EXTRA MATERIAL
Chapter Eight - 1924-1925
The Catholic Art League, Tertianship,
and a Eucharistic Pageant for a Cast of 1250
Six One-Act Plays
The six plays are The Road to Connaught, Rainbow Gold, The Sight of the Blind, Mistress Castlemaine’s Christmas Dinner, The Flame Leaps Up, and Sir Folly. Three plays are about heroic Catholic faith in the face of persecution. Two are fairy tales about virtue and one is about the religious faith of a blind nun.
The Preface of Six One-Act Plays states:
All our plays are produced and tested before publication. We guarantee our series to be:
1. Truly Dramatic
2. Thoroughly Catholic
3. Highly Interesting
4. Simple to Produce
5. Reasonable Cost
These plays were widely produced. Sight of the Blind and Rainbow Gold were produced at Loretto College in St. Louis. Dugald Stewart Walker, the well-known illustrator, did the sets and costumes.1
Synopsis of The Road to Connaught
Set in the winter of 1659 at a Protestant plantation in Leinster in Ireland, Nell is cooking at the hearth. She hears a knock and opens the door to her brother Mark, whom she has not seen in years. She tells Mark that she survived the siege of Drogheda (1641-1642) in which British troops under Cromwell massacred the Catholic inhabitants. She survived because a Protestant officer, John, protected her and hid her. In gratitude she married him.
Mark is a Catholic priest who has been looking for his sister to take her to Catholic Connaught where her parents had fled. Their mother has since died. Nell states that she is torn between the love she feels for her husband John and the love she feels for her Catholic faith. John arrives. He had been hunting the Catholic priest known to be in the territory.
In the end Nell leaves with her brother. John, because he loves Nell, decides to not turn in Nell or her brother as they leave.2
Synopsis of The Sight of the Blind
Based on an Irish legend, this moving little story is about Dara, a blind nun. She has taken simple vows and the next day she will be consecrated as a nun. Sister Dara and Mother Brigid talk in the garden. Dara describes the visions she has of angels and seraphs before Christ:
I saw a long road, paved with gold, flecked with star dust, that ran toward the Gates of Heaven. Then the gates were thrown wide, and down the long road He glided, His hands outstretched to me, His eyes smiling into the depths of my soul.3Despite being blind Dara describes the colors of the tapestry being sown by Sister Columba. Then Mother Brigid kisses Dara’s eyes so she may see. Dara is overwhelmed by the beauty around her.
A Bard enters who sings of the beauty of the world. The Bard is the king in disguise exploring the world and looking for his bride. Mother Brigid has allowed the Bard to offer Dara all the beauty of world.
However Dara realizes that the beauty of the world has blinded her. She can no longer see her visions:
Before my eyes, Mother, has risen a veil, a wonderful, beautiful veil, woven of sunlight and rose red and the glint of eyes that look their praise. Beyond that veil lies a something that until today I saw. Now I see only the veil. Beyond the veil lies Christ; but Him I no longer see.4Dara asks for her blindness back so she can see Christ. Mother Brigid kisses her eyes again and her blindness returns.
Pageant of Peace
Meanwhile in Chicago in late fall Claude Pernin produced Pageant of Peace. This play is filled with allegorical imagery. As Pernin would explain:
In these latter days the PAGEANT and the MASQUE have revived the art of the forms antecedent to the DRAMA. Father Daniel A. Lord, S.J., the author of the PAGEANT OF YOUTH and the PAGEANT OF PEACE is the pioneer in a new movement. Father Lord has endeavored to join the best elements of the MIRACLE, the MORALITY and the DRAMA and to bring back to the stage the character it occupied from the twelfth to the sixteenth century, a definite ally of the Church in the teaching of religion and morality.5
The Story of the Little Flower
The English Benedictines in a review ripped into the pamphlet in what he called “the most devastating criticism ever passed on me.”6 Lord would later admit:
I had written about the Little Flower under the impulse of a simply tempestuous enthusiasm. I had expressed my emotion with fury and unrestraint. Apparently the public liked the result. The Benedictine critics were probably more correct. Some day I hope I can ask the Little Flower what she thought of our product.7
Pageant of the Eucharist
Synopsis
The story revolves around a KNIGHT who is kept prisoner in a Tabernacle. Key characters include FAITH, LOVE, CHURCH, and DOUBT: a grotesque figure in a cave with his clan of companions: PRIDE, VANITY, FRIVOLITY, LUST, and BACCHANALIAN DANCERS. The show has seven scenes:
The Coming of the Visored Knight: The Mystic Mass
The Revolt of Doubt
The Round Table
The Bride of the King
The Quest of Faith and the Quest of Doubt
The Sacrilege
The Gate of Heaven
The final scene shows a landscape of destruction. DOUBT is spinning his web. His companions sit like gargoyles. FAITH enters with Knights. FAITH cuts the web with his sword. Then a procession enters and CHURCH is freed from her bonds.
On the highest level of the set, the Gates of Heaven open. CHURCH opens the Tabernacle and the KNIGHT comes out. He goes up to heaven as the multitude follows until they are on cliffs at the back of the stage. Only then can they see the face of the KNIGHT as he raises his visor.
NOTES
- 1 Barmann, 33.
- 2 Lord, Six One-Act Plays, “The Road to Connaught.”
- 3 Lord, Six One-Act Plays, “The Sight of the Blind,” 77.
- 4 Ibid., 89.
- 5 Claude J. Pernin “A Word About Pageants and Masques,” from the Pageant of Peace show program, 1924. Quote trimmed.
- 6 Played by Ear, 321.
- 7 Ibid., 322.
Copyright 2021 Stephen Werner