The Good Friday Project

What: A spoken-word and dance performance lasting twelve minutes, inspired by the presence of cloth throughout the narrative of the last hours of Jesus of Nazareth.
Where: Northeast Community Lutheran Church, Minneapolis MN
When: April 2, Good Friday evening at 6:45pm.

Conceived and produced by Jennifer Schultz; written by Jennifer Schultz and Dean J. Seal; with choreography and movement performance by Tracy Vacura and Blake Nellis. Presented in cooperation with Northeast Community Lutheran Church.

Two nights ago, a group of artists and I presented a short performance for a church audience of about 40 people, which culminated our congregation's Good Friday service. The performance included text written and read aloud by me and my friend Dean Seal, a professional director/writer/producer. The text was interpreted as movement by two dancers, Tracy Vacura and Blake Nellis, who incorporated significant props into their narrative performance. The theme of the the performance was the last utterance of Christ on the cross: "Father, into your hands I commend my spirit." The subject was the tearing in two of the temple curtain at the moment of Jesus' death. (See SIDEBAR for a page link to the script.)

Some context: Each year the church worships Good Friday Tenebrae service with a meditation on the "Seven Last Words of Christ." The "last words" are phrases found in the various Gospels; church members chose one each of the phrases and prepared a five-minute reading based on their own reflections on the text. We did basically the same thing this year. Those texts are:

1. "Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing." (Luke 23: 33-34)

2. "Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in Paradise." (Luke 23: 39-43)

3. "Behold your son . . . behold your mother." (John 19: 25-27)

4. "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" (Mark 15: 33-34)

5. "I thirst." (John 19:28)

6. "It is finished." (John 19: 29-30)

7. "Father, into your hands I commend my spirit." (Luke 23: 44-46)

Notwithstanding the book of John, which leaves it out, each of the Gospels includes a verse describing the moment of Jesus' death and the tearing in two of the temple veil, or curtain - Mark 15:38, Luke 23:44, Matthew 27:51 (with mass resurrections too.) It's an astounding image on several levels (not to mention a really arresting sound effect -- some fabrics tear more dramatically than others): The rending of the curtain as the "opening of the way" -- bringing mankind into intimate contact with God -- while at the same time symbolizing grief and mourning on a cosmic scale.

What I originally envisioned was a bit of spoken word culminating in the actual tearing of fabric. The two renders of the curtain would do it with some pathos inherent and would rehearse it ahead of time. Cloth has many uses, and many meanings, and appears continually in one form and another in the narrative of the last days of Christ -- a "thread" that continues on into Easter.

What transpired: My friend Mandy Herrick (of Ready At Will Dance Collective) introduced me to Blake and Tracy. Together the four of us (with Dean rather than Mandy) collaborated on the artistic interpretation of the script. Dean and I worked through several drafts of what became a kind of dialogue: beginning with my continuing obsession with laundry and the intimacy of fabric in our daily lives (read by me), moving into the meaning of the temple curtain, its location in history, and the revelatory nature of its self-destruction (read by Dean). [Katya de Grunwald approaches these notions in a brief essay for Selvedge's March/April issue (which I finally received April 5) -- "Its history is contextualised by religious symbolism -- white linen on the altar representing the winding sheet that covered Jesus in his tomb..."] We rehearsed several times, sometimes as a group, other times meeting separately as writers and dancers. I planned the performance to be short: normally, a meditation on one of the Seven Last Words for Tenebrae would last only about five minutes. We settled on ten to twelve minutes, and the written portion of the work took ten minutes exactly to read through in rehearsal.

The performance takes place in the sanctuary of a small German-Lutheran church now situated in the inner city. The ceiling has exposed dark wood beams; the pews and altar are of carved dark wood. There is a small balcony in the rear, above the narthex. The sanctuary seats 200 people.

As the hymn which followed the sixth reading was sung, Blake and Tracy took their positions in and beneath the balcony. Dean sat in a front pew holding a basket of laundry. I walked up two short steps to the lectern, where I retrieved a clothesline we had hidden there. Already secured to a pillar above the lectern at one end, I stretched the other end across the altar and hooked it to the opposite pillar, stretching the clothesline tightly. I then returned to the lectern, carefully closing the gate in the altar rail along the way. Meanwhile, Blake had dropped a bundled cloth many yards long into the waiting arms of Tracy down below, positioned at the head of the center aisle. Tracy stretched the billowing blue cloth as she moved slowly down the aisle, twisting the yardage overhead until it stretched behind her like a cloak, an elaborately elongated bride's veil. (The cloth was lovely deep blue upholstery fabric, shimmering with subtle two-toned stripes.) Tracy half-walked, half-danced up to the altar, pulling the long cloth behind her (the end of which still stretched up to the second-floor balcony), and paused, kneeling, before the rail with her head and shoulders covered. Blake followed carefully behind, and as Tracy emerged from her hooded shelter, the two of them caressed the cloth before carefully draping the end over the rail. Then they turned to face me at the lectern, gazing upward to a point above my head.

At this point I read the Biblical text, and after a short pause, began my portion of the reading. I spoke of the temple curtain in Jesus' day, which separated the Holy of Holies from all human presence save that of the chief priest; and of the meditative aspects of doing the laundry here at home. There was consideration of the baby blanket, the bathrobe, the head scarf and the winding sheet. I talked about productive servitude, and about the washing of the disciples' feet at the Last Supper. I introduced the idea of Jesus removing the barriers between himself and those he loved, by simply washing -- and drying, with a towel -- the feet of his loved ones. In doing so, "Jesus had left the temple behind." Dean and I read that line together, and then Dean launched into an explanation of the Temple layout and hierarchy, and the importance of the curtain -- and its sundering -- to our understanding of the crucifixion and Resurrection as they re-ordered the human relationship with God. As we read, the dancers acted out various interpretations of the script, moving smoothly from one line of narrative to the next, hanging dishcloths and strips of linen on the line, folding other cloths away in the basket. Near the end of my reading, on cue, the dancers produced a curtain I had sewn which loosely corresponded in color to descriptions of the temple curtain. They took down the laundry and instead hung over the line the curtain, which was three joined panels of crimson, purple and blue. (I sewed in weights on the back corners to keep it from slipping off the line -- 5/8 inch nuts that I purchased at Home Depot.)

The dancers' movements illustrated the relationship between men and God and the curtain. In the end, again on cue, the dancers tore the curtain in two down its middle. The sharp cotton tearing, in one fluid motion, elicited a gasp from somewhere in the audience. The dancers followed the motion through in a slow march up the aisle toward the rear of the sanctuary, dragging the pieces of the torn curtain behind them. The lights had been extinguished along with the altar candles, a bank at a time, until our performance ended in near-darkness. Finally, in the blackness of the end of the Tenebrae, our music director performed a solo rendition of "How Can You Refuse Him Now?"

It went well. The performance left several impressions I think; and moreover, served to continue a gradual introduction of dance and drama into our liturgical expressions at church. I'm hoping we have some photos of the rehearsals, taken during daylight hours. If I find them I'll post them here.