Directed by Aldo Billingslea
Script Creation: Brian Thorstenson and a student collective Choreographer: David Popalisky Music: Riley McShane Majestic palm trees. Bountiful sunshine. Wide walkways winding between adobe and tiled buildings. A perfect place for study, reflection, and discussion. Using techniques pioneered by Sinatra Visiting Artist Anna Deavere Smith, and coordinated with her residency at SCU in February 2017, this new documentary play used interviews from members of the SCU community, original writing and music, and movement sequences to take an inward view at SCU. What happens when there are disruptions in paradise? Where can we find moments of grace? The play ran March 10 - 17, 2018 in the Louis B. Mayer Theatre at Santa Clara University. More info here. |
A Third Moment of Grace (with a moment of complexity)
In a single spot, the rest of the stage black.
You know, there was a Jewish student who came into our office.
And uh …
The thing she was concerned with was: How are those students going to be treated?
She could have been concerned about her own safety,
She could have been concerned about anti-Semitic actions and thought on campus.
It was
A day before Yom Kippur
and as she began a High Holy Day, a High Holy Day that's focused on forgiveness, that’s focused on being in Right Relationship with one another.
That's
That's what she modeled, you know?
I mean that's, that's a complexity I think.
That's a time when you just kind of sit back and bask in the amazingness of most of our student body.
You know there are these incidents that happen and they get the press, but these little things, that happen in in our offices, as we have conversations with students, don't get the press they deserve.
You know?
The positive that's happening through the Unity Four proposal. All those
people who are dedicated to truly making a more just and sustainable world.
And it's not just those students. So many of our students I think.
Everyone's been painted to be -
The administration is being painted to be a wolf.
And privileged white guys on campus are made out to be Anti-Semitic and Homophobic.
And yeah there's
there's something behind that. But that is a select few.
It is not everyone.
And to see the incredible spirit of someone who is like,
who is truly living her faith,
taking this key moment in her year to say:
I want to be in right relationship with these people. Are they going to be okay?