Everyday Rapture

Yes, yes, I'm supposed to be copyediting, but before I start I wanted to make a post about Sherie Renee Scott's Everyday Rapture

Overall it was a fun afternoon at the theater, and I think she's a major talent, but there were a few issues.

In The Plus Column

One of the most moving themes in the show was her talking about her gay cousin, and how he gave her the confidence to perform, then eventually died of AIDS after being shunned by the Mennonite community in which they grew up. It's obvious that his ghost is with her always, for both good and ill.

There were also some great, memorable lines, including

"I always felt I was growing up inside a song."

and the priceless

"I always wanted to build a closer relationship to God with everyone clapping!" (Doesn't every church soloist? I must find a way to recycle that line.)

And her ending, about the rapture to be found in everyday life, was very moving.

In the Minus Column

I wanted to hear her sing "My Strongest Suit"!! What we got instead was snippets of the song intertwined with a bit about how a teenage boy (gay, no doubt) had a correspondence with her on the Internet and didn't believe it was really her. That's a great song. And of course since I'm totally immersed in Amneris right now I was dying to hear it.


There was a (IMHO) rather tasteless rendition of "You Made Me Love You" supposedly directed at Jesus. As we're listening to it, different images of Jesus flash on a screen. It's interesting. Since I've been singing at this (very left-wing and serious) Lutheran church I just don't find things like that funny any more than I would find something funny if it was racist or homophobic.


A More Serious Thought

Why do ex-fundies have all the good stories? In a way it's almost a chiche: growing up fundy and naive, peripherally meeting gay people, dreaming about performing, coming to New York filled with awe, and falling in love with this sophisticated world because it's new.

What kind of story do I have as the child of commies? I grew up here and had seen everything by the time I was 10. I mean since it was only 1960 I wasn't smarmily precocious the way kids are now (although I certainly had met many couples who "lived in sin" - they called it "not wanting the capitalist state to put a stamp on their relationship" - as well as plenty of gay couples) but I had heard discussions about people going to jail for being communists, modern art, James Joyce, Gertrude Stein, and the song about Rape from The Fantasticks.

So there's really no arc there. When everything's been talked about around the family dinner table what do you really have to talk about?

I suppose that's why I fell in love with all things old fashioned: Victorian novels, Nineteenth Century Italian opera, the English countryside...

There really isn't a story there, though.