As little Tierney grew up, Lisa says there was definitely conflict and angst about Lisa’s work, especially when Lisa was working with child-actors who were Tierney’s own age and thought Lisa hung the moon and the stars. (Which she did, by the way.) “My mom is NOT cool,” she would helpfully inform them. “You don’t have to live with her.” OUCH. My daughter Madeline, who is eight, has seen me mother other children on stage multiple times but has yet to complain. I wonder if/when that will end.
 
I suppose all parents want their children to at least take a passing interest in their job, and I think this is because we want the people we love the most to understand and celebrate the thing we love to do the most. Maybe if I didn’t love acting so much, I wouldn’t care what the kids thought, but I do. And I do. It’s all just a big love fest, really. And there’s a part of me that wants them to absolve me of the guilt I feel when I have to miss soccer games and field trips.
 
Lisa recalls fondly the time Tierney (in her 20s at this point) overheard a director gushing about her parents to some friends. (Lisa’s husband Kim is also an actor.) She had leaned into the conversation in what must have been a very jaunty and charming way, and said, “My name is Tierney Titus, and my parents ARE amazing.”
 
(Hashtag goals. Hope abounds!)
 
At any rate, I think my kids are proud of what I do for now — when they think about it. Which can’t possibly be very often, and this is just as well. I’m certainly proud of THEM whenever I see them standing in the lobby after a performance, crumpled programs in hand, waiting with smiles to see their mommy — before asking what’s for dinner and can they have the candy at the concessions counter and when can we go home, and...etc. etc.

A couple months ago, I was in a production of “Into the Woods.” We met at a church to rehearse, at night, on a road that divides a nicer section of town from a rougher section. We pulled our chairs around a piano against the far wall of the Fellowship Hall next to the door.

For any uninitiated reader, “Into The Woods” is a brilliant mash-up of famous fairy tales. It won multiple Tonys and is probably Stephen Sondheim’s most popular achievement in his long and illustrious career. The characters converge in the wood and try to achieve their various means of happiness, which succeed, more or less, until Act II when all pandemonium breaks loose in the form of a renegade giant, a philandering Prince Charming, a runaway Rapunzel, and multiple murders and accidental deaths. It’s so brilliant.

On that second night of rehearsal, we were gathered like novices, ready to take our vows to Father Sondheim, penitent for lesser theatrical efforts in our former performing lives. We had begun tackling the Finale, when the door next to the piano opened.

It was a woman who walked in through the open door. The music director stopped playing. We looked up from our scores.

“Excuse me, is there someone from the church I can talk to?” she said. “Me and my kids need $34.95 to spend the night at the hotel. Ain’t got a place to stay tonight.”  

Our fairy tale had been interrupted.

If you looked around our group at that moment, you would have seen a variety of people — here’s a young adult guy who waits tables and acts at night; here’s an older lady with a jewelry business and an MBA. But we all had this OTHER thing, this other privilege: we each had the privilege of using our time to make art instead of finding shelter for our children.   

The woman had come to a church building to find help in her moment of crisis, but instead of a minister, she got a Witch. She got a Witch, Cinderella, and various others, some of whom were maybe agnostic or of another faith all together, and all of whom did not attend that particular church. We pooled our cash — more than she needed — and gave it to her.

The moment made me think about the breadth of Jesus’ reach, the highways and byways he travels to reach people that for all our programs and planning and praying, a church staff cannot anticipate. I’m not sure if someone would have been at that particular church building at that particular time on that particular night at this woman’s particular moment of need. But there we were, a combination of believing misfits and unbelieving misfits, singing show tunes, and she saw the light on.

The Bible describes a Kingdom. A reality of fairy-tale proportions with a Prince and a King and a world lost in the dark woods. As actors, we had a chance to mirror the deep magic of this reality, but on that night with that woman, we also had a chance to embody it. Maybe that moment wasn’t so much an interruption of our fairy tale as it was an incarnation of its deeper truth. Even those among us who didn’t believe in the kingdom narrative were still given the privilege of participating in it, which is deeper grace still.  

