Prairie Lands, Private Landscapes: Reframing a Mennonite Childhood

By Lauren Friesen

“Prairie Lands, Private Landscapes: Reframing a Mennonite Childhood" is a stunning and heartfelt tribute to the power of memory and the importance of cultural heritage. In this poignant and evocative book, the author takes us on a journey through his own personal history, sharing with us his struggles and triumphs and his quest for self-discovery and meaning.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Archway Publishing
• Release date: Oct 20, 2023
• ISBN: 9781665751155

Lauren Friesen

Lauren Friesen is the David M. French Distinguished Professor of Theatre at the University of Michigan Flint. He has also translated Hermann Sudermann’s comedy The Storm Komrade Sokrates. His other publications include a volume of poetry, plays and analytical essays on Hermann Sudermann, Friedrich Dürrenmatt, Anna Deveare Smith and Tennessee Williams. In 1998 he received the Kennedy Center Gold Medallion for excellence in theatre. Magdalena Katt is the Senior Lecturer in English at Käthe Kollwitz Kolleg in Hagen, Germany. She collaborated with Lauren Friesen in translating Hermann Sudermann’s comedy and she has also translated Friesen’s two act play Rothko. Her home city, Hagen, was also Carlo Ross’s home and she has personal familiarity with many of the details in this novel.

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Copyright © 2023 Lauren Friesen.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means,

graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or

by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the

author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

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Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or

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and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Cover Moon over a distant town on the prairie painting by Phil Epp

ISBN: 978-1-6657-5114-8 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-6657-5115-5 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2023918993

Archway Publishing rev. date: 10/19/2023

Dedicated to

Janet, Erica, Eliot, Carrie, Bayrex,

August, Max, Greta, and Alexandra

                    "Great Spirit made all peoples …

                    and pitched one big blue teepee overhead

                    that we might live as families side by side.

                    Behold! Is not our country very wide,

                    With room enough for all?" ¹

– John G. Neihardt

Contents

Preface

Introduction

Author’s Introduction

A Flemish/Dutch/Prussia/Russia/Ukraine Saga

The Lure of the Prairie

Reaching for the Stars: Religious Musings in Berkeley?

Artistic Awakening

Poverty and Invention

The World Beyond

Education is a Whirlwind

Peace and Nonviolence

What the Asylum cannot Confine

A Habit of Faith

The Theatre Impulse

Conclusion

Markers on the Path

Endnotes

Preface

This volume knocked on my door and demanded that I write it. Otherwise, I could have pushed it aside. Even though I resisted for years that persistent tapping, it eventually invaded my consciousness to such a degree that I had to begin. Once these memories became firmly lodged there, they would not let go until I scribbled something. This book had a mind of its own.

This volume began in the Emergency Room of Cromwell Hospital in London, England. I arrived there at 10 p.m. and was notified that doctor could see me about 6 a.m. I had an empty spiral notebook with me and the writing began. I didn’t know whether I was facing the grim-reaper and every hour that passed intensified that feeling. By the time I was called to see the physician, I had filled the notebook with Chapter 1 in this publication. Subsequently, I took a large notebook with me on m trips. Waiting times in Airports and Hotel Lobbies, became writing opportunities. Upon my return home, I would fact-check the essays, add footnotes, and make adjustments. This is not just a memoir, but a book that arose from memory.

I have not edited out topical duplications because similar facts have multiple meanings and belong in separate contexts.

This volume is not a list, chronological or otherwise, of my experiences, however it is a glimpse into a cultural world that vanished. The world I knew as a child is gone. A few photos, small objects, books, and memories remain. Small ethnic groups in America are dying due to cultural, linguistic, and economic changes, as well as technical innovations, and vocational relocations.

The loss of ethnicity is more than changing a language and learning a new culture. The transformation occurs inside, which is impossible to notice outwardly, and some prefer it so. On one level it is easy to identify this shift as a move from pre-modern to postmodern perspectives, although that is far too simplistic. Modern sensibilities do not leave behind the premodern features without an internal struggle for meaning and identity. These essays explore that struggle. Old loyalties give way to new ones.

