined the two practices. The playwright in me was stoked to mess around in a new technique. The researcher not so much.

There’s a responsibility when someone gives you their story. I see it as an act of trust. When we do our interviews, there’s a review process with the narrator. It gives them an opportunity to clarify, add, and if they wish, remove items from their narrative. It is a gift when they share their stories of triumphs and challenges. Their stories never becomes yours to do with what you will.

Then as a playwright working on these, I became very much aware of how we could still keep quotes from the stories intact and yet with surrounding dialogue frame them in such a way as to use someone’s words against them. It was a reminder of the power of language and how even word placement can influence a listener and shape meaning.

That evening we read our little pieces and then Gregory read “Walking Steven Home which he created from the family impact statements at the sentencing hearing of Steven Nelson’s murderer in Boise five years ago.”

I knew Steven Nelson as part of the local Moscow scene. He was the night manager of Shari’s where I wrote a portion of my masters thesis and logged many an hour in coffee klatches with my friends devising theatre projects.

He often stopped by the table to chat us up. I remember him as the friendly, well-dressed fellow who couldn’t wear a suit. They never seemed to hang on him quite right, but that never mattered. He had his own kind of charm. He once regaled us with why he was sporting a spikey haircut. In the end as I recall he had given it to himself. I’m not sure though. There were a lot side stories along the way and laughter.

Steven’s end was not funny. He was lured into a remote area outside of Boise and brutally beaten for being homosexual. Steven had walked, naked and barefoot, half a mile before he could find help. He died of his injuries the next day.

It was these harrowing events that Gregory drew from to create Walking Steven Home. At the reading, he started quietly. It was similar to the ones we had done but obviously not as clumsy. One character spoke then the next and the next. Then slowly, Gregory began to work in his own words announcing a brief break from the transcripts and weaving us back in.

I wasn’t aware of it happening but I could feel it like a storm summoned. Even through the Zoom, it was evocative. The hair came up on my arms. And at the scripts conclusion emotionally I was in tatters. And it was just Gregory reading. There was no fancy effects. No spectacle. So great feats of acting played against each other. It was one man reading the scripts prepared from true events.

Everybody-End of the Journey

Everybody by Branden Jacobs-Jenkins
directed by KT Turner
dramaturgy by Ariana Burns

Everybody has taken its final journey and closed two weeks ago. Spring break has come and gone at the University of Idaho and we’ve all moved to next projects.

Everyman and the early morality plays taught audiences that how they lived their life effected where their afterlife would be spent. And after Everyman’s confession, repentance and death, an Angel arrived at play’s end to report Everyman was finally with God. The story told the audience that if they followed the same course, they too might know redemption.

Everybody offered a more open ending. There is only Death’s assurance that they will be okay and the audience is left to decide for themselves what that meant.

And in the end, Everybody makes the journey alone. A point that was emphasized in our Zoom production which had the actors siloed in different performance rooms and the audiences in their own homes.

What finally becomes of Everybody as they make this solo journey is a question BJJ has left us to tangle with long past our time watching the show.

Performance of Everybody. Laurel Joy as Everybody and Luke McGreevy as Stuff.

Everybody-Making the Danse Macabre

Everybody by Branden Jacobs-Jenkins
directed by KT Turner
dramaturgy by Ariana Burns

(Section of frontispiece from edition of Everyman published by John Skot c. 1530.)

The Danse Macabre allegory discussed in a previous blog post probably claimed antecedents in pagan traditions of dancing in burial grounds. Branden Jacobs-Jenkins’ script called for a Danse Macabre after Everybody meets with Love and before Death returns to begin the journey.

The University of Idaho Theatre Arts Department planned Everybody to be a virtual production from the start. With this knowledge, director KT Turner and her designers began pushing what they’d learned over the school year working in Zoom. What grew out of those meetings was a hybrid production that involved prerecording elements in the studio and on the Hartung stage which will be fed into live performances.

L to R: director KT Turner; *videographer Christian Pankopf & lighting designer Rio Spiering*; Ctr choreographer Victoria Zenner works with the company *during rehearsals at the Hartung Theatre*.

The big set piece is the Danse Macabre which involved efforts from the entire design team (set, lights, sound, costumes). Choreographed by Victoria Zenner, it was filmed on the Hartung stage. We had access to the Hartung for only a few days for rehearsal and filming.

