The Rabbit Room

Mark Hamill played this after doing Star Wars. He wanted to prove he was a serious actor. It seems like nobody else was willing to believe him.

So great! Man, you Tennesseeans (?) have all the fun. Wish I could be there. I hope this is excellent and leads into some great discussion.

This is going to be awesome. If you guys haven’t made it to one of the Blackbird Theater productions, you’re going to be amazed. Every time Jamie and I go to a local theater production we ask ourselves why we don’t choose it over movies more often. There’s nothing like watching a real human being tell a story just a few feet away. I guess you could say the same for live music.

Hosting the Rabbit Room community at MAGIC was a highlight in Blackbird’s young history. We hope to have many of you back for AMADEUS on March 9 and the talkback afterward. AMADEUS is witty, shocking, and thoroughly engaging & thought-provoking – one of the best written plays in the English language. Join us!

Big Thank You to Greg and Wes and Blackbird for the work the are doing! Also, thanks to Greg for the heads up about the RR Night!.

If you live in Nashville and you didn’t get a chance to go see Amadeus tonight, I highly recommend you high-tail it over there for one of the other 7 performances remaining.

This is great storytelling and one aspect of the story that makes it so compelling are the constant choices the main character, Salieri, faces throughout the show. Each time he makes another choice toward his own destruction and the destruction of Mozart and the destruction of his relationship with God we groan inwardly and want to shout, “No, don’t do it!” And then something else happens. His choices probe our own choices.

Salieri wants greatness. And I want greatness, too. A large part of me wants to produce greatness because high-quality art glorifies our very awesome Creator and mediocre art often doesn’t (I’m not trying to start that debate, stay with me). (BTW, finding Christians making high-quality art was one of the great draws of the Rabbit Room.) But my aim also becomes my stumbling block. Nobody is great when they start their art. Will I do a whole lot of crappy work to get to the better, or will I stop in the fear of failing at the greatness?

And then we get to other side of stumbling block. I also want to be great, because I want to hear that I am great, I want the validation. My original motivation for greatness- for the sake of glorifying God-silently and sneakily morphs into glory for myself. And if I feel like I can’t achieve that greatness for either myself or the Lord, why not just STOP? Freeze. Play it safe.

Will I be paralyzed (the character in the play goes much further than being paralyzed in his own work, but I’m speaking about myself) by the greatness of other writers (fill in the blank-musicians, artists, etc) or will I continue to serve the work I’m called to do?

This is the quote I was thinking of during the show, this is the only path I know to take that won’t lead to destruction.

“If I thought I had to say it better than anybody else, I’d never start. Better or worse is immaterial. The thing is that it has to be said, by me. We each have to say it, to say it in our own way. Not of our own will, but as it comes out through us. Good or bad, great or little: that isn’t what human creation is about. It is that we have to try.”

- Madeleine L’Engle, A Circle of Quiet

We are rabbits, trying.

Aimee, thank you so much for this reflection, and thanks to all of our Rabbit Room friends who made last night’s performance and talkback so rich. The Blackbird family makes theater for good people like you. A huge thanks to Pete Peterson for giving us the honor of hosting you all last night!