"Who do you say that I am?"

Jim Young, the founder of Wheaton's Arena Theater, used to say, "I keep finding Jesus in places I thought he had no business being." Arena continues the tradition of looking for God in unlikely places in a class called Church and Theater.

The thesis: Theater asks questions, and the church provides a safe, nurturing context in which to wrestle with those questions. So how do we go about asking those questions in artistic ways that point people toward God?

Christians, especially Christians in the arts, cannot ignore the media's portrayal of Jesus. We have to trust that our faith is solid enough to stand being rattled around some. The first half of the semester, then, is about who our culture says Jesus is. This translates into our watching a lot of heretical movies.

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Yiimimangaliso: The Mysteries
In the tradition of medieval mystery plays, Yiimimangaliso hits the high points of the redemption story from creation to Pentacost. The company is from South African.

The story of God's relationship with humanity is told mostly through percussion and dance, with smatterings of English, Afrikaans, Zulu and Xhosa. Angels wear chicken feathers. Adam and Eve are completely nude. Lucifer wears red pleather. Noah's flood mostly uses a watering can, and Jesus' entire childhood is depicted in a short, rhythmic game.

The only thing I can picture being offensive (unless you find dance in church offensive) is the occasional resemblance to minstrel shows. The company, though, is South African, not African American, so I don't know their familiarity with minstrelsy.

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Leonard Bernstein's Mass
Unlike the other pieces we've talked about together, Bernstein's not-exactly-a-musical-and-not-quite-an-opera-and-certainly-not-a-straight-Mass is the only one that does not portray Jesus explicitly. The Celebrant and choir sing the traditional Latin text for the Mass, and they are interrupted periodically by parishioners voicing their doubts and demands. The chaos eventually takes its toll on the Celebrant (pastor). The congregation turns on him and demands he fix their lives. He eventually burns out, drops the chalice, and notices for the first time that red wine isn't red at all, but sort of brown and blue. He also rhymes "Adonai" with "I don't know," which gets him major points in my nerdy writing major book.

Some Wheaton friends accuse me of cynicism about the church, but I grew up in Greenville, Texas. Specifically, I grew up in Aldersgate (nondenominational) and then Highland Terrace (Southern Baptist), which gives me a juicy background of having some pastors being run off and other pastors running off on their own, all while their congregations squabble over nothing in particular. Bernstein's Mass portrays the church not as it should be but as it often is -- rich in history and truth but filled with people who are sometimes actively destructive, sometimes hypocritical, sometimes quietly struggling, and pastors aren't immune.

I have listened to the soundtrack on my own at least five times since we heard it in class.

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Chocolate Jesus
Cosimo Cavallaro exhibited his anatomically correct sculpture of Jesus during Holy Week 2007. It is entirely chocolate. We could neither confirm nor deny Cavallaro's interest in Tom Waits' Mule Variations.

I am less offended by this now that Walgreens has their Easter candy out. There are chocolate crosses right there next to the bunnies and eggs. They are four dollars. I am much more offended by those than by the Cavallaro sculpture. We are supposed to eat the body of Christ, though it is usually somewhat healthier -- a torn piece of bread or an oyster cracker.

There is nothing cute about this Cavallaro's Jesus. He is naked and in pain. The crosses at Walgreens were adorable enough to make you forget they were instruments of torture. Nobody eats chocolate electric chairs or even chocolate guns.

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Jesus of Montreal
It's 1988, and a Canadian bishop asks a young director to revamp the parish's decades-old passion play. The director gathers actors -- some with more experience in beer commercials than any other venue -- and revamps not only the presentation of the Passion story but also the entire script, incorporating recent archeological digs in the Palestine and soliloquys from Hamlet. The Catholic church is not pleased.

As the film goes on, the actors get their own identities entangled with their characters, and the movie becomes allegorical. The actors are disciples. The director is Jesus. A slick lawyer is Satan. A film studio is the temple. Art is religion.

That last bit is where I have the hiccough: It seems like art turns into a replacement religion somewhere along the way. That, as well as a few stray comments about everyone finding their own seperate paths to salvation, is probably why the movie was considered so offensive. Unless I missed something, which is possible, since the movie was in French and subtitles don't always cut it.

Oh, and crucifixion is crucifixion, and ____ ______ is resurrection. I won't ruin it for you; see the movie.

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But I am about to ruin another movie, because neither its craft nor its theology earn it a recommendation.

The Last Temptation of Christ
I once heard a speaker at a youth camp say that, ever since this movie came out, he's boycotted everything by anyone involved in the abomination, and he encouraged us to do the same. (I know David Bowie's pocketbook is seriously hurting from losing his teenage Southern Baptist demographic after his role as Pontius Pilate.)