The rest of the time rehearsals were on Zoom from the actors’ homes and offices.

Typically for Zoom productions here, a backdrop is provided for the actor performance areas. For Everybody, the backdrop would be a combination curtain and green screen to display an image of the set on the Hartung stage.

While Zoom rehearsals went on, lighting and scenic (set by Brindle
Brundage) were testing ideas at Hartung. The curtains at the proscenium limited upstage lighting positions to back light performers.

They looked to where they could and couldn’t reach and how to use that to their best advantage. They also tested different plastics for the upstage curtain to create silhouettes on.

Our theatrical rehearsals were the first at Hartung in almost a year when the pandemic shuttered The Moors one day after its opening. For the short period we were there, strict safety protocols were in place along with constant reminders to watch out for each other.

Besides the Danse, there were also a couple other elements that needed to be worked out and filmed like transitions between the live performances and the short recordings. And through the rehearsal process, the show continually develops and changes.

After watching the dance, KT decided to interweave the actors into it instead of having them be outside observers. Victoria began teaching them the routine.

Then Idaho-always known for unpredictable weather-brought a snow storm which closed campus and we lost a precious rehearsal day at Hartung. The actors were still learning the routine. We would not be able to make up the day before shooting that weekend.

Composite image of Zoom rehearsal. Victoria Zenner top left coaching the actors through dance steps.

The decision was made to have dance practice on Zoom. The above composite image captures the humor and the frustration as the company met the challenge head on. Two days later, we returned to Hartung and were ready for filming.

After several days filming, Christian is now editing the footage for technical rehearsals which begin on Saturday. This is the final process of stitching the production together for audiences to see starting March 5.

L to r: dancers & actors, costumed, listen to Christian *Pankopf* explain how the camera shoot will go; Emma von Till lies prone while Christian readies to start filming.

More information about ticketing can be found at the University of Idaho Theatre Arts Department’s webpage:

https://www.uidaho.edu/class/theatre/productions-and-events

Everybody-Dramaturgy Packet-Sisyphus

Everybody by Branden Jacobs-Jenkins
directed by KT Turner
dramaturgy by Ariana Burns

(Section of frontispiece from edition of Everyman published by John Skot c. 1530.)

Let 'em go. They're right. I don't have time for this. I've already spent my entire life dealing with this crap. I refuse to spend the last moments of it pushing the same rock up the same hill. --Branden Jacobs-Jenkins, Everybody

The above quote from Everybody is a description of the Greek legend of Sisyphus, a king punished in the underworld to push a boulder up a hill for eternity.

A cunning trickster of legend, when Death came to fetch him, Sisyphus chained Death up instead. This resulted in the sick suffering more so since they were unable to die. The world was thrown out of balance because nothing died. Ares finally freed Death because war was no fun if people didn’t die. Sisyphus was sent to Hades.

Prior to his leaving, he had told his wife to leave his body unburied. He was able to use that as an excuse to get out of the underworld which he did to punish his wife. Once free, he lived a long life until dying a second time.

When this death came, Hades was ready for him and had a special punishment for cheating Death: pushing a boulder up a hill again and again and again. A torment that has stayed with us through the ages, surviving through art, poetry, and remaining in common speech as a never-ending and futile task. Homer mentions it in the Odyssey:

Aye, and I saw Sisyphus in violent torment, seeking to raise a monstrous stone with both his hands. Verily he would brace himself with hands and feet, and thrust the stone toward the crest of a hill, but as often as he was about to heave it over the top, the weight would turn it back, and then down again to the plain would come rolling the ruthless stone. But he would strain again and thrust it back, and the sweat flowed down from his limbs, and dust rose up from his head.

Britannica, The Editors of Encyclopaedia. “Sisyphus”. Encyclopedia Britannica, 10 Jul. 2020, www.britannica.com/topic/Sisyphus. Accessed 9 February 2021.

Homer, The Odyssey, translated by A.T. Murray. www.theoi.com/Text/HomerOdyssey11.html. Accessed 9 February 2021.

Everybody-Dramaturgy Packet-Danse Macabre

Everybody by Branden Jacobs-Jenkins
directed by KT Turner
dramaturgy by Ariana Burns

(Section of frontispiece from edition of Everyman published by John Skot c. 1530.)

