Why I Love Doing Live Theater, Part 17
So last night I opened a short run of my comic monologue Ben Franklin: Unplugged -- a show that looks at Franklin's famous kite experiment from several possible angles -- at the Philadelphia Theatre Company (through Jan. 21 -- come see it if you're in Philly!). And I was closing in on the end of the first act, when an enormous crack of lightning literally shook the building. The audience and I took a moment to take stock of ourselves, and I briefly struck a kite-flying pose before returning to the scene I'd been in (depicting an intense dining-room conversation). Afterwards, my director and collaborator, David Dower, pointed out that if the performance had begun at the usual theater showtime of 8 p.m. -- rather than at 7:30, when they're starting here -- the lightning would have struck at the exact moment when I was actually dramatizing the kite experiment.
I leave it to theatrical theologians to determine whether this confirms that God prefers holding to the 8 p.m. showtime. ...
4 comments January 12th, 2006
