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Theater Life and light in midst of suffering
By RETTA BLANEY
Damien, Aldyth Morris
one-man play now being performed by actor Casey Groves off-Broadway in New
York, tells the story of the Belgium-born priest who ministered to the lepers
of the Hawaiian island, Molokai, before dying of leprosy in 1889 at the age of
49. It is the powerful story of a man who went where no priest would go -- to a
rock of an island surrounded by forbidding cliffs and pounding surf, a
place without sunset, where lepers were shipped by the board of
health to die. It is graphic -- Father Damien describes the lepers
maggot-bloated sores -- and it is transcendent. He copes by
remembering those worm-infested ulcers are the wounds of Christ.
What makes Damien such good drama is that it portrays
a man worthy of sainthood without shrouding him in shallow piety. He can be
stubborn, angry and impatient, but these all-too-human traits are overshadowed
by his faith and compassion. His work was to become the foundation for a
hospice movement worldwide and, because of his ministry to people dying of
lethal infectious disease, he has become the unofficial patron saint of people
living with AIDS. A member of the Congregation of the Sacred Heart, he was
beatified June 4, 1995.
The play begins in 1936 when Father Damiens body is exhumed
from its grave on Molokai to be sent back to Belgium for burial in a place of
honor. Father Damien addresses the audience, voicing his protest that he is
being taken away from the people for whom he had cared and died. The story then
follows his life backwards. As his casket is at first taken to the cathedral in
Honolulu, Father Damien tells of his arrival there in 1873. When his casket is
loaded onto a ship and passes Molokai, Groves dramatizes the bulk of the story,
beginning with Father Damiens first impressions. Dear God, how
could such things be? he asks when he sees the lepers and their living
conditions. He soon decides to stay. This is my niche. This is what I was
meant to do. This is why I was born.
Wanting the lepers to live out their lives in peace and beauty,
Father Damien builds houses, gardens, roads and docks with them, ministering
and singing to them, as well as enforcing discipline. He fights local
authorities and his own church to improve their lives. He makes the world aware
of their agony.
We understand some of Father Damiens struggle as we hear his
side of an argument with the bishop who has apparently been asking him about
the procedures he followed before giving last rites to two lepers. You
dont ask a leper if hes a Catholic, your excellency, Father
Damien snaps, giving his opinion that God wont either. When a leper
on his deathbed cries out for absolution, you go to him
and in the name
of Christ forgive him. But the bishop is not won over, as Father Damien
recounts. I was, his excellency says, a defective priest.
In a powerful scene, we see what Father Damien has to go through
to receive the sacraments after he has been diagnosed with leprosy. He has been
in despair because he is barred from going into Hawaii for the sacrament of
reconciliation. He speaks of what a great hardship it is for a priest working
without a companion priest to go weeks or months without being able to make a
confession and sees this tactic as his superiors way of forcing him off
the island. They want to get rid of me, he says. They know I
cant live without the sacraments.
Finally a ship carrying his provincial anchors offshore and Father
Damien rows out beside it. Groves kneels on the floor, swaying as if he were
rolling on the sea in a small boat, and makes his confession. As the ship
begins to move away, he says, I feel the peace of
absolution.
The play closes with Father Damien returning to Belgium,
recognizing the farm of his childhood and the Sacred Heart house where his
father took him when he was 20 to become a priest. He is happy at first, but
has doubts about whether he shouldnt have remained at Molokai. Realizing
that these doubts separate him from Christ, he accepts his homecoming in peace.
If it is these doubts themselves that come between us, Lord, then I cast
them out.
Groves, 31, took on the role of Father Damien as a student at De
La Salle High School in New Orleans in 1987. He has studied drama in England,
been featured extensively at the Shakespeare Theatre in Washington, D.C., and
has appeared in many New York productions. He hopes to tour with
Damien if he can arrange bookings.
A lot of times Im a mess personally, but to play a
character who brought so much life and light in the midst of so much suffering
helps me cultivate that kind of compassion, he says. It makes my
heart light. I dont want to get too weird, but I feel hes with me,
guarding me. I do feel blessed when I do it.
Damien, with Casey Groves, is a beautiful play,
beautifully performed, about a life beautifully lived.
Retta Blaneys second book, Working on the Inside: The
Spiritual Life Through the Eyes of Actors, will be published next year by
Sheed & Ward. Groves is among the actors featured.
Damien will be at the Jose Quintero Theatre, 534
W. 42nd St., from Feb. 7 through Feb. 17. For tickets call (212) 244-7529. For
information about future performances, call Open Road Productions, (212)
358-5906. |
National Catholic Reporter, February 8,
2002
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