Mississippi Goddamn’s Closing Bittersweet

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Closing shows, especially glass ceiling-shattering ones, are always bittersweet. And, this run of Jonathan Mississippi Goddamn, albeit brief, is certainly no exception.
Today’s matinee is SOLD OUT…not so shabby chic for a show met with a usual degree of unnecessary southern grief. But, bravo Biloxi Little Theatre! This is what “a commitment to equity in programming and practice” could look like if more organizations were as brave.
Let this success lend credence to the fact that we have our own audiences comprising diehard supporters who wouldn’t dare ask us to apologize. For what?

Biloxi Little Theatre Debuts Jonathan Norton’s, “Mississippi Goddamn:” Sentiments of an Assistant Director

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Reading for sheer pleasure is not the same as reading out of obligation. My first few encounters with playwright Jonathan Norton’s, Mississippi Goddamn, began as the latter — reading out of obligation to make good on my commitment to serve as assistant director of Biloxi Little Theatre’s show which by the way opens today, January 26, my 50th.

Mississippi Goddamn has all les accoutrements of a well-made play colored both with Norton’s intellectual play writing prowess and his heightened awareness of the importance of the historical context a bit over a decade before we were born and certainly not old enough to fully understand the racial and racially-laced political landscape of our nation in c1963.

LaWanda Jones is wandaful (typo intentional) in her directorial debut role with the maternal-matriarchal wisdom of veteran thespian, Summer Selby-Drew, nurturing and nudging both of us along the way.

Norton, the playwright, required double casting which is why I cannot imagine there would have been a more agile collective of characters on the Mississippi Gulf Coast capable of pulling off the particulars of this production in a manner precisely nuanced.

Norton’s Mississippi Goddamn has many memorable moments throughout, but there is this one passage that makes me feel ever so lucky; I never have to celebrate life alone:

“ROBBIE: (Singing, quietly)
Happy Birthday to me.
Happy Birthday…
(Then she picks up the knife. She cuts a slice of cake)
Happy Birthday. Happy Birthday.
(Then she cuts another slice. She begins to jab the knife into the cake. Slow and deliberate at first and then picks up speed)”

Thomas Merton, Sue Monk Kidd and “New Seeds of Contemplation”

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I first learned about Thomas Merton’s Seeds of Contemplation while watching writer, Sue Monk Kidd, who in an interview began speaking quite passionately apropos how personally impactful Merton’s writing was. While neither my initial nor subsequent readings of this book would invoke in me the life-shifting change Kidd’s clearly had ignited within her, still one rather concise, yet profound statement really helped me to make better sense of the very personal-private, internal tussle I contend with as a burgeoning writer being beckoned to higher consciousness. Merton writes, “Everyone is plagued by an illusory person – a false self.”