My Own "Battle of Angels"

I find it most fitting that I am writing this early in the predawn hour of Sunday morning.  I am up early despite the "Maker" leaving its "Mark" on me last night because an image has not left me since Friday afternoon.  Another angel has visited me and left a mark of her own. I have told the story of my birth into the world of theatre many times.  I saw a picture in the newspaper of an angel descending over the bed of an AIDS stricken man as "Angels In America: Millennium Approaches" had won a TONY the night before.  This angel has led my way for the past twenty years; Twenty years that have included my writing over fifty plays that have now had over thirty productions and led to the concept and building of not on my theatre company (South Camden Theatre Company) but our actual physical home of the Waterfront South Theatre in Camden, NJ. It has been twenty years of hard work, inspiration, wild successes and some disappointment, as I am still waiting for my writing alone to carry me to the next chapter of my financial life.  But now....back to Friday.  Here in Provincetown where I am watching the dawn rise in a mix of light blue and orange sky as I write this, I saw another angel.  This angel was not written by Tony Kushner but by Tennessee Williams, a writer that I am quite honestly obsessed with and was a character in his play "The Milk Train Doesn't Stop Here Anymore".  I, frankly, did not know what to expect in this play or production brought here from South Africa so, on Friday when I sat in my front row seat and watched as two shirtless young men stood at either side of the stage looking towards each other in complete concentration and a huge, oversized photo of Mrs Goforth gazed at us from stage right. The play began and, as some of TW's later plays do, started on a front that made me unaware where I was or who the characters were.  Then though, the majestic visitation began and for the next two hours I was transfixed...taken to another place that one can only be led to by a master poet and playwright.  "Chris" the angel of death in this play was leading Mrs Goforth to the other side...allowing her to "go forth" from a life of opulence and ...ultimately...loneliness. Tennessee wrote this play around the time of the death of the love of his life Frank Merlo and you can feel Frank's and Tennessee's own obsession of death in his every word. When the play ended and the crate which had been used for a bed for this angel had now become Mrs Goforth's coffin.....I felt that same shift inside of me that I felt almost twenty years ago watching "Angels".  An angel had re-visited me an left a "Maker's mark" of it's own.  A mark that will begin the next journey of carrying me to the new stage in whatever amount of years I have left until...once again...the angel of death  will visit me.  But this time...not on stage. I wanted to sleep more today but...this voice kept calling and calling me.

The voice to write.  One that I have been blessed in hearing for almost two decades and...thanks to TW and this play...is moving me to another place.  The sky is turning brighter now...the sun is almost breaking through the horizon.  And now...I feel that I am also.