My ethnic background may have enabled me to value, relate to and sometimes become an advocate for other ethnic groups who also struggle for identity and survival. If this document communicates these insights, then all the hours will have been worth it. If it does not, the onus does not rest on the reader, instead, it reveals the limitations of the writer.

This document would never have seen daylight without the urging of my family. First, I must acknowledge my birth family in Henderson and the joys they provided. Even more importantly, I must acknowledge my own loving family, which has supported me in this and other ventures throughout the years. The credits belong to my wife Janet, our children Erica and Bayrex, Eliot and Carrie, and the grandchildren, August, Max, Greta, and Alexandra. Without them, the will to travel back in time into this past world, and the emotional terrain associated with it, would have been sidetracked by other agendas. They were the incentive for this project and in that sense, it is a family document.

The purpose for this volume is to dig into a storehouse of memories to frame a few simple questions and outline my search for the answer. How is it that I, with my set of experiences, skills, interests, and limitations, ended up devoting my years and energies to the art of theatre? What set me on that path, and how was that journey sustained through all the smooth and rough patches in life? Have I contributed, however small, what is consistent with my basic beliefs and values? And the most persistent inquiry I frequently faced: why did I choose the arts when there are so many primary needs in the world? One can glibly answer that with another question. Aren’t the arts also a primary need for our existence? But out of respect for the question and questioner, I began to put words on a page and then piled page upon page. Hopefully, this narrative will reveal themes and sub-themes that shed light on these vital and sometimes puzzling questions.

The essays were written over a twenty-year span and therefore they have some duplication, differences in styles and approaches to addressing the issues.

If you, the reader, are interested in these topics, you may also delight in the journey portrayed on these pages. Since art is often no more than taking one person’s scrap and reshaping it into a jewel, it is the author’s hope that the dedication I have made to the arts will also shine, and that these words will point to realms yet unexplored.

Also, the words Russia, Ukraine, and Soviet Union, are all used at one point or another to describe the same geographic area. Today, the name is Ukraine, in 1800s it was Russia and then in the 20th Century, from 1921-1991, it was part of the Soviet Union. Three names, one place.

Finally, I am grateful to my sister, Marlyce Miller, and my brother, Mel Friesen, for their recommendations following their careful reading of the first draft. My wife Janet also made corrections. Students at the University of Michigan and Goshen College were always an inspiration and kept my eyes on excellence. A special thanks to Cameron Altaras and her willingness to pen an introduction. They probably were not aware that this project was also my learning laboratory. I gained more than I gave.

The Plautdietsch spellings are my attempt to at a phonetic rendition of the words I used as a child.

In the end, I alone am responsible for the final manuscript and the ideas it contains. I offer this work for your reflection and edification with the full recognition that the author’s limitations are also printed on these pages. It is the record of a plain traveler on a rocky path. If these issues are not interesting to the reader, please put this volume aside and attend a play; I will not be offended.

North Newton, KS, 2023

Introduction

By Cameron Altaras

Sometimes the elements of one’s life coalesce in an event to which one can point and say: where I was headed radically shifted direction in that moment. One such moment occurred for me while memorizing lines for my Senior Theatre Recital on the lawn in front of the Goshen College Umble Centre. For a small midwestern liberal arts college, Goshen has an impressive theatre. I heard a bicycle approach and turned to see one of my professors, Lauren Friesen, riding towards me. Lauren, too, had a moment of such coalescence that completely set him on a new path. It occurred the first time he attended professional theatre as a high school student – which is why he ended up being my theatre professor. Even on a 10-speed bicycle, Lauren had a refinement more befitting of a Viennese café in the late 19th-early 20th century, than a small college in the middle of Indiana cornfields. Only after having read his Prairie Lands, Private Landscapes, can I begin to understand the origin of such refinement in this Mennonite college professor—it’s a bittersweet origin.

