bunnyjadwiga (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
bunnyjadwiga) wrote2005-07-10 12:09 am
bunnyjadwiga) wrote2005-07-10 12:09 am
Don Quixote Pilgrimage
(Fair warning. I used to be a theatre geek. I'm in the SCA, I'm a former Roman Catholic, a liberal, and I'm a magick-practicing pagan. So my take on this was influenced by all those things.)
Lately, I've been feeling the need to go on pilgrimage of some sort, for something I believe in. Purely by chance, my friend Liz and the Touchstone Theatre provided that opportunity today.
I know and love Touchstone's work. They are a professional theatre group with deep roots in the Bethlehem community. I can't remember the name of the school of theatre they are involved in, but it is heavily physical and very improvisational. I've volunteered for them before, and remember vividly the first play I saw there, about a woman whose husband had died in an industrial accident and she, in her old age, was traveling back and forth in time in her head. It was deeply moving and very well acted. It turned out that Jenny Gilrain, who I deeply admire as an actress, was doing what I thought was a production of Don Quixote.
Don Quixote of Bethlehem, which Touchstone Theatre put on this weekend with a host of volunteer cast members including a lot of community leaders and a lot of kids from local schools, is a strange sort of experience. I was thinking 'Don Quixote'. But I forgot about it being "Of Bethlehem" not "of La Mancha!" Also, this was going to be theatre on the move-- we were warned to wear shoes for walking in. It started off on the Lehigh Campus and wound around and through South Bethlehem. There were a number of pre-show activities which we didn't quite see, because we stopped to get a fast food dinner and it was raining a bit.
The starting scenes, where Don Quixote goes mad and presses Sancho Panza into service as his squire, were hard to hear (audio equipment problems) and hard to see. It took a while for us all to get into the audience mode, especially those with younger kids... I think most of those people gave up and peeled off (it was a free performance). Between the audio and the line of sight problems and people having trouble with the bilingual nature of the play, we were a tough audience.
But it used a lot of the sites on Lehigh's campus that I have always thought were custom-made for outdoor theatre-- balconies on Rauch Business Center, the slanted hill and patio behind Rauch that commemorates the old stadium, a pond behind the Wilbur Powerhouse, etc. The horse and the donkey our heros rode were skillful bits of puppetry, and the dialog was sprinkled with local topical references, most of them rabidly liberal and anti-development in tone.
I didn't fight my way to the front of the crowd until the scene where Don Quixote pretended to go even further mad and cavorted in the forest. Mark Mckenna, who played Quixote, was at his physical comedy best. The background of what sounded like mariachi music went well with the scene, but Mark really hammed it up in a distinguished way, which is hard to describe. It was definitely an elderly scholar trying to act mad-- think of the White Knight doing somersaults. I was hooked in.
But as we progressed down the streets, and found ourself at the South Side Library where there was a scene in favor of a) libraries and b) learning, it really started to suck me in. By the time we were walking down Fourth St with Sancho in his triumphal procession to become govenor of a small island, we had been joined by a whole crew of locals. Suddenly, the crowd which had been about 75% white at the start, was more and more toward 50-50. I think we picked up a bunch of people at the street fair where we stopped for intermission.
We stopped a church at one point, and the pastor gave Quixote his blessing and Sancho some good advice. I believe it was a real priest too, I saw him walking with us later. There was beginning to be a festival/parade feeling in the air. By the time we got to the convenience store where we saw the street dancers, and the episode was broken up by a cop (acting-- the Bethlehem police and the Bethlehem city workers had been excellent at blocking off the right streets and keeping things under control). There was a feeling of community. When Sancho sentenced the cops to two months paid leave in Puerto Rico, we all laughed, and when there was an episode about gambling, specifically about the slot parlors Development Interests (whoever they are) want to put in the old Beth Steel buildings, there was definitely community solidarity.
In many ways, my friend Sarah said, it reminded her of a passion play. What it reminded me of was the stories about the Festivals of Corpus Christi held in the old days, where different groups, unions and sodalities built shrines on street corners and the church goers, led by priests, acolytes, etc. processed through the city to each one. I could feel what seemed to me to be a growing unity in the crowd. By this time I was in agony, my bad knee screaming at each step, and I felt like an old lady, searching for a good place to sit down and racing for it at each stop. But I didn't want to quit. I wanted to go on. It had become for me a pilgrimage of Bethlehem. A way to pay back all I've learned from the city where I've worked for 14 years, and am now thinking about leaving. A penance to community.
