The Play`s the Thing by Greg Paul

City of Refuge
S A N C T U A R Y
M I N I S T R I E S
A Voice from the Street
O F
T O R O N T O
Winter 2008 • Vol. 7- Issue 1
The Play's the Thing by Greg Paul
The Passages of
Everett Manning
A new play by Shannon Blake
When it’s
all gone...
who were we?
Showtimes:
Friday and Saturday nights in April
Doors open at 7:30 p.m.
Show begins at 8:00 p.m.
To order tickets, visit
www.sanctuarytoronto.ca/passages
or call 416-922-0628 x.215
A simple anecdote often reveals more about a person’s identity than the most comprehensive résumé.
It’s that much more powerful when a person tells his or her own story. And most of the people in our
community are short on conventional résumés, but long on amazing stories.
That’s why, about a year and a half ago, a small group started working on creating a ‘community play’.
The group gathered individuals from the Sanctuary community and began asking simple questions
designed to prompt a wide range of reminiscences. Those responses were recorded – often the way
a story was told, the vocabulary, tone of voice, or body language, was as important as the content
– and became the raw material for Sanctuary’s first ever completely home-grown full-length theatrical
production.
Tickets:
$12 in advance
$15 at the door
$10/person - groups of 10 or more
Presented by the
Inspired by the
Sanctuary Community
www.sanctuarytoronto.ca/screamingmonkeys
The Passages of Everett Manning, by Shannon Blake, is by turns funny, chilling and mysterious. Although
homelessness, municipal politics and the struggles of a middle-class couple figure in it, it’s not a political or even spiritual tract in theatrical form. The histories, situations and ‘voices’ of the characters ring
quirkily true – because they are true. While it’s far from grim, the realism of some of the street scenes
and language mean that it’s not children’s fare either.
Lyf Stolte, Sanctuary’s actor in residence, is juggling a lot of balls to bring the play to life. He’ll play the
title character as well as casting, directing and producing. He hopes that the people who offered their
stories will “gain some satisfaction from having been heard, and that others will realize that they don’t
have to yell to be heard.”
What he means is that people who, because of poverty, addictions, mental illness or a variety of other
reasons, find themselves on the margins of society, quickly come to believe that they don’t really matter
to anyone – their thoughts, convictions, experiences, their stories cease having any discernable value.
Losing family, home, income, health, and sanity means, ultimately, losing much of one’s sense of self.
And when a person has nothing left to lose, well, it doesn’t take much for him or her to ‘lose it’. Which
is why so many of our folks spend time in jail.
INSIDE THIS ISSUE
A View from Here....................... 2
Passages AD................................ 3
NEW Website............................... 4
Online Store................................. 4
Financial Update........................ 4
Faces of Our Community........ 5
Community Concert AD.......... 6
Gift of Dignity............................. 6
Artistic enterprise of any kind has the potential for tremendous therapeutic value. An actor who invests
a role with her own unique gifting and character has, consciously or not, expressed the fact that she is
made in the image of the Creator. Preparing for and delivering a dramatic performance offers a broad
range of opportunities for self investigation, discovery and expression. And with an audience watching,
the cast members (and stage hands, set builders, etc.) are no longer on the margins, but are right at the
heart of the community.
Lyf has pulled together a cast that includes aspiring and professional actors as well as a couple of
members of The Screaming Monkeys, the Sanctuary-based troupe of which he is the artistic director.
Come April, when they’re up on stage displaying their actorly chops, a bunch of the rest of us will be
bursting with quiet pride.
Because they’ll be telling our stories too.
Although the stories came from the Sanctuary community, friends from Youth Unlimited, Yonge Street Mission, SKETCH and Parkdale
Neighbourhood Church helped us find, sort and shape them.
A View From Here
So much of the important stuff seems to happen at the perimeter.
There are a lot of ‘big’ things that happen around here – a large, well-equipped woodworking shop,
hundreds of people sharing meals in the course of a week, arts ‘extravaganzas’ and community concerts, a busy health care clinic and now, of course, our first ever community generated, written, produced and performed full-length theatrical production. There’s an uglier side too, unfortunately: friends
who make the news because they’ve been murdered, or frozen to death, or complained of having been
beaten by police.