Willem Dafoe is a kind of anti-Christ, not in a Tim LaHaye/Jerry B. Jenkins sense, but in that his attitude is opposite of Christ's in almost every scene. Scorsese's Christ is not sinless, he's just too cowardly to commit any particularly noteworthy sins. He wants to be a regular guy, but God won't leave him alone. Neither will Satan, for that matter. As a result, he comes down off the cross, gets married a few times, has kids, chews out Paul for misrepresenting him. Judas acts like the only one with much sense at all; despite Judas' best efforts, Jesus has ruined humanity's chance at salvation. Maybe there are other interpretations, but that's what came across after one (admittedly sleepy) viewing.

Any Christians left in the theater probably walked out by the Jesus/Mary Magdelene sex scene (which our professor graciously censored), but they missed the big surprise twist at the end of the movie:

It was a dream. The whole time. Like Dorothy and Donnie, Jesus has a vision of an outrageous scenario in which he escapes the regular world and has a chance to do what he's always wanted to do. Then he wakes up, back on the cross, and the credits roll in all their 80's majesty. Peter Gabriel sings.

It's like bad Bible fanfiction. As far as craft goes, Last Temptation is to film as Left Behind is to literature. It just happens to swing crazy-liberal instead of crazy-conservative. I don't know which one is more upsetting. Last Temptation is more blasphemous, but Left Behind is more misleading. At least Scorsese disclaimed at the beginning that his film is not based at all on the Gospels, while LaHaye and Jenkins are marketed like their novels are realistic portrayals of Revelation.

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The media saturates us with its own images of Jesus and the church. They are loudest when they use a microphone and megaphone at the same time. What are they finding out about him when they come to church?

Ain't it crazy
What's revealed when you're not looking all that close
Ain't it crazy
How we put to death the ones we need the most?

I would never budge till Spring crept over my windowsill.

Lately, I have been sleeping an average of fourteen hours a day. Some days it is closer to twelve. Yesterday it was closer to sixteen. Regardless, it is too much sleep.

I finally got in to my doctor and told her my concerns: I am sleeping as much as I slept when I was depressed, except I feel fine when I'm awake. I do not have much of an appetite, but I seem to be gaining weight.

My doctor's diagnosis: Hibernation. I have been hibernating. People do not hibernate. Squirrels hibernate.

Among the factors that have triggered this denning are:

• endless Illinois winter darkness
• cold that makes it painful to go outside
• richness of filling winter food
• side effects of medication

The nights are getting shorter, and the snow is turning to muck, so that bodes well for the environmental factors of my sleepiness. It is easier to exercise when I can breathe deeply without my lungs turning to ice. Tomatoes, spinach, broccoli, oranges and berries -- all my favorite spring-and-summer foods -- will be bright and edible, not like the bruised and mushy produce I passed over at the market today.

As for the anti-depressant, it is time to scale it back. I will be tapering off of Effexor, which I've taken for two years, and switching to the milder Cymbalta, which is a much more attractive name for a drug. It makes me think of Cymbeline, though I do not take that as an unequivically good sign, since there are several poisoning attempts in that play.

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"Well Water"

What a girl called "the dailiness of life"
(Adding an errand to your errand. Saying,
"Since you're up ..." Making you a means to
A means to a means to) is well water
Pumped from an old well at the bottom of the world.
The pump you pump the water from is rusty
And hard to move and absurd, a squirrel-wheel
A sick squirrel turns slowly, through the sunny
Inexorable hours. And yet sometimes
The wheel turns of its own weight, the rusty
Pump pumps over your sweating face the clear
Water, cold, so cold! you cup your hands
And gulp from them the dailiness of life.

- Randall Jarrell

Icicles falling in the dark

Yesterday, the thermometer showed almost forty degrees. I felt like I should be in shorts or a dress.

Last night I stayed up trying to tell the difference between a draft of a poem and an outline of an essay. According to my poet-friends, the line break is what distinguishes poetry from prose, but outlines have line breaks, too.

While I tried to puzzle this out, there was a crash. Then another. Then another. It sounded like the house was being shelled, like I should wake up the girls and sandbag us all into the basement.

It was the icicles falling off the roof. Huge icicles, as big around as my arm, and sharp at the ends in the way that icicles typically are. They had time to get that big and terrifying during the coldest week I can ever remember.

So, the Sun, thanks for coming. I really appreciate it. But you pissed off Winter, and now someone could get impaled. Really, we should coordinate this better.

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But it's so hard to dance that way
When it's cold and there's no music
Well, your old hometown's so far away
But inside your head there's a record that's playing
A song called hold on.

It feels like years since you've been here.

Dear the sun,

Hey, how are you? More importantly, where are you?

We all miss you. No one even makes eye contact walking down the sidewalk. We stare at our boots and hide in our scarves.

Right now it feels like you've never been here, like we've lived like this forever, like nothing will ever change. Things have lost their warmth and color.

I know I've gotten upset at you before for coming on too strong, even for burning me, but all that's behind us now. Forgive me for complaining? I want you to come back. I miss you.

