The 12 Days of BirthMas: Day 8, Miss Me?

I wanted to spend some time leading up to the 2009 iteration of The Birth reflecting. Reflecting on staging a production, reflecting on staging this production, reflecting on the season, reflecting on literature, reflecting on acting.

This is a crazy time of year for me and I thought this would be a helpful way to pull back the curtain a bit and let you see what goes into this sort of process.

Thus I present to you, the 12 Days of BirthMas! (Technically the first performance is the 13th, but you get the idea).

Day Three: Miss Me?

So we’re just going to ignore the fact that days 4-7 were skipped.  Were I able to hop in a time machine and revisit each of the last 4 days and carve out some time to write a post, I would.  As it stands, we are where we are.  And where we are is 5 days away from the opening of The Birth 2009!

Today’s post is actual a reproduction of an article I wrote for Ransom, a new web effort started by my friend Jeremy Hunt for BGEA.

Enjoy!

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“All your life you wait for your own true love.” – The Magnificent Defeat, Frederick Buechner

Four years ago I began a journey of discovery. I didn’t really intend to; I really just wanted to make some theater.  But the plans we have for ourselves and the plans that often emerge can sometimes be quite disparate.

A friend had recommended Pulitzer-nominated author Frederick Buechner to me and with little more intention than to have something to read on a family beach trip, I picked up his book The Magnificent Defeat. It’s a simple book, really: a collection of Buechner’s sermons from over the years and collected and published in 1965. He’s had many books published in the ensuing 40 years but I picked up this one.

You see, about midway through the novel is a sermon titled “The Birth.”  It’s a series of three monologues depicting different characters from the Christmas narrative; namely the Innkeeper, a Wise Man and a Shepherd.

I’m an actor and it’s often difficult to find work you really believe in and my initial reading of this chapter in this book on this beach struck me so that I knew I had to perform these pieces for an audience.

Four years later and with a fourth year of production on the original theatrical production The Birth beginning this month, I find that portraying these three characters on a stage night after night has afforded me a perspective I might not have otherwise had. The reason I was so moved by Buechner’s treatment of these characters is, simply put, their flaws, their humanity, their 3-dimensionality.

In particular I find the character of the Innkeeper to be of startling resonance. In his speech he recounts “the evening they arrived” with no real hint of charity or celebration. His words ring with a defeat, a brokenness, an irrevocable loss at his culpability in driving this expectant couple from his establishment.

Where Buechner’s writing sings is not in how he takes these characters and, relying on tradition, turns them into ciphers for his own enjoyment of the Christmas season – but in how he evokes what it might have been like that night, in that inn, with nothing but that innkeeper and those hopeful parents. In the Innkeeper’s words are the regret and despair of revelation. He speaks of the ‘forest of a million trees’ that is his life and work; always a thing to be done, a task to be accomplished, a box to check off. “Do you know what it is like to run a business,” he asks, “to run an inn, to run anything in this world for that matter? Even your own life?”

His words are accusing, but they are our words. Our desire to meet all the perceived needs of ourselves and those around us leaves us often with the inability to see the miracle right in front of us; a miracle so mundane and unassuming that we drive it from our sight without so much as a second thought.

The Innkeeper ends his cautionary tale with words that break the hardest of hearts and yet, they could be our own.

“All your life you wait for your own true love – we all of us do – our destiny, our joy, our heart’s desire.  So how am I to say it, gentlemen?  When he came I missed him.”

For four years I’ve had those words ringing in my ears: “When he came I missed him.” May we not end up like the Innkeeper, but may we also never lose sympathy for him – or his words may end up our own.

By Nathan Rouse

Nathan is a husband, father, pet-owner and actor living in Charlotte, NC. The Birth can be seen December 13, 14, 20 and 21 at 6:30 and 8:30 pm in Charlotte at Actor’s Theater of Charlotte. More information and tickets can be purchased at www.thebirth.net.

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