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What Role
are You Currently Playing?
by Marvin
Payne
I was visiting
with some young actors a couple of weeks ago, and they asked me
what role I was currently playing. I hesitated for a moment ("Shall
I tell them about the sheriff I'm going to Idaho to play in a film?
Shall I tell them about playing Josiah Lamborn again in the upcoming
taping of "Hancock County"? Shall I tell them of the one-day gig
in August as Sidney Rigdon?"). Then I thought, "Oh, what the heck"
and answered them. "Since you asked, I've been playing, well, God."
They didn't know quite what to think. In our broader society, on
stage or off, "playing God" is generally frowned upon. Not PC (politically
correct). Not TC (theologically correct). Not PB (personally becoming).
I'm suddenly
reminded of when my thirty-something son, who is a seminary teacher,
was three years old. One night after family prayer, he jumped up
onto the couch, grabbed the sides of the enormous T-shirt of mine
that served him as a nightgown, spread them out like seraphic wings
and announced, "When I grow up, I'm gonna be God." I wasn''t keeping
a journal then, but that event at least made it into a song.
He was three.
It's okay for three-year-olds to be that reckless and presumptuous.
I think a degree of accountability is prerequisite to hubris. But
I'm three years old plus a half-century. Way accountable. Playing
God.
A couple of
times, just because I had it with me anyway, I've sat in the waiting
area in the temple writing my thoughts. My journal was very much
a part of my most recent temple experience. This is what I wrote.
30 June 2002
"We are in an extension of the Nauvoo Temple, my in-laws' stake
center in Orem. This is the concluding dedicatory session. The initial
session commenced on the one hundred fifty-eighth anniversary of
the very hour at which Joseph Smith was shot. This was Joseph's
temple. "I feel close to the brethren here today, close to Joseph,
and close to the Lord. This is a huge event, commemorating huge
events, and anticipating huge events. But I feel not so much awe
as intimacy. "Elder Holland has spoken--he knows me. Elder Oaks
has spoken--he knows me. The choir has sung--a lot of them know
me. The Father and the Son are present, and They know me. Joseph
is felt here. He didn't know me, but he may have known John Brown
and he certainly knew Josiah Lamborn."" Being an actor has sometimes
been a key for me, unlocking the kind of feelings I had that afternoon.
I'll explain.
On a couple
of recent mornings I got up a lot earlier than usual and drove to
Park City, the back way. Most of my travels are "the back way."
This time that "back way" took me up Provo Canyon, looking back
on the east face of Timpanogos (most would say the "back" side),
then avoiding even metropolitan Heber, taking the "back way" through
indiscernible Charleston along the reeds that beard the far edge
of Deer Creek Reservoir. Through Midway and then another "back way"
on what they call the Old River Road, green hillside on the left
and marshy pasture on the right. Up the new highway (probably, to
some, more of a "front way") overlooking the spreading blue surface
of the Jordanelle, then into Park City on a road that's, well, the
back way.
Park City, for
those who've never been, is a colony of Colorado (or Hollywood,
sometimes--this is kind of mysterious) in the mountains of Utah.
Around Independence Day each year, the rest of the state gets a
little nervous, because the colonists might get ideas about seceding
from the state, and we need Park City for the sales tax on all the
popcorn sold during the Sundance Film Festival. That early in the
morning, though, it's a pretty quiet place, quite beautiful and
sort of Utah-like. I'd been invited by the Egyptian Theatre to conduct
an acting workshop for some high school kids there. These are the
ones who asked me about my current role.
We mostly explored
together the paradox we live in the theatre, where we trade in Truth
(or else why bother?) while never leaving Make-believe. We are,
in crude terms, at the same time True and False. We imagined together
that good acting might arise from learning to act as close to who
we really are as possible, and at the same time as far from who
we really are as possible. That can get annoyingly technical, but
for now let me just say that we did some crazy things that were
designed to get us to be more honest about who we really are, which
is hard, and then some even crazier things that were designed to
get us experimenting with being very far from who we really are,
which is pretty fun.
Part of my report
to these young actors was that as long as I was sure about who I
was, and brought something of that core self to the stage, it was
a grand adventure to be the drunken and murderous Pap Finn in Big
River, or the bent barber of Fleet Street, Sweeney Todd. Or
that fatal dreamer, the Phantom of the Opera. There was some surprise
when I told them that the most liberating (and self-discovering)
role I'd ever played was Boo Dog. These characters (and critters)
are all, I think, kind of far from who I really am. (I admit I've
never played a non-mammal. I have my limits.) But venturing into
their dreams and sorrows, figuratively pressing onto my eyeballs
the contact lenses that color and focus their peculiar vision of
the world, I get a little stretched, feel a little larger, and wind
up loving different kinds of people a little more easily, because
I have been them.