Danse Macabre or Dance of Death is a medieval allegory about one’s own mortality that came about during a time when death was very much present. The allegory has been presented through a myriad of media including sculptures, murals, wood cuts, paintings, music and presentations (Hollar; Cohen, p 37). Murals were displayed on church walls and charnel houses where corporeal remains were stored and Gertsman wrote of a Parisian cemetery with a large mural surrounding its inner courtyard (p 1). Danse Macabres typically showed people in long processions with corpses in varying stages of decay (Hollar Collection).

The Danse Macabre probably claimed antecedents in pagan traditions. The practice of dancing in burial grounds did not stop after Christianity had spread into Europe (Cohen, p 37). Medieval cemeteries were not relegated to solely mourning and reflection. Gertsman found them to alive with a variety of activities:

…the medieval cemetery, not necessarily a mournful place, was a site of public picnics, promenades and celebrations—and therefore always busy and often given to worldly affairs. –Elina Gertsman, p 1.

As the church absorbed the graveyard dance, it transformed it into a moral pageantry (Cohen, p 37.) It was the fusion of these differing beliefs that would give rise to the Danse Macabre. Gertsman wrote that the Macabre imagery melded the ideas of death as communal and individual. Each person faced it on their own, in their families, and with the presence of mass burials at cemeteries. None could escape it. “The Nobleman and the Beggar of the danse macabre are both mortal in equal measure, and their indistinguishable remains will co-mingle at a charnel house….” (Gertsman, p31).

The most popular woodcuts of the Danse Macabre were created by Hans Holbien in about 1525 (Public Domain). His work has seen successive reprints over time.

Interestingly enough, when artists decided how to depict Death visually the most common representation was his own handiwork. Jean de Vauzèle, the Prior of Montrosier remarked on this in his preface to Holbien’s book:

"And yet we cannot discover any one thing more near the likeness of Death than the dead themselves, whence come these simulated effigies and images of Death's affairs, which imprint the memory of Death with more force than all the rhetorical descriptions of the orators ever could." (Wikipedia).

Death is often illustrated dynamically and full of more life than any of the other characters. As if being freed from the mortal coil, has given it more energy. Cohen wrote that he found the pain still within Death’s appearance:

“…the artists of the Dance of Death, by levity, satire and humour, render him a ‘jolly fellow’, a trusted friend. Nevertheless, anguish in the face of Death breaks when, as in our time, massacres and monstrous weapons of universal devastation are all too familiar, death as a dancer can no longer have any ‘reality’, even in fantasy.” (Cohen, p 38).

Along with the duality of Death being a communal and individual experience, the Danse Macabre brings it close and keeps it apart making it both friend and stranger to the people of the Middle Ages.

Wenceslaus Hollar, Procession of the Dance of Death (Unknown date, author lived 1607-1677)

Dance of Death attributed to Johann Jakob Haid, 1700-1750, from the @britishmuseum collection.

Cohen, John. “Death and the Danse Macabre.” History Today, vol. 32, no. 8, Aug. 1982, p. 35. EBSCOhost. Last accessed: Jan 21, 2021.

Gertsman, Elina. “Visual Space and the Practice of Viewing: The Dance of Death at Meslay-Le-Grenet.” Religion & the Arts, vol. 9, no. 1/2, Mar. 2005, pp. 1–37. EBSCOhost,

Hans Holbein’s Dance of Death (1523–5). The Public Domain Review. publicdomainreview.org/collection/hans-holbeins-dance-of-death-1523-5. Last Accessed: Jan 22, 2021.

University of Toronto’s Library Wenceslaus Hollar Collection. hollar.library.utoronto.ca/dancedeath.

https://www.uidaho.edu/class/theatre/productions-and-events/everybody

Everybody-Dramaturgy Packet-Notes

Everybody by Branden Jacobs-Jenkins
directed by KT Turner
dramaturgy by Ariana Burns

(Section of frontispiece from edition of Everyman published by John Skot c. 1530.)

Last night’s rehearsal included the scenes with Friendship and Stuff. Friendship in Everybody is not the ideal looked for in the Middle Ages: one that is a true friendship, enduring and tested by adversity. At the end of the scene, Friendship has nothing of substance to offer Everybody and leaves them with a statue.

