For a few months I’d been looking forward to Stories on Stage on September 26 at the DCPA. They featured four short stories, all performed by actors: Rachel Fowler reading Lorrie Moore’s “You’re Ugly, Too,” Frank Corrado with Tobias Wolff’s “Bullet in the Brain,” Lauren Klein performing Flannery O’Connor’s “A Good Man is Hard to Find,” and Elgin Kelley reading contest winner Kendal Muse’s “A Message by the Sarge.” The theme was “Nobody Likes a Smartass.”
It was amazing! The concept is brilliant: a cross between a fiction reading and a play. The actors read the stories, like you’d see at a reading, but because of their talent as actors, the stories came alive as if a full set of actors with props performed on stage. I was giddy at the prospect of hearing three stories by writers I admire all in one evening.
Rachel Fowler’s rendition of “You’re Ugly, Too” created a different idea of the characters in my mind. Like Life is the only adult book by Lorrie Moore I haven’t read yet, so I read the story just the week before the performance. Immediately I noticed the absence of the second person and word play as compared to her other stories. Sure, there’s some word play but not to the same extent as there is in the other ones. It was great to hear the character’s voices and Fowler’s interpretation of them.
Frank Corrado had the perfect voice for “Bullet in the Brain.” He spoke in a deep, resonate tone that echoed the violence in the story.
But Lauren Klein’s performance of “A Good Man is Hard to Find” was nothing short of phenomenal. Her voices for the characters, especially the children, John Wesley and June Star, were hilarious and sad just like O’Connor’s stories themselves. At first I was disappointed to see that they chose such a widely canonized story of O’Connor’s and not another one. I’d read it in half a dozen classes in high school and college, and a handful of times since then. It’s a great story, but I was afraid that since I was so familiar with it, that I’d accidentally tune out.
Instead, Klein made the story new for me. I’ve loved O’Connor’s work for what’s been called the “Southern Gothic,” as well as for the quality of tragic humor and the way she flips things around, making the faithless characters almost heros and showing the pious characters for what they are.
And maybe because I read through all of her stories (though it took at least a year), I became numb to the power in them. And maybe I experienced the story on a deeper level now that I have a child. Before I felt like the family got what was coming to them. Now I don’t like them, but I feel the terror and the shrieks coming from the forest. Now, I cringe at the outcome and how simply the men and the Misfit commit their crimes. Before I didn’t think too much of the Misfit, but now I had hope for him. I could see the “moment of grace” offered to him, his almost acceptance of it, the unlikely manifestation of grace through the conversation with the grandmother, and then his ultimate rejection of it and choice to continue with a life of crime, and the utter hopelessness of that choice. I am just in awe of how O’Connor can create characters, all of them so unsavory, and then allow the reader such a contradiction of feelings. She manages to show the complexity of people and grace and sin. Those words, so cliché on paper, so powerful in reality.
Suffice it to say, I highly recommend checking out Stories on Stage and, as always, Flannery O’Connor.
Oh, and here’s a YouTube video of the actors.
Year End Reading
I don’t know how my experience compares, but the first weeks of motherhood just doesn’t allow for much time or mental capacity to read. I’ve barely read a word since August. When I realized I had read at least one book a month for the last three years, and that I was in danger of not finishing one for September, I pushed through to finish Lorrie Moore’s A Gate at the Stairs. Not exactly the way to read a book by a phenomenal author, especially when said author had not published one in over 10 years.
So I’ve realized I better make an effort to read and intentionally pick out which books I’d like to finish. Here’s my list for the rest of 2009:
If I get through those books, I’d love to start some Faulkner (Light in August), Gogol (Dead Souls), Cheever, Carver, Munro, Welty, and some religious/spiritual writing (such as Thomas Merton) and Jewish-American Fiction. It’s been a while since I’ve read the Russians, and I do love them. Right now I can’t contain my reading excitement, but I also can’t muster up the concentration to get started. Until then, I’ll watch the Broncos continue their winning streak and maybe catch up on some One Story issues during half time.