

It’s over now. I spent 6 weeks preparing for a 2 week, 9 show run, and now it’s all over. After a show ends I usually feel two things, often at the same time: relief and grief.

I feel a huge sense of relief because I can now let those 34 pages of memorized lines go (*phew*); I can relax at night and tuck my kids into bed more often than not. There’s also a sense of physical relief as “Damien” was pretty exacting on me physically, specifically my voice as our interpretation of Father Damien who, at the end of his life, was of a man who had smoked a pipe regularly, drank black coffee daily and the like. So his voice was gravel-ly, very gravel-ly (although my director would always warn me whenever I ventured into the “Batman” register of gravel *wink*).

The grief I feel is, simple and yet cuts quite deep for me: the show is done. I spent so much time on this and it’s a show that I have been wanting to do for almost a decade now and…it’s over. Having the honor of portraying Father Damien, a man, a simple and complex man who was able to do so much for the lepers of Hawaii, was fun and enlivening. Father Damien is by no means a Saint, in the common understanding of the word: someone who is holy and virtuous. Sure, the Catholic Church has canonized him, but those words are commonly held to mean, on a metaphorical level, without blemish or agreeable or something else like that; Father Damien was hardly without blemish and was, by most accounts, also not very agreeable . Father Damien was a saint though in the scriptural sense, as are all who have been sanctified by/in Christ Jesus . In this I think the play was so important for me to perform and for many of the people who came to me afterwards and thanked me for the presentation. We need to remember that we are all equals in God’s eyes and that he loves us all, no matter how much we lie, cheat, yell, threaten, grumble, etc…. Does this excuse our behaviour? No, not at all, and that is another thing that I learned from “Damien”. We need to be constantly aware of our imperfections, of our inadequacy, so that we may be humble in what we do, even in our rage against injustice.

I have been asked to consider mounting this play again, and I must say that excites me; not just on the level that people like and appreciated what I did, but that I get an opportunity to visit Father Damien again and explore him even further. What a great opportunity it is for an actor, I think, to revisit a character/play. I have my dreams of revisiting other plays, “The Crucible” by Arthur Miller, “Zoo Story” by Edward Albee, even “The Passages Of Everett Manning” by Shannon Blake. And who knows, maybe sometime in the future, at Sanctuary we will have the opportunity to revisit these excellent plays. For now though, there is a change coming. Not sure what that entails exactly, but I do know that for the time being full length plays are taking a rest. It takes a lot of energy to put them together and I need to find an artistic partner who is willing and able to help me with those productions.

This coming year will be one of experiments, workshops, mixed media, web work and the like, all in the hopes and desires of engaging my community and finding the best and healthiest ways for them to tell their stories.

Thank you to everyone who was able to come and witness “Damien”. I was humbled and honoured by you all.

For anyone who saw the show and wants to read a bit more on Father Damien, here are two free resources for you to look at:

1. Open letter from Robert Louis Stevenson to Rev. Dr. Hyde. This letter is one of the best defenses of Damien. Robert Louis Stevenson is meticulous in his reply and it is absolutely wonderful to read.

2. The Lepers Of Moloka’i by Charles Warren Stoddard [via Google Books]. This book is cited in the play that I was in and is a very quick and easy read. But don’t let that dissuade you, it’s quite beautifully written and Stoddard really has a way with words; you can really picture Moloka’i and the settlement and the environment. It’s simply wonderful to read.

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