on easter sunday afternoon myself and kevin ventured off manhattan (leaving an easter parade on fifth avenue where the more extroverted members of the population of new york were prancing around in bonnets and ridiculous hats and generally having a lot of fun) and headed to the brooklyn tabernacle just in time for the 4pm service which had been billed as ‘The Story of Love’. the well-known brooklyn tabernacle choir were off being well-known somewhere else. i was sad to miss the opportunity to hear a gospel choir (east belfast isn’t exactly famed for them), but intrigued as to what this ‘easter cantata for all the family’ was all about. the service began as I expected; three black singers on stage (two female, one male) and a black man leading the congregation in worship by singing choruses which, despite being up-tempo and accompanied by a lot of swaying, were not so dissimilar from Taize chants in their simplicity and repetitious expression. it is the kind of music i can rest into…get a little lost in…songs which take me just a little bit beyond the enunciations, to a place which feels disconcertingly foreign and encouragingly familiar. (not unlike, also, the soundtrack accompanying this blog entry: 'what sarah said' by death cab for cutie.) a black pastor came on stage, welcomed everyone, made far too many announcements with the aid of a power-point presentation, took up an offering after making a speech about not charging any money for coming to church but reminding us that presentations like the one we were about to witness don’t come for free. all the usual stuff. ok. that sounds cynical. the truth is, rituals like these are, or have been, commonplace to me. i learned them. i learned how it works. i learned about bread and wine. but I also learned the less mysterious rituals of crowd control and elongated introductions.
anyway, ‘The Story of Love’ turned out to be a theatrical feat worthy of broadway. the costumes; the lighting; the singing; the appearance of the actors on the balconies performing within close range of the audience; the onstage freeze frames reminiscent of renaissance paintings. this sunday afternoon spectacle was introduced by a white narrator, who told us about god and how he (sic) created mankind (sic). while he spoke lights shone and a glitter ball glittered (i wooed – it was really very pretty) and adam appeared. (eve was neither seen nor heard.) then jesus came along in the form of a skinny white boy. mary and joseph were also white. the crowd, who loved jesus and then turned against him, were black. so, in a church where the vast majority of the congregation is black, and in the theatrical production attempting to tell ‘the easter story’ the three characters named in the bible were played by white people, and the nameless members of the crowd were black. maybe i shouldn’t have been surprised by this. but i just couldn’t help but find the whole thing unsettling. i had spotted four other white people amongst the congregation on our balcony, which was a couple of hundred people strong. i wondered what would be so terrible about having a black member of the congregation play jesus. what offence would it cause? what comfort would it provide? what questions would it raise? how would make me feel?
the other aspect of ‘The Story of Love’ which i found disturbing was the violence portrayed on stage, becoming so graphic that I began to wonder whether this ‘love story’ was suitable for children after all. but that, i suspect, is a story for another day…
