"The Piano Lesson" & "The Boys Next Door"

What theater taught me about the Incarnation

At the end of my junior year of high school, my American Literature teacher asked our class to read the 1990 Pulitzer Prize winning play The Piano Lesson by August Wilson. Then he took us on a field trip to our professional regional theater company to see it performed live. 

To be honest, I don’t remember much about the play itself.¹ What I do remember, very clearly, is sitting in the second row of that production, completely enthralled as I watched characters from a book that I read come to life before my eyes. 

We were close enough to see sweat on the actors’ brows, to feel a slight breeze as they moved across the stage, to see their spit leave their lips in the lights. I saw and felt and experienced these characters’ humanity and struggle in a way that was real, raw, and very surprising. It was a much more powerful experience than reading a novel and then watching its film adaptation, and it completely blew me away. 

Photo by Alex Avalos on Unsplash

The power of that experience motivated me to volunteer to be an Assistant Stage Manager for a production of The Boys Next Door by Tom Griffin during my first semester of college. Like The Piano Lesson, this play is very human, and real, and raw: it is about four men with mental disabilities living in a group home. 

Working behind the scenes was also powerful, but in a very different way. Week after week I sat in awe of the hours of work that the director and actors poured into character development to ensure that the show was an authentic and heartfelt representation of life with disabilities. As a cast and crew, we even participated in a powerful service project with Best Buddies as part of our preparation in order to get a better sense of the spectrum of mental disabilities, the way that different people with disabilities navigate the world, and ultimately the equal and shared dignity of us all. 

Over the course of the semester that we worked on the show, it was almost unbelievable to watch regular college kids transform themselves into characters with unique and varied quirks and idiosyncrasies each day. And then to watch them shed it all as soon as they stepped off the stage. 

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Throughout Advent, I’ve been hoping this essay would be a celebration of theater as the most “incarnational” art form. The embodiment I have witnessed in the audience and on set has given me a deeper appreciation of what it means to be human and for God to take on flesh. 

But as we get closer and closer to Christmas, I’m realizing that the theater is just a mirror through which we can view this mystery indistinctly.² That’s because the Incarnation is so much more than a performance – it is the truth. 

After a show, the actors go backstage and wipe off their makeup. They change out of their costumes into clothes they picked for themselves, lace up shoes with scuff marks, and sling stained backpacks and bulging purses over their shoulders. They go back to their regular lives. 

In Bethlehem, once Jesus was born, there was no going back to His regular life. This was His regular life now – in a regular (but holy) family, in a little town full of regular sinners, in a smelly cave full of regular animals. He wasn’t pretending or performing. He was fully, truly, really there. 

There are so many beautiful traditions we have during this time of year that help us commemorate this reality. Think of a heartwarming Catholic school Christmas pageant or the Mexican tradition of Las Posadas. Acting out the story of the Incarnation helps us to experience it deep in our bones, and that is valuable. The truth is, however, that in these moments, we are just acting. 

But when we gather at Mass in the coming days to celebrate this miraculous mystery, the priest won’t be acting. An actor wouldn’t put on a full show by herself for an empty house, but a priest will stand in persona Christi and celebrate the Mass even when no one else is in the room. That’s because the Mass is not a performance (although sometimes it might feel that way!). It’s not a representation of what happened on Calvary but a re-presentation – the priest standing in Jesus’ place on behalf of us all. And us – not a passive audience in search of entertainment or catharsis – but a community actively participating in this re-presentation, offering all that we’ve been given back to the One who gave it all. 

If the theater is like the front of an embroidery – where you can’t see the strings behind the scenes making the magic happen on stage – maybe the Mass is like the back of the embroidery. You see a regular, often tired and broken, man saying prayers that might seem long and boring or even meaningless. But what is really happening is a beautiful gift of eternal significance given in the context of a family that participates with their own tired, broken, real human selves. 

As we gather in hushed rows and feel our hearts swell at the familiar chords of our favorite Christmas hymns in the coming days, may the glorious mystery of the Incarnation blow you away. It is beautiful, and it is good, and it is true in a way that we can hardly fathom.  

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If you liked this essay, would you forward it to a friend? Thanks for your kindness!

What I’ve been reading and writing lately:

• I wrote this reflection on a beloved Christmas tradition — and my even more beloved late grandfather — for the Jesuits. I’m looking forward to baking and eating Christmas cookies with my mom and kids tomorrow in his honor.

• I binged Claire Swinarski’s latest middle grade novel What Happened to Rachel Riley in one weekend. Written in an epistolary format, it brough me right back to some of my favorite books from middle school (PS Longer Letter Later anyone?). It was a nuanced and powerful look at what it’s like to be an eighth grader these days. Even though it’s technically written for kids, I highly recommend it to any adult who loves an eighth grader (or a future eighth grader!).

Coming up…

Next time, I’ll be writing about one of my favorite children’s book authors/illustrators from the 90’s. It would be so fun to hear who you loved reading as a kid — feel free to reply and let me know!

And last but certainly not least…

It has been one year since I launched Wonder & Awe. I am truly, deeply grateful for the way you have entrusted me with precious space in your inbox. May you and yours enjoy all the peace and joy that this holy season can bring!

1. A quick Google search has reminded me that it is about a small African American family in 1930s Pittsburgh struggling to decide what to do with their heirloom piano that is carved with the faces of their enslaved ancestors. A brother and sister grapple with the question: should they sell it and use the money to pursue the American Dream or hold onto it to preserve their family’s memories and history?

2. See 1 Corinthians 13:12.