Today is Wednesday of Holy Week when, for decades, the Church of the Holy Apostles used to offer a service called Tenebrae, "a service of darkness." As readings were offered, the candles in the church were progressively extinguished, issuing in an overwhelming dark stillness. I told the students in my Job and the arts class about it this morning, and that it had been started during the AIDS pandemic, by a music director who would himself later die of it. I mentioned it as one of our texts today - Archibald MacLeish's J. B. - is its own kind of Tenebrae, the stage dimming steadily into darkness. Only after the last words - when
most plays fade to black - does some "plain white daylight" arrive, through a humble door from which no
light had shone before. Even reading about it makes for powerful theater. J. B. has been part of my course from the start, indeed it's been with me since high school, when I was a series of hapless "First Messengers" delivering the news of the deaths of J. B. and his wife Sarah's children, one by one. I've discussed the closing scene with students before, too. But on April 8, 2020, I said, I had to say something more. The devastated world at the end of J.B. is all too resonant as the covid-19 pandemic destroys lives and worlds around us. (806 deaths reported in New York City just yesterday. Unfathomable; 10 days ago the mind already short circuited at 222.)
Sarah's words The candles in churches are out. / The lights have gone out in the sky. resonate in a different way when churches are shuttered - no candles will be lit this Easter in many churches - and when the universe seems implacable and indifferent to the horror and heartbreak in every part of the world. I ended with the zoom Powerpoint equivalent of Tenebrae, whiting out all but these words from the texts final pages. I think my voice had fallen to a hush, too. I mumbled something about the audience and actors alone together in the dark, hearing as much as seeing the halting, caring movements of Sarah and J.B. finding their way back together on the stage, blow[ing] on the coal of the heart.
