Rich's Broadway debut (sort of) and Joyce's message
A blessed Resurrection Day to all!
Here's my report after my Broadway debut...
And here's one of the complete services:
Also, today, Joyce brought the Resurrection Day message at Westchester Chapel, from from Isaiah 52:13-53:
In case you missed my initial report about what it meant for me to perform on a Broadway stage, here's my original post:
On Good Friday and Resurrection Day, at Times Square Church, I’ll be playing Cleopas, telling about the walk back to Emmaus the third day after the crucifixion of Jesus. It will be on TSC's Broadway stage and live streamed.
This is an answer to a prayer I first prayed in 1993 when I first moved to NYC. Mom read The Cross and the Switchblade to my brother and I when we were pretty young. The book tells how David Wilkerson moved to NYC from a rural community in Pennsylvania when he was a young man.
It’s one of the things that gave me the courage to move from a 70 acre farm in Oregon to an 8’4"x8'7" room on Times Square when I was 23.
I kept a journal at the time titled Farm Boy on Times Square. I wrote about my first visit to TSC on January 2, 1994, but I mentioned it after describing a service at Brooklyn Tabernacle, so I believe I actually first attended a service at TSC before my first New Year in NYC.
Four years before I attended, TSC had been meeting in the only Broadway theatre ever to have been sold to a non-theatrical entity. I know on that first visit I prayed that I could perform there someday. At the time that would have been a real miracle, because Wilkerson was forbidding any acting to be done on their stage, but there have been many wonderful productions there in recent years, including an adaptation of The Cross and the Switchblade.
Our good friend Patricia Mauceri recommended me for the role, and I’m performing the scene with our good friend, Mark Steele, who I’ve known for about 20 years. We’ve performed in two productions together ( Celebrity Confessions and " Three Days Later"), but this is the first time we've actually acted in a scene together! We're having so much fun in rehearsals!
The service focuses on the major stories of minor characters during Holy Week. The fabulous Times Square Church Choir sings throughout. There's a short film, "Son of Malchus," which was filmed at Capernaum Studios, where I worked on Washington's Armor. That's where Season One of The Chosen was filmed, and one of the scenes is filmed in the home where friends ripped open the roof and lowered their paralyzed friend through it. Not that you see the open ceiling, but I got to do dialect coaching in that room. Small world; big Kingdom!
Then there are monologues by Gerrard James, as Simon of Cyrene, and Madeleine Childers as Joanna, Wife of Chuza. Mark and I get to bring the dramatic offerings home.
Find out more at www.TSC.NYC/Easter.
There were three of us who performed in "Three Days Later" and the wife of the actor who played Simon of Cyrene this weekend was in it, too:
