CANTICLE

an excerpt from the program:

The presence of god--this deceivingly simple statement sits at the core of most theological and religious thought. Though the means and the syntax may be different over time, culture and faith, the desired is the same.

Implied in this search there are many questions but, for our purposes, the relevant questions are the ones that arise on the other side of faith. As a believer of any thought around the question of this presence, the relevant explorations become--how is the presence of god felt? How can it be fulfilled? Does it leave you? Does it only take one form? And of course, what path leads to it?

A year ago, members of my company and I were having a chat with a widely recognized Buddhist monk. As we took an afternoon walk, other folks passed us by. When they did so, they would bow in reverence to this monk. In the distance the monk saw a young couple holding each other in a very loving embrace. He looked at the couple and said "no one bows to them," he then paused sadly and said, "how easily we forget that there also sits the presence of god." This statement was astounding to me. Here was this holy man, triumphing love as sacred, as miraculous, as the highest goal--equating it with god.

Later that summer I began re-reading the plays and poetry of the 17th Century Mexican nun Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz. I was thrilled to find her writings so often devoted to equating love, desire and god. And in so doing, intertwining them, wrestling them and marrying them into one. This led me to further read the writings of other Catholic nuns throughout history, the sainted ones in particular. Ultimately landing on the writings of Mother Theresa of Calcutta. All of these sacred poets again and again revisited god, love and desire. But I discovered some further key notions in the conversation--those of choice, god's will and a fear of darkness. A constant struggle between these created varying degrees of conflict, despair and at times ecstasy. It is these same thoughts that sit at the piece's heart.

Set within a Catholic landscape the piece explores and exposes, not the church and its sanctity, but the living, breathing people who inhabit it. The piece investigates the hearts and confusions of the faithful and the irreverent, of the devout and the confused, of the weary and the forgotten. And so, inspired by writings of faith, fear and desire--set in a landscape of memory, time, and love--and propelled by the constant search for the ever elusive presence of god, we present a world of mothers, heroes, apparitions, music, books and above all faith--we present Canticle.

-Rubén Polendo, Spring 2008