Blessed Are They
We enticed Bruce Smith, prolific writer for film and TV, to write us a play with a $5,000 commissioning fee. He wrote a stunning character portrayal of a group of fundamental Christians. Bruce has the arrogance to pose the fundamental question: “What is God?” A brilliant play, actually. And we converted the back chapel of the St James United Church on St Catherines Street into the right venue for the production. You arrived to the play by walking through the sanctuary of the church. See Director’s Notes…Some stunning acting in the show.
Theatre awards in the Montreal English-language community have historically been, and continue to be, the pervue of an embarrassingly incestuous self-congratulatory cabal. But Blessed, in my view, is an important, clever, well-written play and deservedly won a number of awards that season. The continuing enigma: Why was this play, along with so many other excellent Montreal English-language plays, never picked up by other theatres in Toronto or across Canada?
Director’s Notes
St. James United has a happy history of welcoming theatre and live performance. When I was at McGill in the mid-Sixties, a theatre company called The Paupers (an offshoot of the McGill Players’ Club) presented plays in the Sanctuary. T.S. Eliot’s Murder in the Cathedral, as I remember, was one of them. These days the glorious Montréal Jubilation Gospel Choir is a seasonal performer. Recently even the Montreal indie pop group The Dears rocked the Sanctuary with a charity concert. And of course, every Sunday, the theatrical charisma of Reverend Arlen Bonnar graces the service. Religion and theatre have ancient, intertwined roots. Theatre itself evolved from pre-historic fertility and solstice rituals, re-enactments and dances. The Greeks were the first, that we know of, to institutionalize performances in honour of the Gods. Theatre was not some trivial form of entertainment, a soap opera that you turned on, half watching the latest installment of Aeschylus’ Oresteia as you were preparing your TV dinner in the microwave. Ancient outdoor amphitheatres seated up to 30,000. Performances occurred only at specific times of year as part of religious ceremonies. Wars were temporarily halted and attendance was a civic responsibility. Tribal myths were transubstantiated into poetry, dance and spoken drama. The big historical, moral and religious issues of the day were tackled. In the Middle Ages, as the Christian Church was spreading across Europe, it astutely appropriated many of the Pagan festivals, Mummers’ rites and Morris’ dances and welcomed them as Mystery plays that were staged in and around the Churches. So, theatre and the Christian Church have a long history of celebratory co-existence. Today Infinithéâtre is extremely grateful to Arlen Bonnar, Anne Jones and the entire Board of St. James United for welcoming us into the church for our world première of Blessed Are They. We hope that the location will help our audience listen to the play with a more attuned sense of hearing. In Bruce Smith’s intelligent and searching play, Reverend Hewitt says hesitantly, “Life is more valuable if there is a point.” Simple, basic and profound. What is God? Hewitt does not know. His wife, Kate, says of Hewitt, “What is holy about you, or spiritual, is a sense that there is mystery and wonder in the world and that is what God is.” Boris, self-acknowledged alcoholic in the play, accepts that in order to stay sober and survive he has to believe. This is a play that asks us to question what God is. The play does not presume to have any answers. But perhaps the very questioning of the play is an answer in itself. You have arrived to this performance through the Sanctuary. Let us hope that the memories of worship and silence echoing from the walls of this hallowed space will inform and give resonance to the words of our drama.
Guy Sprung
February 2009