The story that I promised to post at the end of my entry on February 15 (see Valentines and Time) follows:
Haunted by History by Patti Restivo
The city of Elkridge nestles alongside the Patapsco River at the confluence of Howard, Anne Arundel, and Baltimore Counties. Five years after the Thomas Viaduct was built in 1835 allowing rail access to the unpopulated region across the river from Baltimore City, Judge George W. Dobbin built his summer estate on the top of the “Hill.” Fellow attorneys and friends quickly followed, Judge Dobbin moved in permanently, and the close-knit Lawyers Hill community was born.
During the turbulent 1860s, the residents of Lawyers Hill were as divided by the War Between the States as the rest of the country. But, when Union troops camped on Lawyers Hill to guard passage into Baltimore City, neighbors protected each other’s properties and remained loyal to one another despite conflicting sympathies.
And when the worst of the mayhem of the war was done, they built a neighborhood parlor to serve as a place for the survivors to mend their torn emotions.
Tucked away on a corner and across the way from a field, past curving bends, the Elkridge Assembly Rooms have been refurbished. The exterior of the log-cabin type building appears much like it must have in the beginning, when it became a neutral meeting place offering entertainment and companionship to battle-weary residents.
Today, the sun is setting on the little hall that sits alone on the corner of Lawyers Hill and Old Lawyers Hill Roads. There is no traffic or human-made noise, and if I turn my back on the paved road and ignore the port-a-pot to focus on the sound of birds while entering this quaint wood-shingled dwelling, I can almost believe it’s 1871, shortly after the theater was built.
But it’s not. It’s the spring of 2001.
And I am here to perform in the Columbia Community Players’ staged reading of Stephen Vincent Benet’s Pulitzer prize-winning John Brown’s Body for one brief weekend.
I had originally committed to direct this show when the Players' Executive Board voted to stage John Brown’s Body as our contribution to the Howard County Sesquicentennial Arts Celebration. We agreed to finance the show, and the Arts Celebration’s Vision Howard County committee put me in touch with Sally Voris from the Lawyers Hill Community homeowners group to arrange the venue.
In those days I was serving as Communications Director for the Columbia Community Players, an organization run entirely by volunteers. Almost immediately after Voris signed an agreement to open John Brown’s Body on Lawyers Hill the first weekend in June, I realized the only way to get it produced was to take on that job as well, in spite of doubts about trying to manage such pressing responsibility on top of directing and my day job.
While brainstorming how to move forward with friend and stage/film actor Charles Maloney, I tossed out the idea of swapping commitments. (Maloney is not only a veteran community theater director and one of the mentors who taught me to direct plays, he is an avid Civil War buff and Vietnam war veteran.) Caught by the artistic poignancy of staging John Brown’s Body in an authentic civil war setting, Maloney agreed to direct the reading instead of appearing in it as an actor, allowing me to focus my energies on producing and publicizing it.
With the Executive Board’s approval, we quickly reorganized and assembled a cast of a dozen actors and musicians – Dan Bravmann (who also served as Musical Director), Delia Chiu, Steve Bruun, Ed Kuhl, Mark Allen, Richard Bloomquist, Todd Cunningham, Nancy Dall, David O’Brien, Heidi Toll, Susan Weber, and me – with Steve Teller providing technical direction.
The show received generous press coverage from the Howard County Times and the Baltimore Sun; we open on Friday night to a good house. Although historically preserved (sans modern amenities like rest rooms and running water), the building does have some electricity. As the darkness descends outside, gentle lighting sparks the usual stage magic.
Our audience is reverent.
Benet’s Pulitzer prize-winning poem is a magnificent piece that begins with the singing of first-generation slaves imprisoned on a ship headed for America. Sweeping to John Brown’s guerilla raid on the federal garrison at Harper’s Ferry and through the war experiences and romances of Yank Jack Ellyat and Reb Clay Wingate, the poem lends beautifully to dramatic interpretation by voice, banjo, and cello. I cannot imagine enacting its stories in a more soulful setting or in better company.
Maloney has dressed us in stage black and composed the set using our bodies and symbolic visual elements – the confederate and union flags hang strategically and a touch of blood-red color peeks from an upstage bench. We twelve (and the banjo and cello) remain onstage for the entire performance, sinking deeply into Benet’s language that powerfully evokes illusions of burning mansions, complex love stories, and historic political crises.
Benet wrote John Brown’s Body to be read, and we understand that we are performing a theatrical rendition of a poem rather than the poetic presentation of a play. Maloney has split the three intended roles into multiple characters to create an overlapping, dueling vocal effect that at times allows pandemonium.
We recreate Grant and Lee and the other generals alongside fictional characters as diverse as giggling debutants at a house party, an exhausted soldier suffering nightmares, and a steely but fragile Southern mother. There are few human emotions that aren’t laid bare by the time the poem ends.
Lyrics from Benet’s version of “John Brown’s Body Lies A-Mouldering in the Grave” point to the final crescendo:
John Brown’s body lies a-mouldering in the grave.
Spread over it the bloodstained flag of his song,
For the sun to bleach, the wind and the birds to tear,
The snow to cover over with a pure fleece
And the New England cloud to work upon
With the grey absolution of its slow, most lilac-smelling rain,
Until there is nothing there
That ever knew a master or a slave
When Ed Kuhl as Jack Ellyat stylistically removes the confederate flag in staggering silence during the last seconds of the show, there is not a dry eye in the house, onstage or off. It is safe to judge that Opening Night has been a success.
Saturday night is foggy. The pitch-blackness descends quickly and seems thicker; there is an eerie resonance present. With one show down and three to go, we’re revved for the night’s performance. But for me, something is very different. Perhaps it’s the seclusion and the absence of streetlights that seem to isolate us, or the fog that is pricking at my senses.
Actors always live out their stories in real time onstage, but it feels like we’re being watched (and not just by the audience) – that we’re sharing an empathetic moment in time and space with the ghosts who lived this melodrama. I’ll never forget the sensation. Maybe Grant and Lee are really haunting us this night. They’re here in my mind.
Or maybe the hall is just haunted. Donald Hicken, who’s directed at Center Stage in Baltimore and the Smith Theater at Howard Community College in Columbia (but not part of this effort), tells an amusing story. He says that some people believe theaters are haunted for a while after every show…that actors project so much energy while performing that it doesn’t dissipate when the show closes, but floats instead to the top of the theater…and that bits of the characters they’ve created remain.
The sun shines on the tiny theater/dance hall that sits alone on the corner of Lawyers Hill and Old Lawyers Hill Roads. There is no traffic or human-made noise, and if I turn my back on the paved road and conjure the port-a-pot that was rented for the audience into my peripheral vision, I can almost believe it’s 2001, and I am about to perform in John Brown’s Body.
I don’t go in.
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| Photoshop Composition by Patti Restivo |
But I can hear Bloomquist (who passed away five years ago) strumming his banjo and singing out in a booming baritone as I think about the memories our little troupe of actors and musicians made, of the lovely dinner and companionship that the John Brown’s Body cast shared between the matinee and evening show on Sunday. As a giant General Lee gazes out the window and the face of General Grant wafts serenely in the shadows near the roof, the hall shines like a symbol of peace.
