“If you knew my story, you’d have a good story to tell…”
A great story often starts with a journey. An intrepid character sets out to find fortune, fame, or love, but almost always learns that their dreams are better left unrealized and they long to return home. “Home,” however, isn’t always a location. In fact, “home” often times, is a loved one or the character’s true self. Something that has been there all along, unrealized, and that could only be illuminated by the seemingly failed journey. Our play is about the journey home as well.
Alice says to Billy in Act 2, “Mr. Cane, it would be easier to get Lincoln off the face of Mt. Rushmore than to get home out of the heart of a Southern writer.” Billy is a writer finding his voice, and it isn’t until he starts writing about home that he finds his most profound success. Alice is trying to find her way back home as well to her estranged child given up for adoption some twenty years ago. Home, when she finds it, won’t be what she expected. Home never is.
We are, hopefully, in the last months of our own harrowing journey home. The pandemic has disrupted our lives and kept us separate from one another. We long for normalcy, for crowded gatherings, unmasked faces, and live theatre without restrictions. Perhaps, however, we should pause, briefly, and examine who we have become. Because of the sorrow, the change, the uncertainty, normalcy may not feel as “homey” as we expect. Especially, for those of us most unfortunate to have lost a loved one.
For them I hope this play is a reminder that there are others around them making a new place for them to call home, that it's ok to follow the brightest star even though it may veer from where they came. They call out and we must listen,“Love, let me lift this veil of darkness. Love, let me see my way back to you.”
At the moment I am writing this, I am encouraged to hear the forecast looks better, and for the first time, the end of this dark ordeal actually feels within reach. I hope that the experience of Bright Star gave something positive to everyone involved, and helped in some small way to carry us through this difficult season. I also hope you who are watching are doing so on a lovely spring day, and that the forecast continues to call for better days ahead. In the meantime, we are proud to bring you a musical that affirms life, hope, and healing, the perfect message for us while we wait.
Love let me lift this veil of darkness.
Love let me see my way back to you.
Brian Jones
Director of Red Raider Theatre
