Introduction to "The Lover at the Wall"

The following excerpt is taken from the Introduction to "The Lover at the Wall: 3 Plays on Baha'i Subjects" by Mark Perry and published by Drama Circle.  "The Lover at the Wall" consists of three dramatic works inspired by the history and teachings of the Bahá'í Faith, but intended for a wider audience: "A New Dress for Mona," "Band of Gold," and "On the Rooftop with Bill Sears."

     "From the fall of 1982 to mid-June 1983, Mona Mahmudnizhad—the teenaged protagonist of “A New Dress for Mona” and scores of other innocents like her languished behind prison walls in Iran. They hoped and prayed for release, not knowing when it would come or what demands would come with it. Throughout that time, Mona and those others clung to one thing, and this is why their story is told and retold. They clung to love—a seemingly superhuman love, and they held on to the very last. At the time, I hadn’t heard of Mona, though I had learned, even living on the other side of the globe, something of the persecution of her community. Still, it didn’t rank so high on my list of personal concerns. During that same period, I was in a prison of my own. It was called the seventh grade.

     "Social isolation. Rigid protocols and hierarchies. Assaults on individuality. Group showers. If seventh grade wasn’t prison, it was good training for it. I was in a new, larger school, and friends were few. I tried sports with unimpressive, even embarrassing, results. I did fine academically, I liked most of my teachers and the principal, but seventh grade wasn’t about academics or teachers or administration. It was about other seventh graders, and especially those special few—the cool crowd—who acted as the guards at the gates, deciding who was in and who was out, making and breaking the rules as they would, because they could, because they were cool, and cool is the supreme virtue in a landscape dominated by anxiety. There they were, eating their hot lunch of pizza and chocolate milk, entirely neglecting the vegetable offering, living large, lording it over the bustling cafetorium, while I skulked about, looking for a corner seat to unwrap the bag lunch lovingly made by my mother and consisting of peanut butter and honey on whole wheat. If only I could disappear, but no. My family was struggling financially, and I had to wear those shiny discount knockoffs and not the Timberland boots everyone else was wearing. What ecstatic heights of ridicule those kids on the bus attained as a result! Then my stepfather started to substitute teach at my school to make the extra $27 a day. To get to the school though, he would ride the bus with me. This was not a city bus, mind you, but a yellow school bus. He was gracious enough to sit in the front seat while I hung my head, scuffed my boots and did the dead man’s walk to the back.

     Day after day, I would come home and plop down in front of my Atari 2600 or else set out on lonely walks through the woods and down the railroad tracks with my dog, Lady Di. I did not have what it took—the character training, the support network, whatever—to adequately withstand this daily barrage. My religious upbringing to this point was an untended garden. Or rather it was an untended plot in a large, fallow field. I was a New Englander, and we were a people with ancient roots in religious values, but nowadays we were Christian largely by circumstance, and “do unto others” was less influential than the default philosophy of “do whatever the h#!! thou willest.” I had a spiritual impulse, but some of the religious messages that were coming through were hindering me. They seemed to be either fear-mongering (“The devil is going to get you!”), or judgment-laden (“Everyone else is going to hell”) or morally-unsettling (“Do whatever you want; you just have to ask for forgiveness after”). These extremes did not mix well with the intuitive sense I had, even as a pre-adolescent, of the divine purpose. The secular world, on the other hand, seemed to offer just surface sincerity or cynical alienation. Most people seemed to cope with this world through materialistic pursuits, obsessive competitiveness, and all manner of intoxicants. That seemed to be the path that was laid out before me too if I didn’t find a creative outlet or a cause to work for greater than the pursuit of my own pleasure. From the deepest heart of me, the cry must have gone up: God, get me out of this mess!