I’ve been thinking about the tawdry little trophy most of the night. It was on par with a golden idol. And probably the best summation of their relationship. Which reminded me of Moses coming down the mountain with the Ten Commandments only to discover people had gotten bored, melted down the gold for a golden calf, and were throwing a party. Rather than waiting for something of substance, they had gone for gratification.

The departure of Friendship leads to the arrival of Stuff, a larger scale version of the trophy Friendship had just awarded Everybody.

My mental picture—despite BJJ’s description that Stuff is a trophy—is the junk lady from Jim Henson’s Labyrinth. The junk lady rolls into that film intent on distracting the heroine from her mission with all her worldly goods. This is one reason Stuff gives for not accompanying Everybody on their journey.

The image of us being burdened with unnecessary crap seems easier to recognize than that we might have social connections that are just as hollow. There are TV programs dedicated to people who gather too much and messaging would have us believe that we are a nation of hoarders. Comedy routines have been written on the subject as in this example from George Carlin’s 1981 A Place For My Stuff:

That's all your house is- a place to keep your stuff. If you didn't have so much stuff, you wouldn't need a house. You could just walk around all the time. A house is just a pile of stuff with a cover on it. You can see that when you're taking off in an airplane. You look down, you see everybody's got a little pile of stuff. All the little piles of stuff. And when you leave your house, you gotta lock it up. Wouldn't want somebody to come by and take some of your stuff. They always take the good stuff. They never bother with that crap you're saving. All they want is the shiny stuff. That's what your house is, a place to keep your stuff while you go out and get...more stuff! Sometimes you gotta move, gotta get a bigger house. Why? No room for your stuff anymore.... --George Carlin

Our conversation shifted to cutting loose of worldly goods. There was talk of minimalism and how impossible it would be to achieve that for some. I was reminded of Swedish death cleaning, an on-going process of decluttering and organizing but still hanging onto sentimental items. There are quite a few web pages on the topic as it is all the rage nowadays. This was the one I stopped at to refresh my memory. https://www.dumpsters.com/blog/how-to-do-swedish-death-cleaning

Carlin, George. A Place for All My Stuff. https://genius.com/George-carlin-a-place-for-my-stuff-lyrics Last Accessed: Jan 21, 2021.

Keenan, Bretton. “A Beginner’s Guide to Swedish Death Cleaning.” Dumpsters.com. Sept 11, 2019. dumpsters.com/blog/how-to-do-swedish-death-cleaning. Last accessed: Jan 21, 2021.

Everybody-Dramaturgy Packet-Misc

Everybody by Branden Jacobs-Jenkins
directed by KT Turner
dramaturgy by Ariana Burns

(Section of frontispiece from edition of Everyman published by John Skot c. 1530.)

Five Wits

The Five Wits are considered synonymous with the five senses. There were even doctrines that placed the senses in a hierarchical order based on their moral standing.

In Sound, Body and Space: Audience Experience in Late Medieval English Drama, Clare Wright wrote this top-down system was derived from Aristotelian philosophy and that:

Because of their associations with light, truth, knowledge and understanding sight and the eyes were perceived as the most respectable of the senses. At the opposite end of the spectrum was touch, the basest of man's perceptions (Wright p23).

Friendship

Everyman and Elckerlijc found inspiration from a Buddhist parable about false friends (Poláčková p 325; Williams). Everyman and Everybody, in their eponymous plays, look for someone to accompany them to their reckonings with God but are hard pressed to find a companion. Conley in his paper on “The Doctrine of Friendship in Everyman” wrote that friendship had to be tried with adversity to be proven its worth in medieval times. A true friendship was lasting, and then it would be called virtuous “indeed supernatural- a gift of God” (Conley). This last trait made it something of great value. Conley continued that true friendship: “…provides counsel and comfort pertaining not only to this life but also to the next life” (p 382).

This value on true friendship was added to the plot of Everyman which taught the necessities for salvation.

Conley, John. “The Doctrine of Friendship in Everyman.” Speculum, Jul., 1969, Vol. 44, No. 3, pp. 374-382. University of Chicago Press on behalf of the Medieval Academy of America. www.jstor.org/stable/2855500. Last Accessed: Jan 15, 2021.

Poláčková, Eliška. “Mutato Nomine Dicor Nunc Homulus Latin Translation of The Morality Play of Elckerlijc.” Listy filologické / Folia philologica, 2011, Vol. 134, No. 3/4, pp. 323-339. Centre for Classical Studies at the Institute of Philosophy of the Czech Academy of Sciences www.jstor.org/ stable/23468757. Dec 2, 2020.

