and worship me

so,the three words that have been working on me,three words,actors....the three words are "And Worship me!!!"

let me give you it..

"man,who can,wander over my flaxen plains

wonder over my granite mountains

count the stars and wish for wing and hold a tool and thinks of things and search for answers they cannot see

and dream of glory

and worship me"""""

So is the motivation for creating children based on the idea that parents do that to create someone to worship them?

Is that Schwartz's interpretation of God???

And how does one play this?

How does one play a sympathetic god whose motivation is worship and loneliness.

By the end of the show we should feel a bunch of emotion towards the difficulty of creation...fathers and mothers should see themselves in the actions of their sons, sons should feel the pain of decisions...

On top of that it seems to be a play about enduring,animal abuse,letting go...(of course Noah had all these songs...Father comes off like a prick)...but perhaps my interp of Noah may have teetered on the too sentimental,and since I tend to go that way perhaps some of that may trickle into The Father.

So,when your motivation is creating for the sake of worship, what happens when the worship is disobeyed...and you have power. It seems to be the journey of the creative person. So,banishment and floods are motivated by the hurt,the heartbreak...

and in my life,I have never had a father who fully appreciated me. He was perfect in my eyes until it was never reciprocated. (HE WAS MY HERO THEN, HE COULDN'T DO NO WRONG AS FAR AS I WAS CONCERNED).

So as I work,those are the models I start with...

oh,I just thought of Death of a Salesman,where Willy wants his kids and himself to be well liked....worshipped.

just rambling...

Let there be.

So I have started another blog as part of my process for working on children of eden,a play by stephen schwartz,a composer I am always impressed by. My work on the piece has already gone through an absurd amount of process.

so the history of the smith theatre wanting to do theatre together stems from my wife...she wanted to get back into theatre and our local community theatre does a summer show. Of course,you always envision the Music Man (or secretly Erika hoped for Barnum) but the choice was the obscure Children Of Eden,a show that never has been on Broadway(which actually doesn't mean anything really) ,that is biblical in nature,and deals with adam and eve and noah and ham and shem(p),

but, we are all in the show,Erika and Miles holding down a huge amount of chorale music...miles as principal tenor and erika as principal soprano. I have started the process,cast as noah. I went and bought an Ark Model...and learned all the music. Pretty much. It was a perfect role for me,fairly gentle,loyal, and faced with many decisions about faith and family. These are things I am always thinking about anyway. And a major theme is the hardest part of love is the letting go,which I have been thinking about a lot lately.

Well, the red sea parted. The creator role,which was cast as a woman to make it less christian, opened up,and we were left with this giant hole. The director,who is Bruce Vieira,my friend for 35 years,asked me to consider playing God..and being the guy who says yes,I took it...the role of father....

so,two weeks ago I had a student die. I am a spiritual person but couldn't wrap my brain around the reasoning. I wrote to my friend Scott,who is a minister, and he wrote me this.

If God were all powerful there'd be a law of nature that no child can die before a parent, as well as one that there 'd be no suffering. I surmise by the absence of such laws that God is not all powerful and has but three powers, i.e., to always (1) love us, (2) be with us and (3) call us to the best we can be. The good news is that we may not be able to do #2, but we can in our own way love and answer the call to #3.

Sorry you are having to face this. It never gets easy.

And for the record, you can cuss God out and be mad and let loose with all your frustrations and grief over this. It is unfair and is not rights. God can take your words any way you send them (and it's still prayer!). God is way bigger than us and understands. You'll be loved no matter what 'cause, well, . . . just read the bumper sticker on your car.(I have a bumper sticker on my car that says God's Love has no strings attached)

So my journey into the murky world of God starts.

I woke up from a curious dream
I dreamed a perfect garden
And there were whirling shapes
And swirling sounds
And I wasn't lonely anymore(this seems key to humanizing god)

I woke up from a wonderful dream
Woke, full of energy and hunger
And now this hunger will be stilled
And my emptiness be filled

As I set about to build
My dream( i am fascinated by the ability to actualize your dreams)

Let there be, let there be
Morning
Let there be
Evening, day
Let there be

Let there be

STORYTELLERS
Let there be

FATHER
Waters, weathers, winters, wonders

STORYTELLERS AND FATHER
Let there be
Land and

FATHER
Speeding comets with hearts of ice!
Spinning planets with rings of fire!

STORYTELLERS AND FATHER
Cosmic sparks
And quasars and quarks
And suns convulsing
Pulsars pulsing

STORYTELLERS
Let there be

FATHER
Let there be

STORYTELLERS AND FATHER
Let there be

FATHER
Whales!
Snails!
Sharks!
Larks!
Apples trees with dappled barks!
And granite mountains and flaxen plains
Giant lizards with tiny brains
Flourescent fish and crescent worms
And a million bugs and trillion germs

STORYTELLERS
Let there be

FATHER
Let there be

STORYTELLERS AND FATHER
Let there be
(And God saw, it was good, it was good)
Let there be, let there be

FATHER
It's not enough! It's still not enough.
There was something more in my dream
Something could see it and share it
What was it, though?
I only know
I wasn't lonely anymore

There is one more thing to build
One more void that must be filled
I'll make creatures I'll call children
Shaped like me!

FATHER AND STORYTELLERS
Let there be, let there be

FATHER
Something, someone
Small and skinny
Clawless, furless
Finless, fangless

FATHER AND STORYTELLERS
Let there be
Man who can

FATHER
Wander over my flaxen plains
Wonder up at my granite mountains
Count the stars and wish for wings
And hold a tool and think of things
And search for answers he cannot see

STORYTELLERS
And dream of glory

FATHER
And worship me!(OK,SO HERE IS THE PROBLEM....;IN OUR WORLD THIS IS AN ARROGANT STATEMENT. ARROGANCE IS NOT A TRAIT OF MINE,BUT MY FEAR IS TO PLAY IT FOR LAUGHS...GOTTA FIND WHAT IT IS IN A PROUD PERSON THAT ALLOWS HIM TO GO THIS Far)

STORYTELLERS
Let there be

FATHER
Let there be

STORYTELLERS AND FATHER
Let there be
(And God saw, it was good, it was good)

FATHER
Let there be

STORYTELLERS
Let there be

FATHER AND STORYTELLERS
Let there be

STORYTELLERS (AND FATHER)
And the father breathed into his children the breath of life (let...)
And the children became living souls (there...)
And the father gave to his children a garden
And called the garden...Eden (be...)

STORYTELLERS AND FATHER
Let there be!

so much...vocal technique,specificity of movement,humanizing a seemingly all powerful entity(that ends up more in the definition of Scott Elliott)

Well,

suffice it to say I plan to work in the garden more.