Lauren’s maternal lineage, the Mieraus had been influential in Russia, valued education, fiscal management and even the literary arts. The irony, as Lauren put it, was that his maternal grandfather became a ward of the state after the family’s emigration to Nebraska, being confined to an asylum with an unspecified psychosis. Lauren was drawn to his grandfather, although he was seldom mentioned, …his existence hardly acknowledged, and the family only visited him on infrequent occasions. A secret attraction Lauren held for Grandfather Mierau lay in the ease with which he rolled his cigarettes, and a refinement that resulted in every one of them seeming to be exactly the same thickness as the one before. … Even the smell seemed to come from another realm…. [Lauren] silently, reveled in those moments.

It is my guess that the sense of mystery from another realm was not limited to that exhaled smoke but was also an influence shaping Lauren’s later exploration of the aesthetic, the intellectual and the spiritual leading him far beyond the limitations and the poverty of his rural upbringing. One hurdle he had to navigate on his way, was to learn English, another trait he admired in Grandfather Mireau, who was fluent.

Lauren’s mother tongue, Plautdietsch—an oral language which had survived four centuries and great movements across continents, from the Netherlands to East Prussia/Poland, to Russia and finally to America—was probably … the most formative influence during [his] early years. Although it had the power to express feelings and thoughts …other languages could not parallel, Plautdietsch was not a pretty language, and was jokingly referred to as the last language left at the Tower of Babel. By the time Mennonites, so the story goes, who are typically last in long lines … reached the steps and stood before the Almighty, the only language that was left was a tongue rejected by all other peoples. [208] In order to make it through school and find his way in the larger world, Lauren undertook the necessary struggle to learn English.

Prairie Lands, Private Landscapes is not organized chronologically, but rather, like Lauren’s life, carves a path that sometimes doubles back on itself, to pick up strands of influences that shaped his commitment to his roots and at the same time refining—that word again—elements of those roots in a way that allowed him to fulfill a calling he could not deny.

I often think of Plato’s concept of the immortality of the soul, when considering how we end up where we do and with the set of circumstances unique to each of us. Plato proposes, we meet with our soul to consider what lessons we need to learn for our soul’s growth and then search for the ideal situation into which to be born, replete with unique challenges and opportunities, to learn those lessons. It’s interesting to read Lauren’s memoir with Plato’s framework in mind and note the culture, the time period, the family history, the place of birth and so on, and ponder how the particular challenges and opportunities he navigated, play themselves out as he met the lessons of his soul. According to Plato’s theory, we drink from the River of Great Forgetting just before being born and so we forget the conversation with our soul when we wake up to find ourselves on this side of the womb. One could read Lauren’s memoir as his attempt to discern his soul’s lessons and how well he has learned them. Lucky for us, he has allowed us a spectator’s opportunity with a view into his musings.

Regardless of one’s acceptance of Plato’s theory, one notes immediately that Lauren was born into a family with a powerful sense of connection to a history shaped by a religion that was central not only to home life but to living in community. Lauren knew he belonged to an identity larger than himself. A challenging part of that identity was once again that ancestral language, which was not especially useful beyond their village. Contracting polio as a child, interrupted his learning English and his schooling and forced Lauren into an immobile and painful isolation. In his poem, Polio, he describes how: tears braided down my cheek/till I slept in silk /and beside my bed /they spun, /an iron cocoon. ²

And then there was the fact of being left-handed in a right-handed world, which meant a gorgeous fountain pen gifted to him was useless. He overcame the language barrier by mastering English, he excelled in sports and became a star athlete in high school, proving that polio did not get in his way, and he learned to write so his letters slanted to the right, not to the left. He graded enough of my college term papers and exams that I would recognize his handwriting anywhere. As a student of Lauren’s, it never occurred to me that he was left-handed. I have a clear memory of sitting across from him at his desk in his Umble Centre office and watching him write something. I noticed he had a certain way of holding his pen and moving his arm across the page without really bending his wrist. I recall finding this way of writing artful – that is the word that came to mind: artful. Now when I see his handwriting, for example, how he signed his 1987 book of poetry for me, I recognize, ah yes, that was written with the left-hand. His letters are long and lean and reach far to the right, striving to make their way to the end of the line. I am not schooled in the science of handwriting analysis, but my gut tells me there is a lot of drive in those letters, a goal to be sought, come what may!