Williams, Arnold. “Reviewed Work(s): A Study of Everyman with Special Reference to the Source of Its Plot by Genji Takahashi.” Speculum. Vol. 28, No. 3 (Jul., 1953), pp. 616-617. University of Chicago Press on behalf of the Medieval Academy of America. www.jstor.org/stable/2847061. Last Accessed: 11-01-2021 20:03 UTC.

Wright, Clare. Sound, Body and Space: Audience Experience in Late Medieval English Drama. PhD thesis, University of Nottingham. 2011. Access from the University of Nottingham repository: http://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/13108/1/555408.pdf. Last accessed: Jan 1, 2021.

Everybody-Dramaturgy Packet-Branden Jacobs-Jenkins

Everybody by Branden Jacobs-Jenkins
directed by KT Turner
dramaturgy by Ariana Burns

(Section of frontispiece from edition of Everyman published by John Skot c. 1530.)

Amongst his many awards, Branden Jacobs-Jenkins has received the Paula Vogel Award 2011, the Steinberg Playwriting Award 2015, MacArthur Fellow 2016, Windham-Campbell Literature Prize (Drama) at Yale 2016, Critics’ Circle Theatre Award Most Promising Playwright Gloria & An Octoroon 2017, USA & John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowships 2020, and the inaugural Tennessee Williams award.

He holds an MA in Performance Studies from NYU and is also a graduate of the Lila Acheson Wallace American Playwrights Program at the Juilliard School.

Plays

Neighbors 2010
War 2014
Appropriate 2014—Obie Award for Best New American Play with An Octoroon
An Octoroon 2014
Gloria 2015—Pulitzer Prize for Drama finalist 2016
Everybody 2017—Pulitzer Prize for Drama finalist 2018
Girls 2019

Quotes

He said he hopes his students will use the form to provoke thought: "There is an anti-intellectualism in the theater right now. There's room for more challenging work that's talking to the moment, which is filled with so much unease" (Souccar).

"I'm not interested in a linear tale of divorce in the black community," he says. "My dream audience member would turn to the audience member next to them and say, 'What just happened to me?'" (Marks).

On Everybody

For Jacobs-Jenkins, there’s little distinction between adapting a play and creating one—primarily because he can’t resist commenting on what he’s adapting. “For me, adaptation is about challenging the original play. I’m not translating it for an audience so much as actually trying to explore what this piece meant in its context and what it might mean now. That’s my process, starting there and unpacking that way” (Haun).

Everybody is dedicated to the memory of James Houghton the founder of the Signature Theatre and director of the drama division at Julliard from 2006 until his death. Jacobs-Jenkins is a member of Signature Theatre Residency Five program joining in 2013 and an alum of Julliard.

Video

Haun, Harry. “ Why You Need to Know the Name Branden Jacobs-Jenkins.” Playbill. Feb. 27, 2017. www.playbill.com/article/why-you-need-to-know-the-name-branden-jacobs-jenkins. Last Accessed: Jan 17, 2021.

Marks, Peter. “A playwright who’s at ease with causing discomfort.” Washingtonpost.com, 24 June 2016. Gale Academic OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A456073426/AONE. Last Accessed: Jan 16, 2021.

Souccar, Miriam Kreinin. “40 UNDER 40; Branden Jacobs-Jenkins, 32.” Crain’s New York Business, vol. 33, no. 13, 27 Mar. 2017, p. 0015. Gale General One File, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A487852264. Last Accessed Jan 16, 2021.

Everybody-Dramaturgy Packet-Everyman

Everybody by Branden Jacobs-Jenkins
directed by KT Turner
dramaturgy by Ariana Burns

(Section of frontispiece from edition of Everyman published by John Skot c. 1530.)

Very little is known about the morality Everyman. It is a translation and adaptation of the Dutch Elckerlijc but there is no surviving record of its production history until modern day; when or where it was seen; if it was indoors or outside. Nor any description of the size and shape of the stages it used (Tydemann, p 1). But that does not mean that Everyman was never produced. “It could, of course, have been staged, though unrecorded, any number of times in the early sixteenth century, and would have been ideal for presentation as a school play” (Davidson).