Back to Nauvoo
and the dedication. I think my feeling of closeness to the Prophet
Joseph was kindled by all the feelings about him I lived through
in the play Hancock County as Josiah Lamborn, the prosecutor
of his murderers. They are feelings I might not have had as mere
Marvin. For a hundred and fourteen evenings (so far) I was the pioneer
captain, John Brown, my great-great-grandfather whose springboard
for Adventures in the Kingdom was Nauvoo and the man whose vision
built it.
As Brown, I
had a lot of restoration feelings I surely wouldn't have had as
mere Marvin. I felt close to the Brethren who spoke at the dedication
because those particular apostles have said and done things that
encourage me, personally, to persevere as an artist--to go, somehow,
beyond mere Marvin. (My closeness to the Tabernacle Choir is only
because I go to church with some of them, and several others made
their audition tapes in my little recording studio--and I've been
in shows with some of them).
But the closeness
that was both the most awesome and most intimate was the closeness
I felt to my Father in Heaven. I suppose I shouldn't need an acting
experience to bring me close--I talk to Him several times a day.
(And of course He's talked to me more often than I have even discerned.)
But for three weeks of recording that just ended, and several years
of writing before that, I have been imagining what my Father in
Heaven feels and thinks, and the words He might use to share those
unspeakably precious things with us. I've been writing, with Steve
Perry, "Family--A Joyful Proclamation!" And when it came down to
casting it for the CD, Father of Light is the role that fell to
me.
(We knew it
was okay for Deity to sing in a choral work. Handel made it popular
and acceptable, following the example of Bach, who had the advantage
of actually being religious. What we didn't know was if it's okay
for Deity to sing accompanied by a dobro and accordion. We were
somewhat encouraged by Brigham Young's statement that "There are
no fiddlers in Hell." We''ll let you decide if it worked.)
Perhaps the
most useful effect of playing this role manifested itself a few
nights ago when I saw my four-year-old and my one-and-a-half-year-old
playing together gleefully and realized with a flash that what pleases
Father most is merely to see His children loving each other. (Well,
isn't it?)
Families is
where we learn to love. Better, probably, than in dramatic portrayals--unless
we happen to see our family as a warm earthy gaggle of survivors
and at the same time a sublime model of heavenly archetypes (there's
that word again!). In other words, family as sacred drama. Totally
real (the "us as us" part), and at the same time totally make-believe
(the"us as God" part). Sound paradoxical?
I reckon that
few of us Latter-day Saints who have been taught the flame-white
elements of the Proclamation since Primary realize how radical this
document is. What it echoes for us about Heavenly Parents, what
it clarifies again about why families even exist and what they are
meant to become, is blazing revelation to the rest of the planet.
This is news to them. I don't think they are taught these things
anywhere else. Not at Mother Urban's (which is a bar in Park City),
not at Notre Dame (which is a cathedral in Paris), not at the University
of Nebraska (which is a University in Nebraska). Among the saints
is the only place being a "child of God" really means "child of
God." Genetically.
(Do you remember
I promised you, in the last column, that our musical potpourri was
to have included a Muslim call to prayer? Well, that was before
the guy who was going to perform it for us admitted that one of
the basic tenets of Islam is that "God does not bear." In other
words, apparently it's important in that theology to believe that
God is not literally Our Father.
So we nixed
it--sorry, it would have sounded cool.We stuck a bagpipe into that
gap in the music instead. We nixed it mostly out of respect for
Islamic belief, but also because we didn't want to become the target
of a fatal Fatwa).
But Asaph, a
cymbal-playing Levite choir leader wrote down in his journal (published--Psalm
82) something the Lord had told him (primary reason for keeping
a journal, you recall), which is, "Ye are gods; and all of you are
children of the most High."
We explored
paradoxes those early mornings in Park City. How about this one?
Is playing the role of Heavenly Father possibly the most presumptuous,
hubristic (I think I just coined that word, words being the only
thing you can "coin" except coins), and spiritually dangerous thing
any of us might do? Yes. Is playing the role of Heavenly Father
probably the most humbling, refining, visionary (and even necessary)
thing any of us might do? That too.
--------------------------------------
Visit
marvinpayne.com!
"...come
unto Christ, and lay hold upon every good gift..." (from
the last page of the Book of Mormon)
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