Reflections on Leaving Ruin
This past weekend, I performed Leaving Ruin at Taproot Theatre. The three performance run was truly a treat for me, like playing a football game on your home turf for a hometown crowd. There was a level of ease and presence in the work that is sometimes hard to maintain on the road. With all the time I've spent in the Taproot space, the familiarity became an ally as I dropped into the imaginative world of Cyrus Manning. I found Saturday night especially affecting, and the emotional waves that theoretically swamp Cyrus showed up right on cue throughout the evening.
I've been doing this play for seven-and-a-half years now, which I hadn't really considered until this weekend. In that time, the play has seen many types of audiences: some laugh through the first act as if it's a sitcom, others sit quietly as if offended, but in the end, there are always people who come up to me after it's over to say thank you, that their brother or father or friend went through exactly that experience, and that somehow the journey of Cyrus ended up being what they were scared it wouldn't be--healing.
It's hard to express just how thankful I am for Leaving Ruin. As my wife says, it's just something God gave me, and it easy to see His hand working in the ongoing work of the play and the novel. It's one of those Chariots of Fire things, I guess--that when I'm playing Cyrus, I feel God's pleasure.
Let all the applause belong to You...
8:35:50 AM
