The opening night audience, all a-flutter with anticipation, arrives at what is known as the summation scene of a mystery thriller, the famous detective having cleverly solved what was heretofore a thorny puzzle. He meticulously lays out the clues and their natural conclusion, the culprit is apprehended, and lights come up, and everyone goes home …
Throwing in the Towel
I don’t want to talk about God anymore. I don’t know how honest I can be here, but I resonate so much with Peter Rollins words in How (Not) To Speak of God. In the introduction, he quotes Ludwig Wittgenstein: “What we cannot speak of we must pass over in silence.” He juxtaposes this notion …
Taproot Theatre’s “Brownie Points”
Theatre as conversation starter: it's a metaphor we often pull out when we're trying to justify theatre's existence. "To teach and to please" was the catchphrase back in the 18th century, and Taproot Theatre's current production--Janece Shaffer's Brownie Points--manifests that ideal explicitly. One of the characters even suggests early in the play that there …
The Sacred Mystery of Each
"Every person is a sacred mystery." A few years back, Ron Austin caught my attention with this little statement in a brief talk at Act One: Screenwriting for Hollywood. He was reminding us that each person has an essential beauty and mystery, and that to see each person we meet as sacrament is to heighten the …
The Near-Taproot Fire
So I'm sitting at the coffee shop at 6:10, when a prayer request from one of the women at church comes across my desktop. Something about a 3-alarm fire near 85th and Greenwood, and that my good friend Scott Nolte is being interviewed. It takes a minute to register. I go to KING 5 News' …