When Lauren, the now-fluent-in-English college professor—another attained goal far-distant from the Nebraska farm of his birth—dismounted his bike that spring afternoon, the conversation which ensued gave me not only the post-college-graduation-direction I sought, but also the confidence to follow through. Even though I had a lot of lines to memorize for the performance that would bring my years of study with Lauren to a crescendo, I sensed he had something of great consequence to say. Certain moments in one’s life have a timeless quality, no matter how many decades pass. The details remain clear, as if to stamp within one’s memory the message: Take note. This is significant. Whatever else was discussed that afternoon had evaporated. The words: I want you to think seriously about getting your PhD, persist. Up until that moment, I’d not really thought beyond just graduating and certainly on that afternoon, the most important item on my educational agenda was memorizing my lines. I took Lauren seriously and the PhD I completed had its root firmly in the many courses and conversations with him on the topic of religion, aesthetics, and theatre.

With Lauren I was able to articulate my internal struggle regarding how to be a Mennonite interested in theatre, beyond simply being in the audience and without requiring theatre to serve religion. I did not want to briefly study a play and then immediately move beyond it into its theological implications. I held disdain for an instrumentalist attitude, which subordinated theatre to such endeavors as determining its pedagogical usefulness. At the same time, I was not interested in the trivial, the inane or the saccharine, in short, performances akin to Caesar’s Bread and Circuses meant to entertain and distract one from the realities of the human condition. Discussions with Lauren opened me to a world which honored the art of theatre in its awe and complexity, its beauty and challenge, and recognized inherent in it a prophetic voice of truth. Where I ended up was in the camp of Theodor Adorno, a twentieth-century German Jewish philosopher who, as I wrote in my dissertation, argued: "Art’s ‘true affinity with religion’ is in its ‘relationship with truth;’ ³ in its sigh, the critical voice of art condemns the lie of reality and like the prophets of the Jewish and Christian traditions, calls for that other which ought to be."⁴

What has become apparent to me now, having read his memoir, was that Lauren also struggled with how to bring his Mennonite faith and his love of theatre together with integrity. He no doubt heard me voice some of the same questions he’d already wrestled on his way through college, seminary, and grad school. I have no idea how many other of his students found themselves squarely in the middle of the religion-and-art-mud-puddles I had, but I do know that under his pedagogical guidance, the questions and concerns I had found legitimacy.

But why ought there even exist any question as to whether or not one who is drawn to exploring and expressing one’s talent in theatre may do so without running afoul of one’s faith? If theatre was indeed a consuming passion for Lauren, then why would he expend so much energy to avoid this calling by a number of more respectable routes yet always knowing there were forces drawing him to the stage at even the slightest provocation. Why this need to avoid the call or, at least justify it? From whence came those religion-and-art-mud-puddles in which I found myself and through which Lauren spent years wandering? Is it not obvious that if one is born with gifts of an artist that one should find ways to bring one’s art to the world without needing to find ways to legitimate one’s choice to do so? To refer to Plato’s theory, why set up such a challenge for one’s soul?

Lauren does acknowledge that only when theatre became an arena for study, did he become aware of any conflict. His early life was a conflict-free blend of theatre and oratory,…made all the easier by [his] parents, who did not always applaud even though they definitely encouraged this direction. And there was his grandmother, who expected memorized poetry recitations. While my grandmother did not insist on memorized poems, my parents did attend every performance I ever acted in – crossing the border and enduring an 8-hour drive to do so. Yet, I wondered: can I do this and be a Christian? Is this a useful form of service fit for a Mennonite? The real question is, however, why was the voice in my head even asking these questions?

Could it have something to do with growing up Mennonite in a community where church work was considered the highest of callings? Or graduating from Goshen College, whose motto was Culture for Service? Could theatre be considered a work of service? Wasn’t being on stage just drawing attention to oneself? As Mennonites, weren’t we supposed to be humble and focus the attention on offering everything to Christ? Isn’t it rather selfish to act in a play just because it brings one joy to perform a great dramatic work of art? What is, after all, the point of, or the use in that?⁵ Could theatre work ever remotely be viewed as fitting enough to be considered serious church work?

