RABBIT TRAILS: DISPATCHES FROM THE SHED
Updates, news and blog stories from around the Ted and Company universe.
In 1986 while living in Pennsylvania, Jessie Glick, member of Plains Mennonite church where Sue and I were attending, handed me a VHS tape. It was The Cotton Patch Gospels written by Tom Key and Russell Treyz with music by Harry Chapin. The musical which played off-Broadway was based on the writings of Clarence Jordan- The Cotton Patch Version of Matthew and John. I loved this version of the texts, and Clarence’s whimsical and biting take of the teachings and life of Jesus helped incubate my own work. Fish-Eyes, written with Lee Eshleman in 1994, owes a debt of inspiration to Tom Key, Russell Treyz and Clarence Jordan. I am privileged on September 29 to be part of Clarence Jordan Symposium. It is celebrating the 100th “birthday” of Jordan and an appreciation of his work. Clarence Jordan was a innovative progressive thinker and life example creating Koinonia Farms, a racial integrated…
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Baseball has been a constant presence in my life for the last 50 years. It marks the seasons, enriches spring, symbolizes the death of summer and as the days shorten, a growing cold of the autumn. I grew up playing with my brother, following the Giants and St. Willie Mays. Then there were the home town Phillies. I’ve followed them through the horrid years before the emergence of the Mike Schmidt and Steve Carlton-led power house of the 70’s and the 80’s, through the down time of the 90’s and the reemergence of the Utley and Howard-led teams of the 2000’s. The boys followed my love of the game, and we now all have “graduated” to softball. A number of years ago we had the opportunity to all play together for our church, Community Mennonite: The last Peace Pies and Prophets tour to the Midwest included a show in…
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If you have seen a recent “I’d Like to Buy an Enemy” show with myself and Tim Reubke, you know the sketch “Cut-Outs.” Originally done by Ted & Lee, we hold briefcases in our laps, wearing bowler hats, cutting out increasingly larger and more ominous weapons out of poster board and threatening the other until it escalates into a rock/paper/scissor game where no one wins One of the weapons I cut out and drop into Tim’s briefcase is a round bomb with a fuse on top. Tim desperately tries to de-fuse the bomb, but then throws it into the audience. In Madison Wisconsin, 2 weeks ago, Tim tossed it out as usual to great laughter, and we moved on. Kalea, age four, who was sitting in the front row in a red party dress and sun bonnet must have been disturbed by the “littering” or casual disperments of weapons into…
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A few years ago, I , along with Lee Eshleman met an actor from Zurich, Switzerland at a conference in Sandy Cove Retreat center. It was the annual Christians in Theater Arts conference. His name was Beat Muller, and he too was a writer and theater artist with his own company. In 2011 Beat completed his translation of the Ted & Lee play Fish-Eyes into Swiss German and planned a 24 city tour. The world premiere in Switzerland of our most well known work: In these photos Ted & Lee fans will recognize the suspender and colors of the costumes we wore for a decade of “net casting” as Peter and Andrew. This week Beat sent to me this short greeting from the fine theater audiences in Switzerland:
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Documentary film is an art form that distills events into images, movements and highlights and let’s us feel as if perhaps we can engage in an event. The first Peace Pies and Prophets tour of 2012 in Eastern Pa was a three day event in three cities, Akron, Philadelphia and Souderton. Okay, one city, a large town and a hamlet. A marvelously disparate theater tour- from the buggies of Lancaster county, to the heightened pulse of the theater district of Philadelphia, to the sensible streets of Souderton. A film also occasionally needs to balance between very important issues and entertainment…It’s saying “This is important people” without boring anyone….to be entertaining enough to compel us to stick with it and take stock in what the filmmaker is trying to say. Steven Stauffer has taken 3 days in March, plus months of dreaming and planning, and distilled the celebration of community, the…
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Friends- last weekend March 9-11 Ted and Co. had an experience like no other. It was the kickoff for Peace Pies and Prophets tour. Instead of 1 or 2 actors showing up to perform a show—which is still pretty cool—actor Tim Reubke and I were joined by a film documenter Steven Stauffer, a musician, Nathan Allebach, son Derek who ran sound and video projector as well lending his strong back to “roadie” and trouble shooting jobs, a team of 8-10 volunteers, Movement Architect Scott Hackman, Christian Peacemaker Teams Outreach Coordinator Tim Nafziger —and 140 handmade pies. The event was a participatory wonder. Our show, I’d Like to Buy an Enemy was interspersed with a “stealth auction”, where an airhorn would go off and Tim R and I would don our special hats and auction off handcrafted pies, including three made by the winner of the Pa state pie competition in…
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