JESUS MY BOY Artistic Director's Notes

this is the irrational season,
when love bloomed, bright and wild.
had mary been filled with reason
there'd have been no room for the child.

When we talk about experimental theatre, when we think of theatre that takes risks, it's not something as sweet and unassuming as JESUS MY BOY that we have in mind. But the fact is, this production feels to me like the riskiest in our season.

We start with a downright funny monologue, written by a comedy writer, about a dad who mostly doesn't understand his son. A son who happens to be The Son. Of God, no less.

Then we throw in the evocative, sometimes haunting, sometimes delicate music of Sheree Plett and Jeremy Eisenhauer.

Oil. Water.

Earthy. Transcendent.

Sublime. Ridiculous.

Well, we'll see.

It's risky, like any marriage is risky. It's uncertain, an experiment – which, more or less by definition, may or may not work. (If you're absolutely certain how it's going to turn out, or even that it's going to turn out at all, it's hardly an experiment, is it?)

But we thought we'd try. Frankly, this seems like the right time of year for such improbabilities, this midwinter time Madeleine L'Engle called "The irrational season." The perfect time for this awkward coming together of unlike things, a union that has everything to do with the risk of marriage, the death-defying miracle of birth, and especially the divine improbability of the infinite and mighty God becoming human, finite, vulnerable.

Can't wait to see how it turns out.

Ron Reed,
Matchmaker