As a teenager, Lauren heard an interesting take on this concept in a speech given by J. Lawrence Burkholder, his future father-in-law, who spoke about the difference between the work of the church, and church work. The difference may at first seem inconsequential. To dig deeper, however, one comes to understand an important distinction. Several of Lauren’s attempts to do the work of the church were met with condemnation when his theatre contributions were not unanimously accepted as church work—even though he was hired to write and direct plays for Mennonite events and hired to teach theatre at a Mennonite college. Many were the barriers enroute to coming to terms with his calling, only to find his calling looked upon askance by many from within his religious tradition. His commitment to the Mennonite church of his ancestry while at the same time honoring the deep longing, he felt compelled to explore, shaped decisions he made regarding how to bring his calling into form.

One has a sense in several places throughout his memoir that certain statements are in direct rebuttal to the naysayers. The following for instance: Theatre and other art forms address life directly in all of its glory and misery all in the name of shedding light on our human condition and thereby enabling us to reflect and act in redemptive ways. If I did not believe that I would have abandoned this profession. He did not abandon it—a testament to his conviction to the commitments on which he staked [his] life and identity.

Those nagging questions did not appear ex nihilo for either Lauren or me, rather in those questions is congealed a very long history—even older than our Mennonite roots. As Marsha Hewitt, my doctoral advisor, explains: Each generation confronts history as the accumulated sedimentation of the social, and cultural products and achievements of previous generations. This accumulated sedimentation of previous historical epochs that becomes congealed in each successive period is the result of human activity, a fact not always visible to human consciousness when knowledge is understood as separate from or somewhere above history.⁶ Her statement builds on the following from Karl Marx: the tradition of all the dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brain of the living.⁷

In this case, the nightmare transmitted from the past, took the form of battling amorphous patterns of thought against which one must defend one’s deep internal calling and in short, define one’s sense of who one is born to be; or to be more specific, to bring the words Mennonite and Theatre together in the same sentence of one’s life with integrity. Becoming conscious of this nightmare means we can get a little bit of distance, just enough, to examine and critique it, and then step into our agency to do something about it.

One of the important pieces that I take from my years of study in the field of Critical Theory with Marsha Hewitt is that when we recognize the social character of history, we enable ourselves to break through the illusion that history is an objective or blind force over which [we] have no control and are therefore helpless to change.⁸ The aim of Critical Theory, explains Hewitt, is to restore agency and historical subjectivity to human consciousness,⁹ our agency – our ability to speak and to act. In other words, awakening in us an awareness of the fact that the world as it is, didn’t just happen out of nothing. This means that the world didn’t just become patterned as we know it, rather, human beings exercising their agency, shaped it that way; and human beings, like us, exercising our agency, can change it.

Thus, what is it about those who came before us in our history as Mennonites that would have shaped our world in a way that would cause us to even question the possibility of having a career in theatre? The DNA strands to answer this question go way back. One could point, for example, to Mennonite roots in the period of the Reformation, when many places of worship were stripped of all adornment out of fear that it would be the work of art which was worshipped, not God, and Christians would be lost in idolatry.¹⁰ Yes, there was The Dutch Golden Age of the 1600’s, where Mennonites were not only prominent artists and patrons of the arts, but worked alongside of and supported great artists like Rembrandt; however, much of this history was lost to North American Mennonites until recently, when none other than Lauren Friesen, brought it into their/our awareness.

