Clarion 1987-09-18 Vol. 63 No. 02

              LEARNING RESOURCE CENTlR
BETHEL COLLEGE
3900 Bethel Drive
St. Paul, Minnesota 5511
CLARION
18 September 1987
Bethel College
St. Paul, Minnesota
The Plague strikes US at Bethel
by D.C France
When the Twin Cities theater-going audience dresses up for a night of theater-going, the Bethel College theater is generally excluded from the range of choices.
That's because theater at Bethel College
is generally standard fare and that's because the Bethel theater-going audience
generally likes plays that digest easily, like
"Cinderella" or "Death of a Salesman."
But there is a time for everything under
the sun and Bethel theater will have a
coming-out in mid to late October that
may well turn the heads of the theater-going audience of the Twin Cities.
That's because the theater department at
Bethel is opening an American premier of
an avant-garde play written by an internationally known playwright and director.
The play is "The Plague," (based on
Camus' "The Plague" and Defoe's "Year
of the Plague") and the playwright is
Kazimierz Braun, who directed lonesco's
"The Rhinoceros" last season at the
Guthrie.
'The Plague" combines
traditional
psychological drama
and visual imagery.
"The Plague" fell into director Jeff Miller's
lap from a section on Polish theater in
Drama Review, a monthly theater journal
published at MIT. In the spectrum of contemporary drama, "The Plague" sits in the
middle of traditional psychological drama
(Arthur Miller, David Mamet) the theater
of visual symbolic imagery (Robert Wilson, Mambou Mimes). Miller was taken
with Braun'sjustaposition of dialogue and
visual language; taken enough to place a
few calls to see if the script might be avail-
Kazimierz Braun, internationally known director and playwright.
able. The script was and Miller is directing
the American premier.
Braun is an artist with international reputation. He worked in Polish theater for
twenty-five years; between 1975 and
1984 he was the artistic director of the
Contemporary Theater in Wroclaw. "He
shaped the theater into a vital artistic center, unique for its innovative and challenging ideas, particularly supportive of ambitious theater artists and open to a wide
range of intelligent and unconventional
theater-goers," report the Guthrie
Theater program notes on "Rhinoceros"
He hold doctoral degrees in philosophy and humanities and an M.FA. in
directing from the Universities of Poznan,
Wroclaw and the National School of
Drama. Over the years he has taught
theater and trained student actors at the
University of Wroclaw and various colleges and universities in Poland and the
United States. Braun has also written
adaptation of classical narratives such as
the Iliad and Gulliver's Travels. He has also
authored several books on theater.
"The Plague" first played in Braun's native
Poland in 1983. Several Polish critics
called the play Braun's best work ever, but
for reasons of politics, the play's run was
short. From Wroclaw, "The Plague"
moved to the Berliner Festwochen (West
Germany) and then to the Holland Festival in Amsterdam and finally to Bethel
College.
"The Plague" is not a play for everyone.
Braun places emphasis on developing
visual images in the mind and even
though, as Miller points out, "Braun's
images are very accessible because he
writes for a very broad audience," the
play will leave some audience members
wondering why they paid money to see
it. To aid the viewer, Miller plans on holding discussions after each performance.
Braun employs rats as one of the primary and central images in "The Plague."
The rats embody the plague, as the rats
embodied the plague in the 13th century.
The rats speak very little. They symbolize
social, moral and political evils in the 20th
century. For Braun the rats probably carry
political evils in particular, since the play
was written and performed in Poland
while the Polish people were struggling
fiercely for solidarity and against martial
law. Braun is living in the United States
and is currently teaching at the State Uni-
Several Polish critics
called The Plague"
Braun's best play ever.
versity of New York at Buffalo.
In a phone conversation with Braun, Miller asked why he left Poland, but Braun
was cagey and said he would explain
when he arrived here at Bethel. Braun will
be on campus over the first three days in
October, watching rehearsals and working with students. Miller is looking forward to Braun's arrival. "It's equal to having Liviu Ciulei or Joe Papp come to
campus."
"The Plague" will run at Bethel from
October 14 to October 17 and from
October 21 to October 24. Miller estimates that only about 650 tickets will be
available to the public.
Urbana challenges modern-day Jonahs
by John Albright
Jonah couldn't care less. God told Jonah
to go to Ninevah to preach. All Jonah
knew was that he hated the Ninevites.
They were dirty, backwards and made
funny contortions with their mouths when
they talked. The last place Jonah would
ever go was to Ninevah so he jumped the
first boat to Tarshish, conveniently the
opposite direction from Ninevah. Jonah
thought he could outsale God. Unfortunately, he ended up in the belly of a
whale, which gave him time to reconsider
God's proposal.
And so goes the theme for the upcoming
15th triennial missions conference put on
by InterVarsity Fellowship at Urbana, Illinois. Urbana is a get-together of 17,000
students, missionaries and Christians
from around the globe to focus on
Christ's commission to disciple every
tribe and people. It consists of five days,
December 27-January 1, of mass worship
services, seminars, small group studies
and plenty of time to get to know other
Christians from England, India and Peru,
just to name a few.
The day will begin with a quiet time, then
a small group study of the book of Jonah,
and to finish off the morning everyone
will meet to hear the wisdom of Ajith
Fernando, the National Director of Youth
for Christ in Sri Lanka, as well as to see a
multi-media presentation on the mission
needs of some of the world's largest cities like Bogota and Nairobi. In the afternoon topical seminars will be offered; to
name several: The Gospel and Culture,
Opportunities to minister in China, Missions and Your Profession, and Music and
the Arts in Mission. One of the benefits of
Urbana is the Intercristo printout, an anal
ysis which matches your personal vocational and geographical interests with the
specific needs of mission agencies. After
the evening session of song and sermon
with evangelists such as Billy Graham,
Becky Pippert and Tony Campolo, students wrap up the night with prayer in the
same small groups as for the morning
Bible studies.
The true lesson of Urbana
is that Cod speaks to
individuals even in a crowd
of thousands.
This true lesson of Urbana, as it was during the very first InterVarsity Missions
conference in Toronto in 1946, is that
God speaks to individuals, even in a
crowd of thousands—as well as in the
belly of a slimy fish. It was after Jonah was
washed to shore that God asked him,
"Should I not be concerned about that
great city?" Yet even ifyou feel that God is
not calling you to a modern day Ninevah,
He is bound to teach you some valuable
lessons, whether cross-cultural missions
isyour bag or not. When Bethel Senior Jim
Howard went to Urbana in 1984, God
managed to spit him out of his Jonah-like
complacency. Howard looked back on
Urbana '84. "I don't think you can go to
Urbana without being affected. I grew up
in a missions-oriented famly so I had been
saturated with missions, but Urbana made
the call more relevant to me personally. It
jolted me out of complacency concerning God's will in my life."
It is the prayer of many that Bethel busses
at least 300 students to the conference
this year. Should not you be concerned
about that great city?