Despite its missing production history, it was known to have had at least four print runs to attest to its popularity (Davidson). And has been described by modern writers as one of the best examples of a morality play (Poláčková, p 325).

Much of the first half of Everyman looks backward over Everyman’s life. The acquaintances they has made and material goods acquired. And with the coming of Death, there is a realization that none of these things will make the journey to judgment. “The things of the world are banished, in other words, as part of a gradual triumph of the things of the spirit” (Garner, p 281).

At first blush, the story of Everyman may appear to be terrifying, meeting with Death, faced with mortality, and being sent to judgment. But the lesson of Everyman’s chance for redemption and a life after death makes it a tale of hope (Kaula, p 10). “The reluctant journey of Everyman’s contrite soul toward God as judge becomes a glad pilgrimage toward God as Savior” (Cunningham, p. 168).

In his “Sermon Themes and Sermon Structure in Everyman,” George Peek divided Everyman into two parts or two medieval sermons. The form of sermons then was divided into five parts: theme, protheme, introduction of theme, divisions, and subdivisions. The themes would contain the message that the orator would build from; the protheme introduced a prayer and led into proof of the theme. The introduction was a narrative which served to bring the listeners into the divisions and subdivisions which expounded on the ideas introduced in the theme (Peek, 159).

With Everyman, the messenger introduced the theme and emphasized the transitory nature of material things. God developed the Protheme: the fall of man and gave reason for the action of the play. The Introduction was the scene with Death and Everyman. The desertions were divisions. Peek detailed how the second part of the play moved from the dealing with spiritual death (averted now that Everyman is seeking salvation) to physical death (Peek, p 160).

Finally, I read an article comparing adaptations of Everyman produced in the United States which raised the question to me of what is the story of Everyman without the theme of salvation?

How can spiritual values be dramatized for a society which is generally unreligious? How can death be depicted for an audience accustomed to cosmetize death? How can abstractions such as Good Deeds be realized? How can the very familiar fable of Everyman be made fresh for a modern audience? How can the spectacle of theatre be transformed for a visually jaded audience? Earl Schreiber, p 106.

The adaptation that Schreiber commented on was Everyman Today, a 1975 adaptation of Jedermann (a 1911 German adaptation of Everyman). In it there is no redemption, no existence beyond the grave, only death. Most early moralities messaging taught that behavior while living determined where their afterlife would be spent. Jacobs-Jenkins remarked on this in Everybody, describing moralities as stories about the transience of life which means they’re really about death. And perhaps that depends on where people chose to end the story of Everyman. I’m hoping to revisit these ideas through the course of the production of Everybody.

Cunningham, John. “Comedic and Liturgical Restoration in ‘Everyman’.” Comparative Drama. Vol. 22, No. 2 (Summer 1988), pp. 162-173. www.jstor.org/stable/41153346. Dec 2, 2020.

Davidson, Clifford. “Introduction.” Everyman and Its Dutch Original, Elckerlijc. Eds: Davidson, Clifford Davidson; Martin W. Walsh; Ton J. Broos. 2007. d.lib.rochester.edu/ teams/ text/ davidson-everyman-introduction. Last accessed: Jan 9, 2021.

Garner, Jr., Stanton B. “Theatricality in ‘Mankind’ and ‘Everyman’” Studies in Philology, Vol. 84, No. 3 (Summer, 1987), pp. 272-285. University of North Carolina Press. www.jstor.org/stable/ 4174272. Last accessed: Dec 1, 2020.

Kaula, David. “Time and the Timeless in Everyman and Dr. Faustus.” College English. Vol. 22, No. 1 (Oct., 1960), pp. 9-14. National Council of Teachers of English. www.jstor.org/stable/373857. Last Accessed Dec 22, 2020.

Peek, George S. “Themes and Sermon Structure in Everyman.” The South Central Bulletin. Winter, 1980, Vol. 40, No. 4, Studies by Members of the SCMLA, pp. 159-160. The Johns Hopkins University Press on behalf of The South Central Modern Language Association. Last Accessed: Dec 1, 2020.

Schreiber, Earl G. “Everyman in America,” Comparative Drama. Summer 1975, Vol. 9, No. 2. pp. 99-115. www.jstor.org/stable/41152663. Last Accessed: Dec 1, 2020.

Tydemann, W. English Medieval Theatre. 1400-1500. Routledge & Kegan Paul. (London) 1986.