     "Then, an epiphany. It was during a school performance of “My Fair Lady.” I was not on stage, but in the audience. While the play that night may have proved a slight test of endurance for supportive parents, it catapulted me into another realm. What was this event that could so transform this space? To me, it seemed as if the roof had been blown out, and the rules that governed our world were suspended. We were freed, transported to some liminal space between this junior high cafetorium and Edwardian London’s Covent Garden. Here an eighth grade geek could channel a passionate, witty Englishman. Kids who, in the hallway that very afternoon, would sooner drink toilet cleaner than take a false step were now singing, dancing, wearing makeup, and braving cockney accents, risking public exposure on a whole new scale. Here there was support though, even for the missteps. False notes still won applause. Here was a process that affirmed both individual expression and creative collaboration. Here our minds and feelings as audience merged and swayed this way and that not according to some immediate private concerns but following some urgent shared priority—fictional, yes! And on the surface, it had nothing to do with our lives, but it spoke to something deeper, to a common condition of being human across space and time. I enjoyed the play that night, but it was the phenomenon of theatre that bowled me over. The next year I would try out for the school play and—lo!—would be cast in a lead role. I had found a creative outlet, or it had found me, but either way life would never be confined again.

     "Another life-changer was in the works as well: less immediate, but more revolutionary. My stepfather—whom I liked—had moved into our home that summer, and along with various exotic items from his world travels came all these books about this religion with a funny, foreign name. My suspicions were on high alert for anything cult-like, or anything non-Christian for that matter. Further investigation though would gradually reveal not only that this religion posed no threat, but that it gave answers that resolved in simple terms the several paradoxes that had confounded my awakening religious sensibility. I found it offered a clear, embracing vision of our world and our existence, and it allowed a place for me in the divine plan. It affirmed the oneness of God and spoke of the world’s religions not as competing armies on an apocalyptic battlefield, but as successive chapters in one ongoing, divinely-guided educational process carrying humanity ever forward. Its central principle was unity among the world’s peoples, and it sought the elimination of prejudices and other barriers to that unity. It was at once idealistic and pragmatic, easy to understand while retaining a mystical orientation. The problem I found, however, was its name. The unfamiliar name “Bahá’í” along with the name of its Founder, Bahá’u’lláh, seemed to keep people from looking at what this Faith had to offer. These names stood like a hefty wall blocking the way of a generation that could only gain by considering the beautiful, synthesizing teachings inside.

     It came to me only gradually what now seems obvious, that I should combine these two gifts I’d received. The Bahá’í writings spoke highly of the station of drama. They raised engagement in the arts to the level of worship and claimed art to be “a gift of the Holy Spirit.” The task though was a bit daunting. There was no established network to plug into, no touring circuit to join. The Bahá’í Faith is still young to have birthed a substantial artistic culture and still too far out of the mainstream consciousness to have gained a voice in the general theatre community. I did encounter others along the way who shared the vision of Bahá’í-inspired drama, and their work and their encouragement emboldened me. Over time, the calling became clear. I would strive to use this profound expressive outlet of drama to explore Bahá’í stories and themes and communicate these universal teachings to a general audience. People wouldn’t need to subscribe to a new religion to benefit from spending an hour or two meeting characters who strive for spiritual transcendence and social transformation, or absorbing themes of racial harmony, religious tolerance and multi-cultural exchange. An audience would happily suspend its disbelief for a story that dug deep into the human soul and emerged with hope in hand. So what of one proclaiming that, despite the present darkness, a glorious future awaits humanity as we mature and move out of this traumatic period of our collective adolescence? Adolescence, after all, may feel like it’s going to last forever when you’re in the midst of it, but reason and experience say otherwise.

The Lover at the Wall

     "Here then are three plays inspired by the history and teachings of the Bahá’í Faith, but intended for a wider audience. They have been long in coming, two of them having taken over a decade to find their current form. They are also, each one of them, deeply personal. I have laughed and cried my way through them, wrangled my brain, that you might do the same…"

This is the end of this sample of the Introduction from “The Lover at the Wall.” To purchase the volume, please visit www.lulu.com/spotlight/dramacircle.

"The drama is of the utmost importance. It has been a great educational power in the past; it will be so again." - 'Abdu'l-Bahá