Onward we walked, and Don Quixote confronted bulls, and pigs. Finally he was felled by the Black Knight, went home and recovered his sanity. (I was forcefully reminded of the taxi driver at the end of _Harvey_: "A perfectly normal human being. And you know what bastards they are.") There was much mourning-- and we finished by climbing up the steep hill to St. Michael's cemetary, again like a pilgrimage, though there were vans for those who couldn't make it. I was teary-eyed by then, thinking of *why* the story of Don Quixote de La Mancha has such a hold on us, the story of someone pursuing his dreams... and the goodness that comes of it, and why people have to pull that down.
In the cemetary, we all milled around, just like a real funeral or the end of a Memorial day parade, saying hello to those we knew and feeling exhausted (though with few of the negative emotions of anger and frustration and real grief that we experience in groups then) To the tune of Amazing Grace, various actors and community leaders exhorted us to be brave, to take our Sancho Panza selves and become more than we are, to use that bravery to be honest, real, and to work for the community. In some ways I felt the Irishmen in their graves stirred restlessly with all those Latinos there and that celebration of Latino... but in some ways it was a flowering of the community sense we've lost, that they had when they came to this country and built lives here, and I felt they couldn't complain overmuch!
Will that feeling of community, of unity, hold? Most of the caucasians went back to their cars and drove away; many of the Latinos went back to the street fair. But still-- for a while, we were a group, a community. I think it may stick, at least somewhat.
By the way, one of the things that made me think community had been achieved-- when people bumped into each other in our trek down the street, it was all apologies and 'don't mention it'; Hispanic kids and parents mixed freely and friendlily with Caucasians and we all laughed and smiled at one another... though one of my prize memories is of three little blonde caucasian girls (6-7 years old) dancing in the street to the Latino music together...
Lately, I've been feeling the need to go on pilgrimage of some sort, for something I believe in. Purely by chance, my friend Liz and the Touchstone Theatre provided that opportunity today.
I know and love Touchstone's work. They are a professional theatre group with deep roots in the Bethlehem community. I can't remember the name of the school of theatre they are involved in, but it is heavily physical and very improvisational. I've volunteered for them before, and remember vividly the first play I saw there, about a woman whose husband had died in an industrial accident and she, in her old age, was traveling back and forth in time in her head. It was deeply moving and very well acted. It turned out that Jenny Gilrain, who I deeply admire as an actress, was doing what I thought was a production of Don Quixote.
Don Quixote of Bethlehem, which Touchstone Theatre put on this weekend with a host of volunteer cast members including a lot of community leaders and a lot of kids from local schools, is a strange sort of experience. I was thinking 'Don Quixote'. But I forgot about it being "Of Bethlehem" not "of La Mancha!" Also, this was going to be theatre on the move-- we were warned to wear shoes for walking in. It started off on the Lehigh Campus and wound around and through South Bethlehem. There were a number of pre-show activities which we didn't quite see, because we stopped to get a fast food dinner and it was raining a bit.
The starting scenes, where Don Quixote goes mad and presses Sancho Panza into service as his squire, were hard to hear (audio equipment problems) and hard to see. It took a while for us all to get into the audience mode, especially those with younger kids... I think most of those people gave up and peeled off (it was a free performance). Between the audio and the line of sight problems and people having trouble with the bilingual nature of the play, we were a tough audience.
But it used a lot of the sites on Lehigh's campus that I have always thought were custom-made for outdoor theatre-- balconies on Rauch Business Center, the slanted hill and patio behind Rauch that commemorates the old stadium, a pond behind the Wilbur Powerhouse, etc. The horse and the donkey our heros rode were skillful bits of puppetry, and the dialog was sprinkled with local topical references, most of them rabidly liberal and anti-development in tone.
I didn't fight my way to the front of the crowd until the scene where Don Quixote pretended to go even further mad and cavorted in the forest. Mark Mckenna, who played Quixote, was at his physical comedy best. The background of what sounded like mariachi music went well with the scene, but Mark really hammed it up in a distinguished way, which is hard to describe. It was definitely an elderly scholar trying to act mad-- think of the White Knight doing somersaults. I was hooked in.
