Murray Ross

The Sounds of Silence

 

 

We had a jolly gang on the Everyman bus last night at 8:00, and when it was all over and done with I thought maybe it was a little too jolly-- the bus felt like a Broncos shuttle.  We do want everyone to have a good time on the last ride of Everyman's life.  The play is actually the opposite of a downer.  But this ride is also not like anything else, and we learn as we go.  Watching the smiling faces leave the bus last night I realized they had missed out on something: a contemplative experience.  Because indeed that is what EVERYMAN ON THE BUS can and should provide.  Our ride is chock full of lively scenes, but there are also times when the bus is moving through the dark streets of our town and there is nothing to do but listen to the music, and look out at the window. In silence.  The music is varied and intentional, and includes Frank Sinatra, Bob Dylan, The Beach Boys, Mumford & Sons, Enigma, John Tavener, Gregorian Chant and a few surprises. But the silence matters.  Having taken the ride now several times, I can report the most interesting and resonant moments of the entire journey are when nothing is happening, when you are sitting, looking, listening and waiting for the next scene, when you are spending time suspended in between.  The easy and natural temptation is to turn on your cell phone, check a few scores, slide into facebook, or chat with your date. But we're finding that these temptations are best resisted.  So we are imposing a gentle Order of Silence on our audiences for the remainder of the run, and inviting them to pretend they've entered a Carthusian monastery where they will refrain from conversation for the the 75 minute "service." (Actually, our bus looks surprisingly not unlike the barrel vault nave of a monastic church). We think you will find that your silence is very full, and that you will have even  more and better talk afterwards!

Night Ride

Medieval theatre was not quite theatre as we know it. It was created at time when theatre was emerging from the womb of the church, and it remains deeply bound to its mother.  But it occupies a space of its own, a zone between religious ritual and secular show biz.  It works on its audiences in quite a special way, quite differently from today's entertainment.  I began to understand this the other night when I went out for a ride on my own.

Everyman, as we know, is a play about the journey of a man (who represents all men and women) going to his death.  Death of course was everywhere in the 15th century, just as it is now, and even though it was much more visible it still often came as a surprise--as these famous Holbein woodcuts of death's dance illustrate. 

Like the woodcuts, the play asks us to be intensely aware of death, but more than awareness it lifts us into another plane of reality.  We watch Everyman confronting his own death, and in doing so our vision changes--or at least mine does.

I went out on Saturday night about 9 o'clock to drive the route our bus will take during the route of our show--I hadn't seen it when it was dark. The bus will take us down a few streets I rarely travel, and many of them are very quiet.  I also wanted to listen to some of the music we'll  be playing on our bus, which Alex Ruhlin has wonderfully refitted for sound.  Listening to the music, imagining riding with Everyman, watching the small houses on the dark streets, thinking always of death--it's not the sort of thing I do every day or night. Driving past a desolate city park, three boys were playing basketball on a lighted court:they looked like ghosts.  On Platte avenue I saw the school band walking down the sidewalk after a game; a tuba gleamed in a street light.  I looked at the signs lit up downtown and the north end: so many banks!  So many churches!  Really at night it's not so different from the 15h century, with the Norman tower of Grace Episcopal glowing, and the cross lit up high on Penrose hospital.  Lights in the dark. With the play running through my mind, as it has been doing for the last several weeks, the world seemed close yet far away, something I was floating over, on the way to leaving.  600 years between the 15h century and now disappeared; I felt like I was feeling the play in a way not so different from its original audience. I believe that this is the space the Medieval theatre wants to usher us into, considering the world in a new way, as something temporal, and more illusory than the eternal but often invisible realities which inform it.  

Considered as a play, Everyman might seem crude by contemporary standards.  The language is often repititive, the verse is simple and sometimes clumsy. But its effect can be remarkable.  You might think contemplating death is a grim prospect, but in this play, where we are taught "how transitory we be all day,"  I felt strangely peaceful, an in-and-out of body experience.  And indeed, as the play's Messenger informs us, "this matter is wondrous precious, and sweet to bear away."