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The following articles appeared in Actors
Theatre's subscriber newsletter prior to the 1999 Humana Festival
GOD'S MAN IN TEXAS
"With my writing, what intrigues me is being able to unlock
a universe," explains playwright David Rambo, "to go into
a world and explore its rituals and its language, its politics and
its climate." In God’s Man in Texas, Rambo renders
a complex portrait of a "universe" that has emerged as
a growing force in the American cultural landscape in recent years:
the megachurch. This riveting drama examines the personal, spiritual
and institutional struggles that ensue when Jerry Mears, a brilliant
young preacher and scholar, "auditions" to be the successor
of Dr. Philip Gottschall, the much-revered, aging pastor of Houston’s
Rock Baptist Church.
Wits and personalities begin to clash, however, when Dr. Gottschall
proves no less formidable than the church he has built—a church
whose 30,000 members, gigantic facilities, and enormous clout make
it the "Super Bowl" of the Baptist universe. Reluctant
to relinquish the reins of his dynasty, Gottschall puts Mears’
abilities, political savvy, and even his faith to the test. And
as he’s forced to examine his own motivations for wanting to
lead the Rock, Mears must confront some painful realities about
his past. As Rambo puts it, "Jerry’s a classic case of
‘be careful what you wish for, because you might get it.’
He’s almost like a Biblical prophet: he’s climbing a mountain,
getting closer to hearing God, following his call—and when
he gets to the top, he finds that the mountain is not the message;
the mountain is not the journey. Life is the journey, and he’s
not there yet."
Rounding out the "trinity" of voices in the play is Hugo
Taney, an audio technician who coaches Jerry through the protocols
of preaching at the Rock ("They like preaching that starts
out folksy.") Having been saved from his vices by the church,
Hugo clings to the Rock for dear life, serving as a trusted source
of overheard information for both Mears and Gottschall.
The careful orchestration of this trio is particularly important
to Rambo: "The three men become locked together, in a way.
Each of them has something the other wants. And maybe that thing
the other wants is something that they’re afraid of at the
same time." Joined by the need to find the father-son relationships
that each has lost, divided by an ideological battle for the power
to do good, they form the center of the turbulent social world that
swirls around them.
It’s a world to which Rambo has dedicated a great deal of research
and thought, and the play raises probing questions about the culture
and politics of religion in the age of the mass-marketed megachurch.
Taking actual events as his inspiration, Rambo draws loosely on
the controversies that arose several years ago when the renowned
young successor to the famed pastor of First Baptist Dallas walked
away from his new post following a long tug-of-war for church leadership.
God’s Man in Texas also explores recent developments in the
scale and structure of organized religion, and the play delves into
its investigation of the psychology of worship with great insight.
Citing a kind of "millennial anxiety" as a reason for
the megachurch phenomenon, Rambo recognizes that we worship together
in order to "feel belief" through communal experience.
But he also raises concerns about the implications of worshipping
by the thousands: "Something is felt. Whether it’s genuine
or artificial, I’m not to say. But I think that’s the
potentially dangerous thing about large churches—that while
they’re feeling something, craving something, while the congregation
is on this journey, this wanting to be part of something greater,
it is so easy to be led." It is this potential to lead the
many that Jerry Mears must weigh against a more intimate model of
faith.
"I really wanted to give the believers in this play a great
deal of respect," says Rambo. "Sometimes in our literature
that’s not done, because we think they’re more interesting
if they’re somehow false." So when Jerry Mears explores
the all-too-evident parallels between salesmanship and preaching,
or when the colorfully-drawn realm of Rock Baptist Houston provokes
laughter, it’s because of the care which the playwright has
taken to portray a distinct culture. "I firmly believe that
nothing is funnier than real life," Rambo wisely explains.
"Especially when great solemnity is called for." And in
God’s Man in Texas, a mix of gravity and humor, fierceness
and foible, and thunder and humility creates deeply conflicted characters
in an enthrallingly (and quite literally) real universe.
— Amy Wegener
DAVID RAMBO
David Rambo, the son and grandson of public school librarians, came
to playwriting late in life—originally a stage and television
actor, he decided to try playwriting after a moment of revelation.
While shooting a commercial for fruit bars, it occurred to him, on
Take-64, that this was "not the highest and best use of me."
Rambo had been away from live theatre for some time and he missed
it. He missed literature. He "missed everything television was
not." Rambo began a day job as a real estate agent in order to
afford to work in live theatre again, an experience he would later
use in his play There’s No Place Like House.
At the age of eighteen, Rambo left his home in Spring City, Pennsylvania,
and headed for New York to become an actor—armed only with his
"tap shoes and a lot of nerve." He took class after class
and found himself working with "remarkable" teachers, including
Joanna Merlin, who studied with Michael Chekhov. While Rambo studied
acting, his "survival jobs" included being a pianist for
cabaret acts, and singing and playing in "different joints around
the city." He wrote cabaret songs, some of which were later picked
up by his friend Howard Crabtree and incorporated into Crabtree’s
show, Whoop-Dee-Doo, which won Best Review of the Year, the
Drama Desk Award, the Outer Critics Circle Award, had a cast album
made, and toured all over the world.
After some time, Rambo left New York to shoot a pilot in Los Angeles
and stayed to make his way in commercials and television. It was not
until his mid-thirties, and the fruit bars commercial, that Rambo
finally sat down to become a playwright. "I remember sitting
down at the typewriter I had set up in the attic of our old 1924 Tudor
house, located in a very old section of Hollywood. I put a piece of
paper in, and I remember typing ‘Act I, Scene I.’ After
that, I can’t remember a thing, except for finishing it. It was
that kind of experience. It was thrilling for me, and I thought, ‘Why
didn’t I find this sooner?’"
Rambo’s other plays include There’s No Place Like House,
Speaky-Spikey-Spokey, and an early play, Lodge Night. "I
like plays that draw you in in oblique ways—plays which are a
tapestry of events, people, motivations, incidents, and settings,"
says Rambo. "I love the kind of complexity that sneaks up on
you, and that is what I try to achieve in my work."
Rambo is particularly proud of There’s No Place Like House,
and the success of its recent run in Los Angeles. The play was booked
for six weeks at the Zephyr Theatre where it sold out. The producers
moved the play to a larger venue, where it ran for six more weeks.
Speaky-Spikey-Spokey recently was named one of the ten best
new plays in the 1998 Bay Area Playwrights Festival. The play has
had successful readings and workshops at festivals around the country,
especially the Ashland New Plays Festival in Oregon.
This year, Rambo return to the Ashland New Plays Festival—he
has been invited to host the event. What’s the best part about
Ashland for Rambo? "It’s a little bit of teaching, and an
awful lot of conversation about theatre that I love." Rambo cites
Ashland’s festival as being especially important to his work
and life as a playwright. "It’s an extraordinary environment.
I started God’s Man in Texas at the 1997 festival and
the atmosphere there is what made it possible for me to write this
play."
—Ilana M. Brownstein |