​And maybe all of us who follow Jesus should anticipate as a matter of course strange and unexpected moments where our vocation or hobby or job swerves into a chance to personify grace to hurting people. Jesus goes out into the alleys, the promenades, the thoroughfares and under bridges and into country roads to invite people to his banquet, and detours must not be uncommon.  Let’s anticipate these moments, watch for them so they no longer seem odd, and celebrate them when they come.     

Jesus went through all the towns and villages, teaching in their synagogues, proclaiming the good news of the kingdom and healing every disease and sickness. - Matthew 9:35


First published at irvingbible.org June 27, 2018.

So this is fun. I love to act AND I love to write, so when I get to write about acting, I become very jealous of myself. Check out the new issue of "MadeWorthy" magazine, out this month: Madeworthy Magazine – Issue 4 – Tanglewood Moms. I'm on page 24, writing about our upcoming production of "Into The Woods" at Stolen Shakespeare Guild. Enjoy!

And it really is. I had never really thought of “Little Women” as a Christmas show before, but few stories come close to capturing the comforts of hearth and home and the nostalgia of the-years-falling-away-like-snowflakes quite like this one. The show opens during the Christmas season, when the March sisters are fully aware both of their increasing poverty and of the even deeper poverty of their neighbors. Each of the sisters is introduced by turn in Emma Reeves’ cogent adaptation, and we are quickly drawn to the second-oldest sister Jo (played by Madeline Ruth Pickens), whose story this ultimately becomes. Pickens plays her with all of the natural, playful freedom that a willful and unconformist Jo should embody. Marmie, played by the dear Lisa Fairchild, draws such a lovely contrast as the gentle mother wholly capable of both embracing and tempering each of her daughters’ particular personalities. (Side note: Lisa once played my mother figure in SSG’s “Persuasion,” so I left last night feeling   like a March sister myself. Weird.)
 
One of the loveliest (can I use that word again?) relationships we enjoy throughout is between Jo and younger sister Beth, the shy, soft-spoken wisp of a girl with no particular aspirations of her own. Samantha Snow was ethereal, understated, and completely well cast. As are Laura Smith (a warm, likeable Meg), and Emmie Gelat (a very funny, endearing Amy).
 
Here’s what you’re going to like about the show: it is very true to the spirit of the book. It was, well, so Little Women-ish, down to Amy’s horrified exclamation upon realizing Jo has chopped her hair: “Oh, Jo! How could you? Your one beauty!” The script doesn’t swerve into too much sentimentalism; it retains its humor and the natural ebb and flow of sisterly relationships, and when things get bleak or downright tragic, those moments are played with a fortitude and sincerity that reminds us why this story is so enduring: a family is always changing, but it never has to lose hope. It never has to lose love. Hope and love take on different colors in different seasons. They shape-shift, but they never go away.
 
Here’s what else we love about “Little Women”: the idea that even a misfit can find her way. This is Jo’s triumph, one she shares with any of us who have ever felt not-enough or too-much of something. SSG does a nice job bringing this out and setting it center-stage. More kudos to Madeline Ruth Pickens, who was, in the most important ways, a consummate Jo March.
 
SSG’s production features the gorgeous Civil War-era costumes, lush work regulars have come to expect from Lauren Morgan and her team. The set is expansive and made to work well as various locations. The pacing is good, as is the use of music and singing for effective transition moments. Standout Christian Teague, a Dallas Opera-ite, shares his talents as both singer and actor as Professor Bhaer. Veteran Cynthia Matthews is also a welcome presence as the feisty, imperial Aunt March whose machinations are equally funny and infuriating.
 
Christmas is a wonderful time to be staging this adaptation. In a season that can bring stress and remind us of loss, “Little Women” raises us high to see the life of a family from above, over the course of years, fighting to stay connected and at peace in a time of war and uncertainty. It’s worth bringing all your little women (and men) to see.