But the history of art in just about any form, not being honored as art, by Mennonites, let alone, the Christian Church, goes back much further. I remember studying theatre of the Greek Classical period with Lauren, and learning about Greek sculptures in Art History class and wondering: why the shift? It seemed like the aesthetic meaning of art of classical antiquity was dismissed as inconsequential and art was only valued if portraying a religious theme – as one author put it: art, for Christianity, [had] an other-than-aesthetic meaning.¹¹ Or as Adorno argued in his essay on art and religion, such religious works of art are art only accidentally.¹²

I found that "by the late Middle Ages the use of art for didactic purposes predominated in the Christian church. The functional usage of art in the sense of a laicorum litteratura (literature of the laity) had become something which was taken for granted; the assumption was that the use of art was for the instruction of the people. In fact, in the thirteenth century the biblia pauperum (bible of the poor) came into being, consisting of illustrated texts connected to the themes of the Bible. […] Gregory I," in a letter to the Bishop of Marseille, describes the biblia pauperum: ‘What the written text is for the learned, is afforded to the laity in what they see in images, since in images the unlearned can also see what they must comply with; through these images those who cannot read, read [what they need to learn.]’ It was admitted that the acceptance of art ‘was merely a concession made’ in order to reach the unlearned, who were much more easily influenced by a ‘sensual means.’"¹³

The interesting aspect to art as a message bearer with power to influence by a sensual means, is to also recognize the power of art—as in a picture is worth a thousand words that can’t be said any other way as well. Fear of art’s power has ironically led to the destruction of and banning of art, for what is feared must in the minds of those who fear it, be destroyed. Catherin Nixey, in her study aptly titled The Darkening Age, credits the Christian Church for plunging western Europe into the Dark Ages, with statements such as: Art lovers watched in horror as some of the greatest sculptures in the ancient world were smashed by people too stupid to appreciate them – and certainly too stupid to recreate them.¹⁴ She points to, for example, the Christian convert, Emperor Constantine, when faced with an intransigent population who insisted on worshipping idols at the expense of the risen Lord, cracked open statues, destroyed ancient temples, advocated the burning of whole libraries of ancient texts and forbade the reading of Classical literature. There was even good biblical precedent for his actions, notes Nixey. In Deuteronomy, God had commanded that his chosen people should overthrow altars, burn sacred Groves, and hew down the graven images of the gods. If Constantine attacked the temples, then he was not being a vandal. He was doing God’s good work.¹⁵

The good work of desecration and violence continued for centuries and was led not by embarrassing eccentrics, but men at the very heart of the Church.¹⁶ Basil, Bishop of Caesarea, (329-379) for example, explained, such ecclesiastical censorship was not illiberal; it was loving. One of his loving steps was the removal of great tracts of the classical canon as an act of ‘great care’ to ensure the soul was safely guarded.¹⁷

I remember Lauren’s Theatre History class, in which he spoke of how the classical theatre of the Greeks changed in the hands of the Romans. The more naked flesh and gory blood, the better—the same seems to attract audiences today! In the hands of the Romans, farces were rich in sexual innuendo,¹⁸ which of course was condemned by early Church Fathers. Many a Christian preacher labelled theatre as from the devil; the whole thing a foul idolatry contrived by demons ‘in order to turn the human race from the Lord.’¹⁹ The abominations of the stage, were a lawless corruption²⁰ purposely designed to pollute the audience. Severis of Antioch was among those who considered actors "little better than whores—no, they actually were whores: Christians regularly substituted the words ‘actor’ and ‘dancer’ with the word ‘prostitute’; the theatre itself was the ‘temple of lust for prostitution.’²¹ The accompanying music and dance were likewise condemned. The music that these people danced to was considered perilous, for music might take away men’s senses and mesmerize them, whipping them into a frenzy of lust and ungodliness."²²

These views were not limited to the Church of the early or medieval periods. In fact, as late as the mid-eighteenth century, sermons filled with opprobrium were preached against such things. For example, the following listing of such statements found in Jean Delumeau’s study titled Sin and Fear: Public performances are inherently opposed to the spirit of Christianity. Plays give only dangerous lessons. Plays are the source of our time’s dissoluteness. Even when plays are honest, they remain dangerous. Public performances are inherently opposed to the spirit of Christianity.²³

