Vy oN
~~
CARS RR
lL
i.
SUSO
Vol. 78 No. 28 July 12, 1978
UEHANNA
Susquehanna Times & The Mount Joy Bulletin
MARIETTA & MOUNT JOY, PA.
From left to right, in the ‘‘plain’’ costumes the wore for the play are: Sabina Frey, Eugene Mellinger and Jay Musser.
Pilgrimage, the story of the River Brethren
by John E. Rivermoore
Three residents of the
Mount Joy and Marietta
area participated last week
in what this reviewer
considers the most original
and authentic drama he has
witnessed in the Pennsyl-
vania-Dutch area.
Unlike most locally pro-
duced theatricals, this
drama was no re-play of a
Broadway hit. It was a play
that grew as naturally out
of our soil as the crops that
are greening all around us
and that flowed as natural-
ly and smoothly in its
unfolding plot, as the
Conoy Creek on its happy
way to the Susquehanna
River.
The drama, entitled,
Pilgrimage, was written
and directed by Norman A.
Bert, who teaches drama at
Messiah College, where the
pageant was presented to
full houses on three
separate nights last week.
Bert, who employed many
techniques of modern thea-
ter in depicting the
200-year history of the
Brethren in Christ church,
has, I think, produced a
truly indigenous Pennsyl-
vania-German epic drama.
The three local actors
who appeared in Pilgri-
mage were: Sabina Frey,
daughter of Mr. and Mrs.
John K. Frey, 124 S. River
St., Maytown, a member of
the Brethren chorus in the
play; Eugene T. Mellinger,
son of Mr. and Mrs.
Harold H. Mellinger, R.D.
1, Mount Joy, also a
member of the Brethren
chorus; and Jay R. Musser,
son of Mrs. Ruth D.
Musser, R.D. 1, Mount
Joy, who played the role of
one of the founders of the
Brethren, Jacob Engle, and
then successively took on
the roles of subsequent
leaders in the church.
Sabina, Gene, and Jay,
like all the other actors in
Pilgrimage, are amateurs
who gave flawless perform-
ances. The pageant began
and was sustained through-
out by an excitement and
enthusiasm that never
lagged. No professional
actors could possibly have
done as well as these
actors, who are part and
parcel of the traditions they
were portraying.
Although the pageant
was most directly about the
successive parochial crises
that threatened at times to
shatter the Brethren—the
erection of meeting houses,
the founding of Sunday
Schools, sponsoring foreign
missions; building orphan-
ages and schools, revival-
ism, and the shedding of
‘‘plain”’ garments—Bert
presented these local con-
cerns against a universal
background, so that non-
Brethren members of the
audience, like myself, were
thoroughly caught up in the
drama.
Throughout the play,
contrast is provided by an
ever-hovering chorus of the
‘““‘world’’ who absorbedly
watch the crises of the tiny
sect. Their ‘‘gay’’ costumes
are starkly different from
the ‘‘plain’’ garb of the
Brethren. On occasion, the
“‘world’’ intrudes rudely
into the lives of the simple
Brethren, altering them.
Projection screens high
above the action, provided
a continuous background in
words and pictures of what
was transpiring in the
world at large while the
Brethren wrestled with one
problem after another.
The only props used in
the show were wooden
boxes about the size of
grocery cartons, which the
cast from time to time
rearranged, to shut out the
“world,” or to let it in.
The same actors portray-
ing the history of the
church over its entire
200-year history, easily
switched to new roles in
each epoch, adding contin-
uity to the ‘historical
development.
Drama about local events at Messiah College
Background music (pic-
colo, piano/organ, percuss-
ion, and violin) unobtru-
ively reinforced action on
the stage.
The very human nature
of the Brethren portrayed
by the actors raised this
play above a mere sectari-
an piece and made it,
fundamentally, a play a-
bout humanity.
Without distracting from
the deep seriousness of the
Brethren’s concerns, the
play contained much good
fun, a good bit of it at the
expense of the Brethren,
judging from the hearty
laughs from the audience.
The Brethren in Christ
have an endearing and
healthy ability to laugh at
themselves.
All the various theatrical
techniques and the varying
moods were masterfully
integrated by Bert into a
well orchestrated unity,
with a powerful cumulative
effect on the audience.
I left Messiah College
with a strong admiration
for this church, its roots
deep in the past, changing
and adapting to the times,
keeping the loyalty and
fervor of its young people,
the actors in this drama,
while retaining its essential
‘“peculiarity”’ which is its
purity that sets it off from
the ‘“‘world.”
RAL
Rn.
; Ww
mou Jo
TY
a
any 0
CT pOR 04 15 4
\ )
phi 4
FIFTEEN CENTS
Candy Flowers wins
tri-state roller skating
competition
Candy Flowers
On the 4th of July, eight
year-old Candy Flowers of
Marietta won the Eastern
Regional Division Roller .
Skating-Figure skating
championship at Elsmere,
Delaware. This means that,
as far as the U.S. Amateur
Confederation of Roller
Skating is concerned, Can-
dy is the best figure skater
under nine years old in the
states of Pennsylvania,
New Jersey, and Delaware.
On July 30, Candy will
travel to Lincoln, Nebraska,
for a shot at the United
States championship.
Candy’s parents, Charles
and Dolores Flowers of 526
W. Market Street, Mariet-
ta, put her on roller skates
for the first time when she
was eight months old, and
let her enter her first
competition when she was
one and a half years old.
Candy practices on her
skates for about 20 hours
each week, in Park City.
(She can’t skate on the
sidewalk, because the -
rough surface would nick
the wheels of her expensive
skates.)
All this experience has
given her plenty of
confidence: ‘‘The other
kids are nervous before a
competition,”” she says,
“but I'm not. 1 know that
I’m the one they have to
beat.”
She is so supremely
self-confident, in fact, that
when she and her partner
were knocked down during
a roller skating dance
competition, Candy was not
at all embarrassed. ‘We
couldn’t help it that we had
a collision with another
person,’’ she says. “‘It
[continued on page 2]