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COUNTERCULTURE
Jesus Loves Paul and Sol
by Charlene Ball
Every Western writer raised in the Christian
tradition has to deal with the image of Jesus. That
Roman instrument of torture, the cross, bisected
the sky two millennia ago. And we've been trying
to put ourselves back together again ever since.
Non-Christians look on amused as Baptists,
Catholics and secular humanists absorb, rewrite
or try to banish this elusive person of myth/histo
ry from their consciousness.
If one is raised in the Bible Belt, one becomes
steeped in the language, stories, and turns of
thought of the Old and New Testaments. And for
a Southerner who was raised on the Bible, the
rejection one gets for being gay can be a potent
catalyst. One is an outsider, with an outsider's
sharp perspective, but an insider's knowledge.
And one may well find that one longs for a lost
paradise of belief. This longing, of course, is
what generates art
As a gay male Southern playwright, Jim
Grimsley has a special relationship to the Bible's
characters and their stories.
Grimsley's Jesus play, The Lizard of Tarsus, is
an attempt to come to terms with Jesus and what
he represents. It echoes other works— glimmer
ings of Dostoevsky's Christ and the Grand
Inquisitor, Niezche's Zarathustra, or the Jesus of
the Gnostic Gospels. It is appropriate somehow
that another revisionist play about Jesus has
appeared in Atlanta. Both Jim Peck (appearing as
Jesus here) and Eddie (Levi) Lee have attempted
the subject. And, of course, the so-called "Death
of God" theology originated at Emory (and at
Manuel's Tavern) in the 1960's.
Jesus (Tun Peck) has returned to earth at an
unspecified time in the future of the New
Jerusalem and has been arrested by St. Paul (Del
Hamilton), who is still the head of the church.
Paul wants Jesus to record his message for pos
terity before being done in again. Jesus, however,
can neither read nor write, and he refuses to be
pinned down as to what his parables meant, or
what actually did happen to Paul on the road to
Damascus. Paul wants Jesus to validate him and
his alterations to Jesus' message. And Jesus
refuses.
Del Hamilton and Jim Peck are two consum
mate actors; it is a joy to hear and see them. They
balance each other, with splendid voices, just
right for these two larger-than-life characters and
the eloquent words they speak. Del Hamilton, as
St. Paul, looks like the lizard of the title. A per
snickety bureaucrat and PR man, Paul is ridden
with secret repressions; a man on the run from
himself. Jesus is Paul's opposite: vital and spon
taneous, with a peasant's simplicity and shrewd
ness, but all the imperiousness and unpredictabil
ity of a Greek deity. Like C.S. Lewis' Aslan, this
Jesus is no tame lion. Definitely not the sanitized
Jesus image of Christian Sunday Schools.
Peck's Jesus is kind yet shrewd—expressing
infinite compassion—but he is nobody's fool. He
has the inexpressibly weary air of someone who
has seen the same dreadful things happen over
and over again. Yet he maintains spontaneity and
hope. Likely the most improbable-looking Jesus
ever seen on stage or screen, Peck is as down-to-
earth as whole-wheat bread. And his delight at
working a miracle is a joy to behold.
Faye Allen plays Sol Heifer, a down-trodden
servant woman whose tongue has been cut out
by St. Paul. Sol's name is evocative: it sounds
Sol Heifer is healed by Jesus, and Paul isn't pleased
like Saul, Paul's original name; it is also the sun.
And Heifer is a cow, a derogatory term for a
woman, but it also harks back to the pre-
Christian era when the cow was sacred to the
Mediterranean Mother Goddess. Sol represents
Woman under Paul's patriarchal version of
Christianity, chained to a huge Bible, fetching
and carrying, keeping silent. Allen perfectly
embodies the degraded Sol—fearful, but with a
hidden intelligence and vitality that emerge at
Jesus' prompting.
Grimsley's Jesus is not all that non-traditional:
He is still divine; he is still the good guy; the
patriarchal premise of his existence remains
unchallenged. At one point, when the two men
are arguing in abstract terms over whether Sol
Heifer, just healed by Jesus, should be allowed to
keep her new tongue, I wished Allen would get
up off the floor and say, "The hell with you
both—I'm gonna bring back the matriarchy!"
That didn't happen. But it is promising to see
a male writer acknowledge that women have
been silenced by male authority, instead of deny
ing that fact, trivializing it, or making excuses for
the perpetrators.
Grimsley has written an intriguing play; one
that is theatrical and keeps an audience on their
toes. There are things about Tarsus that don't
quite work—the ending and the significance of
the lizard that Faye Allen brings in at the end are
vague. But in all this play is well worth seeing.
And Grimsley is a playwright worth watching.
He and Seven Stages have once again handed us
exciting and thought-provoking theater.
Lizard of Tarsus plays through March 4 at
Seven Stages Theater. Call 523-9647 for times,
prices and reservations.
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Lesbians Win NEA Grants
The National Endowment for the
Arts (NEA) has recently selected three
openly lesbian writers as winners of
$20,000 fellowship grants, reports The
Washington Blade.
Writers Audre Lorde, Minnie Bruce
Pratt and Chrystos received grants to
support their individual writing projects
for one year.
The lesbian poet/authors were chosen
along with 94 other American writers to
receive the NEA’s Creative Writing
Fellowships for 1990.
The decision to support these writers,
known for their homoerotic content,
comes at a time when Congress has
issued an amendment which is designed
to deny funds to projects that "promote,
disseminate, or produce materials. . .
which may be considered obscene" and
which include descriptions of "sado
masochism" or "homoeroticism."
Sen. Jesse Helms introduced the
amendment to an appropriations bill
which supplies funds to NEA.
NEA chairman John Frohnmayer
said the grants are intended to "play
some small part in nurturing a literature
that truly reflects the immense diversity
of the United States."
8/Southern Voice • February 15,1990