The Plays: A Continuation from Yesterday

Well, I can't call this "Further Thoughts on Faith" because Anne Lamott already used it, but this essay I am working on is not about faith, per se anyway. I started, yesterday, by writing about the origins of my connection to Unitarianism. Now I will write a little bit about the plays.

Each year the children in the Religious Education program (Unitarianism for Sunday School) put on a play. The plays were written by, directed and produced by and embodied by a powerful woman named Alorie, who had a shock of black hair that I remember--rightly or wrongly--with a white streak that developed over time. Alorie was intimidating. She was smart and strong and loud and forceful, and we all did exactly what she wanted us to. I think she also wrote the music and either wrote or modified the songs.

The plays must have been something else. I realize I am using the expression "something else" in a way that makes me sound about 80, but it fits, so I will use it anyway. I say this because I can't remember them that well, in entirety, and of course I never saw them as an audience member anyway; I was in them. I remember much of some of them, less about others, but even in my very earliest First Parish productions, when I wasn't much older than Lily, I knew they were political, and I knew I wanted, at least, to understand what they meant.

The first play I was in I performed a song and dance number with the other children my and Alison's age called "Weave Me the Sunshine." For some reason this song (and the dance, or the part of it that involved the waving outstretched arms) really made an impression on my father. He can still be counted on to sing it in exaggerated falsetto once every couple of years when something triggers a memory for him. I remember some of the lyrics to the song, which went, "Weave, weave, weave me the sunshine, out of the falling rain. Weave me the hope of a new tomorrow, and fill my cup again."

I remember the Trial of the Whizmabongs, and not just because of the title. I think this was one was existential and about social justice, although that is like saying that the civil rights movement was about obtaining civil rights. In other words, all of the plays were about social justice. The Trial play featured a stirring (read intentionally angry) performance of the Beatles' song "Revolution," to which I still remember all of the words.

There was one about a circus, too. I think this one was called The Greatest Show on Earth, and in case you are thinking that this one was a typical elementary school production the circus was a big-time metaphor, for life, no less, if I am remembering correctly. I do know that I was a Poodle Trainer, and that this was considered a good part, certainly better than being one of the poodles. And there was one about Noah's Ark, or a variation on Noah's Ark, because in this I was one of Noah's daughter's: Leah, I believe. And because Unitarians are feminists, virtually by definition, Leah was not a simpering wife on the sidelines. I can't remember any of my dialogue, but I can conjure up the vehemence with which I was meant to speak it.

And from still another play, I think, was the first time I heard the song, "Little Boxes." I remember rehearsing the dance to this one, lined up on stage with a bunch of kids I still remember really well--Ned, Emily, Andy, Paul--and acting out this depressing ode to suburban living, meant unironically, I am certain, although we lived--and were rehearsing in--the very epicenter of a quintessential American suburb.

But that's the funny thing about Unitarians, about Alorie, about all of the adults I remember from these days. They transcended the dictates of suburban living, managed to exist outside the "little boxes" of the song. In fact, I like to think that the First Parish itself was, maybe still is, a home for people who don't want to live in little boxes "made of ticky tacky" even as they watch the all -American Fourth of July parade from the picture-perfect green lawn of a colonial town church under a spreading chestnut tree, no less.

I just did a little (as in 10 second) research project online to see if I could find anymore about Alorie's plays. I found one line describing one I only vaguely remember and am not sure I was ever in. It reads as follows: A group of Questions demand answers from Life, who responds with examples of many religious possibilities. Yikes. What were the costumes? Can you imagine the stage direction, the choreography? Questions! Over here, stage left. Now...jazz hands! Life, get over yourself. You have an understudy, remember?

At school, at all of the schools I attended, and they were all pretty liberal and creative places, we put on Stone Soup, Annie Get Your Gun, Oliver, Macbeth. At the First Parish Church, where Alorie ruled the stage, and the soundtrack was protest music, regardless of the decade at hand, we were the questions. We were being to taught to demand answers from life. It was scary sometimes. It was over the top sometimes. As my dad--mincing around the kitchen while singing "Weave Me the Sunshine" will attest, it could even be a little bit silly. But all in all, it was powerful stuff. Ned, Emily, Andy, Paul? I bet you remember those little boxes we were encouraged not to ever, ever fit into too.