But as we progressed down the streets, and found ourself at the South Side Library where there was a scene in favor of a) libraries and b) learning, it really started to suck me in. By the time we were walking down Fourth St with Sancho in his triumphal procession to become govenor of a small island, we had been joined by a whole crew of locals. Suddenly, the crowd which had been about 75% white at the start, was more and more toward 50-50. I think we picked up a bunch of people at the street fair where we stopped for intermission.
We stopped a church at one point, and the pastor gave Quixote his blessing and Sancho some good advice. I believe it was a real priest too, I saw him walking with us later. There was beginning to be a festival/parade feeling in the air. By the time we got to the convenience store where we saw the street dancers, and the episode was broken up by a cop (acting-- the Bethlehem police and the Bethlehem city workers had been excellent at blocking off the right streets and keeping things under control). There was a feeling of community. When Sancho sentenced the cops to two months paid leave in Puerto Rico, we all laughed, and when there was an episode about gambling, specifically about the slot parlors Development Interests (whoever they are) want to put in the old Beth Steel buildings, there was definitely community solidarity.
In many ways, my friend Sarah said, it reminded her of a passion play. What it reminded me of was the stories about the Festivals of Corpus Christi held in the old days, where different groups, unions and sodalities built shrines on street corners and the church goers, led by priests, acolytes, etc. processed through the city to each one. I could feel what seemed to me to be a growing unity in the crowd. By this time I was in agony, my bad knee screaming at each step, and I felt like an old lady, searching for a good place to sit down and racing for it at each stop. But I didn't want to quit. I wanted to go on. It had become for me a pilgrimage of Bethlehem. A way to pay back all I've learned from the city where I've worked for 14 years, and am now thinking about leaving. A penance to community.
Onward we walked, and Don Quixote confronted bulls, and pigs. Finally he was felled by the Black Knight, went home and recovered his sanity. (I was forcefully reminded of the taxi driver at the end of _Harvey_: "A perfectly normal human being. And you know what bastards they are.") There was much mourning-- and we finished by climbing up the steep hill to St. Michael's cemetary, again like a pilgrimage, though there were vans for those who couldn't make it. I was teary-eyed by then, thinking of *why* the story of Don Quixote de La Mancha has such a hold on us, the story of someone pursuing his dreams... and the goodness that comes of it, and why people have to pull that down.
In the cemetary, we all milled around, just like a real funeral or the end of a Memorial day parade, saying hello to those we knew and feeling exhausted (though with few of the negative emotions of anger and frustration and real grief that we experience in groups then) To the tune of Amazing Grace, various actors and community leaders exhorted us to be brave, to take our Sancho Panza selves and become more than we are, to use that bravery to be honest, real, and to work for the community. In some ways I felt the Irishmen in their graves stirred restlessly with all those Latinos there and that celebration of Latino... but in some ways it was a flowering of the community sense we've lost, that they had when they came to this country and built lives here, and I felt they couldn't complain overmuch!
Will that feeling of community, of unity, hold? Most of the caucasians went back to their cars and drove away; many of the Latinos went back to the street fair. But still-- for a while, we were a group, a community. I think it may stick, at least somewhat.
By the way, one of the things that made me think community had been achieved-- when people bumped into each other in our trek down the street, it was all apologies and 'don't mention it'; Hispanic kids and parents mixed freely and friendlily with Caucasians and we all laughed and smiled at one another... though one of my prize memories is of three little blonde caucasian girls (6-7 years old) dancing in the street to the Latino music together...
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It was marvelous to hear about such a performance from a participant (I count audience as participants)-- because it indeed sounds like a peripatetic version of a medieval courtyard/wagon play.
And you've also given me some ideas for my back pocket, which may come in useful some day....
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It seems fitting that you had the chance to do this as you are preparing to move on.
A sense of community, I think, is one of the things that a lot of us miss in this age of sprawl. It's certainly true in the fedrosplat, where only certain places seem to have much cohesiveness (e.g. Herndon, Clifton, Old Town Alexandria). I've always been a child of the suburbs, I guess, but New Jersey had more of a big-city feel to it, with neighborhoods that had strong identities, and the developments west of Allentown each fostered that idea too back when I was in high school. (No idea how well the newer ones are managing it.) So it was very moving to hear your tale, and I do hope that things like this help re-instill that sense of community that so many of us have lost. Thanks.
*nod*
This, I think, was the best effort yet that Touchstone has done. They have some great productions.
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Now go take care of your knee :)
**hugs**