Love and tearcicles,
Alyssa

The Male and the Floss

Dentists don't bother me. Dental hygienists make me nervous.

My old dentist retired, so I had to go to a new dentist over Christmas. This meant a new dental hygienist. I was used to the hygienist who asked me open-ended questions, usually about Harry Potter, and then stuck her hands in my mouth before I could answer.

The new dental hygienist's tactics are rather different.

"You don't floss enough. You know, not flossing has been linked to prostate cancer."

If her hands hadn't been in my mouth, I would have explained to her that I've already taken measures to prevent getting prostate cancer. Namely, I don't have a prostate.

To be sure, I have done extensive research. My findings report that people with prostates don't cry in the candy aisle at Walgreens because they're overwhelmed by the selection and can't decide what kind of chocolate they want.* I am officially disqualified.



*Thankfully, I have a boyfriend who is tolerant of this, and who surprised me with a back-up Reeses in case I changed my mind about the M&M's.

Mugged

A recent dream of mine took place in a white and silver coffee shop that looked like it was designed by IKEA.

I was sitting next to Kate Olsen, who was talking about a play she'd seen in Prague. Across from us was the queen of England, who listened politely to Kate for awhile, but then pulled out books about English architecture and tried to prove that architecture was England's answer to Czech theater. Her Highness was cheerful but competitive.

Realizing I was the third wheel, I excused myself from the booth. Soon, I noticed I was being followed by a 40-something man. I'd leant my car to someone, which meant I was without my keys and thus without my pepper spray keychain. I dodged into the women's restroom, which happened to be behind the cash register. Instead of a mirror over the sink there was a window, from which I could see Kate and Her Highness; Tim Hunt was alone in the next booth.

The bathroom door opened; the man had followed me in. This was the first time I'd seen his face. It was Otto, a guy from an iO class I took a couple of years ago.


Otto? What are you doing?

His voice was gentle. "I'm going to mug you."

Otto. I know you.

He looked pleasant. "Yes."

You were in my Level 2 class.

Not threatening, not sarcastic, not even mischeivous. Just pleasant. "Yes."

You can't mug me.

"I'm going to take your money."

I'm not even a stranger. We took a class together. I think we're Facebook friends.

"I'm mugging you now." I tried to yell for help, but my voice wouldn't project. Even though Tim could clearly see me through the mirror/window, he acted like he was watching a scene instead of a crime. Maybe that's because I couldn't stop laughing at how silly it would be of Otto to mug me.

But I knew he was serious, that he would actually hurt me and steal from me. Even so, I couldn't stop laughing, so Tim thought everything was fine. After I wouldn't break eye contact with him, though, he came into the restroom, too. He was pretending to be a monkey. This scared Otto away.

I couldn't make Tim understand that I really needed help. Perhaps laughing might have detracted from any sense of urgency I might otherwise have conveyed. Of course I was laughing; it was funny. Why would Otto, why would anyone, mug someone he already knew, someone with whom he was on a how-have-you-been-I'm-fine-thanks terms? That doesn't mean I wanted to be mugged, though.

That is why you should carry pepper spray everywhere. Even around your friends, even in your dreams.

Dreaming through the Noise

It's been three months since I posted. Since then, my time has been taken up by:

- Getting flooded. I was homeless for a very short period in August, a time that culminated in a tornado, pepper spray, and getting lost in the parking lot of Nordstrom's.
- Finding the rhythm of school.
- Living in a very dramatic house that is mostly full of theater girls.
- Memorizing a lot of Shakespeare.
- Directing Faux Posse and Post Script Ambiguity for wheatonIMPROV.
- Cowering at the prospect of job and/or graduate school applications.

Amidst the insanity, why the revival of the blog? Currently, I am confined, restless, to a couch. My voice is completely gone, as gone as the sun, the maple leaves, free time. I hope my voice returns sooner than any of those things are liable to here to Wheaton College.

It has made me seasick to try and read for school. That might have less to do with the head cold and more to do with that the book of the moment is Absalom, Absalom by William Faulkner. Reading Miss Rosa's memories feels like watching a scene filmed without a tripod, Blair Witch style. I suspect anyone trying to decipher the Sutpen family tree would be a little disoriented, even without the cold medicine.

So instead of reading Faulkner, writing an annotated bibliography, drafting a prompt book, rehearsing As You Like It, or working on my grad school application, I am drinking juice through a straw, dozing through Vienna Teng albums, binging on Pushing Daisies -- I am coveting all of Chuck's clothes, though I'm not sure they'd be as fun in a shades-of-gray Chicago winter; they might only work in a world of supersaturated color -- and fighting off the gathering panic about how behind I'm going to be when I go back to class.

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And she dreams through the noise, her weight against me
Face pressed into the corduroy grooves
Maybe it means nothing, but I'm afraid to move.