My Father's Eyes

Myths and Hymns by Adam Guettel closed at Hope Repertory Theatre last night. As I mentioned in my previous blog, my father’s passing had a profound impact on the concept for the production. In many concrete ways, Myths and Hymns was my last theatrical collaboration with my father - our last musical together.

The first design meeting for Myths and Hymns was scheduled for March 14th – the day my father’s death rattle began. I canceled the meeting and drove the five and a half hours south to my parents’ farm to hold vigil with them during dad’s final moments. He took his last breath at approximately 6:20am the following morning. 

The following week, as I helped put the final touches on my father’s celebration of life, the songs of Myths and Hymns ran through my head. By the time the creative team for Myths and Hymns reconvened a week later, it had become clear to me that a Grecian urn could serve as a powerful focal point for the production. The urn is an artifact that serves as a container for the ashes of our lives: our deep, personal, and often collective losses. The Grecian urn does the same, but it also artfully celebrates the grandeur of our heroic journeys. What a lovely symbol of life itself: a vessel for our stories of fragility and tenacity, our loves and losses, our tears and joys – a container for Icarus, Pegasus, Leander, Hero and my dad.

I'm the little person with the microphone in my hand. (Photo credit: Jan Luedtke)

The first musical that my dad and I collaborated on was my fifth-grade production of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat by Andrew Lloyd Webber at Bulae International School in Lae, Papua New Guinea. I played Reuben. 

At that time, my Dad was the Dean of Students at Martin Luther Seminary and was teaching English and religion classes to future Lutheran pastors. But he also had a master’s degree in theatre from the University of Illinois (1974). And so, when he heard our fifth grade class was producing Joseph – in an open air gathering space covered by a roof with a small raised stage at one end (it’s hot in Lae) – he decided to create a lighting system for us from scratch. 

He constructed floodlights out of coffee cans, hung them from the rafters and connected them to dimmer switches purchased from the hardware store. He had warm and cool lights in the sky that created a little bit of magic for us as we sang our hearts out on the stage. He was at the makeshift light table for every performance, cheering us on and making sure we were all bathed in light. But more importantly, I felt bathed in his joy and his love. 

Photo credit: Jan Luedtke

Five years earlier, my parents had taken us to see the Duncan Academy of Dance’s Christmas production of The Nutcracker at a small auditorium at Lae Technical College. I was six and had never seen anything like it. I fell in love with the story, the dancers, the costumes, the movement, the lights – all of it. My little body wanted to dance and tell stories like that, too. I convinced my mom to take me back to the ballet the next night, and by the following Wednesday, I was enrolled in the company.

I wonder what my life might have looked like if my parents had said “no” - specifically, if my missionary father had been afraid of letting his son dance in the ballet. I count myself lucky that he saw my storytelling instincts as a gift and was willing to support them rather than suppress them. He saw me – the real me – and allowed me to thrive.

One last story. I directed Pentecost by David Edgar for my MFA thesis production at Illinois State University in February 2003. My parents had moved to China to serve as the inaugural faculty at Concordia International School Shanghai. Despite the distance, they flew across the globe to see the production in Normal, IL. 

In brief, Pentecost is a play about language, art, international border politics, refugees, and the power of stories to connect people across boundaries of difference. It features twelve different languages and numerous English dialects. It is a play about hope, even in the midst of devastation. 

There is a moment in act two when the power of stories brings a very diverse group of characters together. They dance and laugh in a celebration of life. My dad was sitting next to me in the theatre, laughing and celebrating with the characters, too. His enjoyment of the moment was palpable and deeply felt. However, the celebration is followed by devastation: a wall explodes, the military descends on the gathered group with M-16s, many are killed, and only a few survive. 

When the back wall exploded, my dad’s arm instinctively shot out across my chest to protect me from the danger – as if protecting me during a car crash. His hand stayed on my chest as he let out an audible cry. He only released me once he remembered he was watching a play, rather than mourning the loss of his new friends.

That moment remains the most impactful experience in my theatrical career. It was a powerful moment in the theatre, but an even stronger moment of connection between my father and me. In many ways, he was my protector and my champion. More importantly, it revealed our shared vision of humanity: that the power of stories can overcome boundaries of difference through shared empathy and human connection – that good stories matter, especially in dangerous times.

Two weeks ago, after the final dress rehearsal of Myths and Hymns, I gathered the cast and creative team around the urn onstage. I shared a few of these stories, then poured sand into the urn as a way to say “goodbye” to my father and to thank him for being part of my storytelling journey. It was a sacred moment of farewell—a way for me to honor nearly fifty years of storytelling collaboration with him, and a moment for the theatre to say goodbye to him.

Photo Credit: Eric Van Tassell

George Fox, the founder of Quakerism, encourages us to attend to “that of God” in everyone we encounter. When we listen deeply to each other – listening beyond words – we can often hear the whisper of God, the essence of life itself, in one another. I am grateful that my father attended to that of God in me. Maybe the greatest gift we can give each other is to attend to that of God in one another, encouraging each other to lean into our deepest selves.