When used as a theological tool to teach the laity and thoroughly under the control of the clergy, however, drama was acceptable. It was from Lauren that I learned of Christian drama’s tenth century origins within an Easter Morning Mass.²⁴ And this is where I really noticed my hackles rising. Authors like E. Martin Browne advocated the use of drama as an avenue for worship.²⁵ In fact, Browne goes further noting that producing drama has been quickly seized on as a means of encouraging appreciation of her [the Church’s] message and worship, and a flood of plays great and small have been written for parish production.²⁶ While those that Browne produced may have been of high and even professional quality, he does note that the majority of such plays suffer naturally, from a lack of literary distinction. This is, however, in his estimation, secondary to the first purpose, which is to enshrine the devotion of the living Church, and therein lies the strength of their [weak scripts’] appeal. …All those who use religious drama can tell of minds and hearts touched by it.²⁷

Just as Lauren was commissioned to write and direct plays for various Mennonite Church organizations, so was I. And I got paid to do it. (Do the words of Serveris of Antioch come to mind?) This is a moment of great confession here: and I was doing it even as I was writing my dissertation on drama not being a tool of worship. One of the scripts I was commissioned to write was a retelling of the story of Martha – as in sister of Lazarus and Mary of Bethany. I kept it to under 20 minutes, so it was suitable as a substitute for the average Sunday morning sermon. Even if I was paid a modest $50. honorarium, par for the course for a guest speaker at a Sunday morning Mennonite church service at that time, the fact that I performed it 45 times over a couple of years, eased the book-buying-burden of grad school. My internal dialogue went something like: but I’m bringing Martha to life! I’m giving form to her existential questioning, the same questioning of many of the people sitting in the pews! This is good acting! People are in tears! Is this any different than when I sing a solo on Sunday morning? But it was and I knew it. I couldn’t deny that I felt like I’d left my integrity locked in my car in the church parking lot. I was appreciating the opportunity to do something I loved, but the rest of the picture was hard to swallow.²⁸

I was also hired to lead workshops on the topic of drama and worship. I wanted so much to do it differently. As I noted in my dissertation, I "resorted to taping to the wall the following: DRAMA IS NOT A TOOL. My purpose for leading these workshops was to counteract [that] all-too-prevalent notion. …Fortunately, I encountered a few who are sympathetic to my view [that] drama is not a tool of worship, is not an ersatz form of worship, does not become a message bearer; rather, in and of itself, drama as an art form is thoroughly materially mediated in its social-historical context and as such, offers a critique of that context …[which] may cause tension in the context of the church. It is precisely the dialectic which this tension provokes which must remain intact. When a message is put into the drama, the tension is alleviated, and both the message and the drama fall flat."²⁹

Or worse yet, the message can be twisted, and the ideas easily extracted for malevolent purposes. In this regard, there are many similarities between Christian theatre and political theatre, where political words and images are designed to get the audience to agree with what happens on stage. Both political and Christian theater preach an ideology to an audience, I noted in my dissertation, and referred the reader to the horrific twentieth century example of the manipulation of the script of The Passion Play of Oberammergau, under the Nazi Regime, to promote antisemitism.³⁰ With reference to the aesthetic theory of Adorno, this particular work of art, here used in a destructive way, had slithered into the abyss of its opposite.³¹

The Mennonite church is no exception to this long history of both using art for theological and didactic purposes within the Christian church, or of taking completely anti-arts positions, where any form of art is banned. It is no wonder Lauren struggled with how to come to terms with a career in theatre that could be justified by his faith. I wonder what his path would have been like had he been free of this. The roots of this struggle weave their way through the deacons of the church forbidding his mother to lead Lauren’s youth group in games, which he admits were really square dances and folk dances. And the bishops toned down the plays she produced at the Christmas church services. A couple of decades before this occurred in Henderson, Nebraska, there was another version among Mennonites several states to the east. From 1927 to 1947, George R. Brunk I and II were behind the Virginia Mennonite Conference ban of musical instruments in Mennonite homes.³² Whether ancient or recent, one must admit that the Christian Church – in its many iterations – has had a devastating impact upon the arts and artistic expression.

Lauren’s calling to the art of theatre took hold of him as a youth and the job he landed at the San Francisco Opera company confirmed it wasn’t just a vocation. The passion, and