Last night Angela & I went to see a play at Forest Park Community College. Still no word on my applications – I’m expecting to hear something by mid April. So the play was J.B. by Archibald MacLeish, a retelling of the Old Testament story of Job. The set design was great for the space, multicolored curtains reduced the seating area to make for a more cozy audience and, when combined with the ribbons of fabric swooping from overhead, gave you the sense that you were in a large circus tent. Honestly it was a much better production than I had expected. My old roommate and friend Mary H played “distant voice”. She had no stage time, but was the occasional voice of God. It was opening night so we took her flowers. I haven’t participated in that ritual for years (since I stopped dating drama majors).

There was a fabulous nut sitting next to us explaining the secret history of the world to his companion. I wish I had had a tape recorder. “People think that a meteor killed the dinosaurs, but really they started eating humans, which angered God, and he had to wipe them out.”

The playbill included a Stephen Mitchell quote about Job (I have several books on Taoism and Eastern religion written or translated by Stephen including one of my favorite Tao Te Ching translations)

“The physical body is acknowledge as dust, the personal drama as delusion. It is as if the world we perceive through our senses, that whole gorgeous and terrible pageant, were the breath-thin surface of a bubble, and everything else, inside and outside, is pure radiance. Both suffering and Joy come then like a brief reflection, and death like a pin.”

The play fits well into my current mood and I will buy it this week and spend some time with it. It’s quite well written, particularly the counselors scene in the second act where God sends a Marxist soldier, a Freudian psychologist, and fire and brimstone preacher to “comfort” Job. The stage direction had the Marxist actually swing in on a rope, he was dressed like an action hero. The treatment of the doctrine of original sin is quite special as Job searches his soul for the crime that could bring about such suffering from a just God.

In the small world arena, my friend Tasha’s youngest daughter plays one of Job’s children and she did quite well. The director handpicked her from a theatre class at the Visual and Performing arts school in the city (think Fame).

After the play we went to Dressel’s in the West End for a drink and had freshly fried potato chips in the second floor bar among the Gaslight Square memorabilia.