At the beginning of my sophomore year I went to the Wilbur Theater in Boston to see Godspell, and I fell in love with the show and the people in it.  By “fell in love” I mean I became a Godspell groupie, going to show after show (I found a way to sneak in for free right after the show had started, through a forward entry), crying at all of the same scenes, and hanging around for hours afterward to schmooze with the cast. I actually became friendly with two of the cast members, Kathy Solway, a willowy blonde with a lovely, precise voice reminiscent of Julie Andrews, and Barbara Laird, a small actress with a big voice. Barbara had the honor of singing “Day by day”, while Kathy was ironically assigned the worst song in the show “Learn your lessons well”.  Barbara and Kathy had only recently become friends by being cast together in the Boston production, and they welcomed me as a third.

At the same time, I was becoming a member of another community, the Old Cambridge Baptist Church in Cambridge, or “OCBC” as the older members called it.  Coincidentally, this group included Harvey Cox, the author of the book (“Feast of fools”) on which Godspell was based. So not by coincidence, the philosophy of the church was much like that of the show, endorsing freedom of expression, music, dance, and the arts, and liberal politics. With my open face and friendly personality, I was welcomed into the church with open arms.

During this time I ate, slept, and breathed Godspell.  I learned the chords to “Day by Day”, which was full of major and minor seventh chords, and played the song again and again on the piano which we had inherited in our Quincy House dorm room. I decided to write a musical show called “The Ash Grove” about a commune that splits up, based on my old high school youth group. I volunteered to lead a worship service at OCBC about Godspell. (OCBC was big on lay leadership of services.)

Meanwhile, Kathy, Barbara and I became a jolly threesome. They decided after the original two-week run of the show had been extended three times, to take the plunge and move out of the seedy Hotel Avery into an apartment on Beacon Street. Barbara’s boyfriend, also an actor, came up from New York on weekends to visit, and we all went to cast parties together.

The male members of the cast were suspicious of me. Several of them were, I think, gay, and suspected that I might also be gay (I am not) and trying to make inroads to them.  In any case, they kept their distance.  One of them, the funniest one on stage, was very intense and serious offstage. Forgetting that they were actors, I found it hard to reconcile their onstage and backstage personas.  This was made all the harder for me by the fact that Kathy and Barbara were, by and large, the same onstage as off: happy, friendly, and gregarious.

It just killed Kathy that she couldn’t sing “Day by day” in the show. She had arguably the best voice in the cast, but her “power zone” was just a little bit higher than that song, which in the Broadway recording was sung by an alto. She walked around humming the song all the time, and she played it on her guitar backstage too. Barbara, meanwhile, did not particularly value her assignment. It was part of her role, and she performed it as she did the rest of her part. If she was aware of Kathy’s envy of her, she didn’t let on.

Over time, Kathy and Barbara became very taken with me–they became convinced that, with my openness and my “cuteness”,  I would fit in very nicely as a member of the Godspell cast. This, of course, fed right into my own fantasy, which was further fueled by my meeting at a cast party a stand-in for Jesus who was a Yale undergraduate who had just driven up from New Haven to play his role that night. What I didn’t consider was the years that that kid had likely spent on off-Broadway and Broadway making him fit for that understudy role (and the fact that that experience on his resume had helped to win him the slot at Yale).

At one of the cast parties I showed off some of my talents: I played “All good gifts” on the piano along with a set of alternate lyrics spoofing the miserable New England winter we were having. (“All this shit around us was sent from heaven above…”) This only reinforced K and B’s theory that I could become a Godspell cast member, and my fantasy that I could write a Broadway musical.

Finally the day came for my OCBC Godspell service. Kathy and Barbara agreed to sing and play a few songs including “Day by day” to add to the veracity of the experience.  The energy level was high in the sanctuary, and when the time came for the sermon I delivered my thoughts. In summary, I said, why should Christians criticize actors (who may not be Christian) for not acting like Christians when they should be asking themselves why they are not better Christians? The question, which seems a bit muddled to me now, was received with hilarity and appreciation by the congregation, and my service was a success.

However, my celebrity at OCBC began to get the better of me. Without asking me, the pastor of the church signed me up to serve on the statewide Baptist church steering committee, which met in Western Massachusetts every month. There were three problems with this: 1) I didn’t have a car. 2) I was not a Baptist. (I am a Methodist–he said that didn’t matter.) 3) I was overcommitted and had no interest in serving in such a capacity. I didn’t have the heart to tell the pastor that I was refusing his assignment, so every month when I received the notices of the meetings I put them on a pile with a growing sense of guilt.

Also, after our service, one of the enthusiastic church members approached me to ask whether we would perform a folk mass at the Norfolk State Prison, where he volunteered. Again having no reason to say “no”, we agreed. This will be the subject of my next blog entry.