Greg Paul
It’s a common reaction, when visitors do the ten-minute tour, to marvel at the busy and eclectic slate of
activities taking place in a small community like this. (I fully expect that The Passages of Everett Manning
will astonish many of the people who come to view it.) We even have a national role – us! our rag-tag
little group! – through our participation in StreetLevel , a national roundtable on poverty and homelessness, helping to gather, encourage and educate others doing similar work across the country, as well as
speaking to national political leaders and media.
We put a lot of time, money (yours!) and energy into doing this and other important stuff. We work
hard, dream extravagantly, engage deeply in messy, costly relationships, endlessly discuss and develop
practices and policies that we hope will bring to fruition God’s grace and justice in ourselves, our
friends, our community, our country.
We do so because we believe in a God who spoke the worlds into existence, and maintains it all by that
same word of power. Not willing to be only Supreme, this audacious One became least - the wildest,
most uncontained act in all of history. Dared to die. Defeated the grave. And now takes us along with him
on that same journey.
How could we not expect such a God to do mighty things among us? It would seem an insult to Him
to aim low.
And yet. We see precious few miraculous displays. Year after year, the general condition of our community seems to remain essentially, painfully unchanged. When something magic does happen, it’s more
than likely to do so just out of our direct line of sight. On the margins, in the corners. Apparently small
scale stuff, taking place in the shadows, often while our attention is firmly focused on the ‘big’ stuff.
The first time we drew together a small group to begin gathering the stories that would become the raw
material for Passages, Lyf and I were surprised that “Bill” showed up. A member of our community for
a few years at that point, he had always kept very carefully to the perimeter. A silent man who rarely
even made eye contact, Bill had developed an amazing capacity to ‘disappear’ in a crowded room. Even
his wired-together glasses and luxurious mustache seemed at times like a disguise.
When he began to speak that day, he was still careful to tell stories that gave little away regarding where
he had come from or what had driven him to the street. But he revealed a rich vocabulary, a dry sense
of humour, and a plummy CBC news reader’s voice.
BOARD OF DIRECTORS
Matthias Benfey - Chairman
Merv Mercer - President
Erica Brewster - Treasurer
Andy Burgess - Director
Eleanor Clitheroe - Director
Ted Smith - Director
Cindy Gladstone - Director
John Anderson - Director
Blair Lewis - Director
These days, it’s hard to remember that Bill not long ago had his being on the outer margins of our
community. He’s become almost ubiquitous – he’s always in early, setting up chairs for the two weekly
AA meetings, or borrowing computer time in the office, or helping organize the last minute details of
one community event or another. When the front door opens, Bill seems to materialize right there,
unless he’s already inside. Although he still keeps his head down most of the time, a greeting offered
draws an immediate, cheerful response, and a thoughtful inquiry after the greeter’s own state of being.
Bill, the quintessential outsider, has become such an integral member of our community that we take
his presence for granted.
Lyf excused himself from a rehearsal one night recently to back me up as I tried to break up a loud,
ridiculous fight that was taking place in Sanctuary’s front yard. A few weeks later, the same man who
initiated that fight was released on bail into the care of two other staff people. Much later that night,
they would put him on a bus to an aboriginal treatment centre in Sudbury, but in the meantime, they
…continued on page 4
Page 2
The Passages of
Everett Manning
A new play by Shannon Blake
When it’s
all gone...
who were we?
Showtimes:
Friday and Saturday nights in April
Doors open at 7:30 p.m.
Show begins at 8:00 p.m.
To order tickets, visit
www.sanctuarytoronto.ca/passages
or call 416-922-0628 x.215
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Presented by the
$12 in advance
$15 at the door
$10/person - groups of 10 or more
Inspired by the
Sanctuary Community
www.sanctuarytoronto.ca/screamingmonkeys
Page 3
www.sanctuarytoronto.ca
NEW WEBSITE / DOMAIN NAME
We are excited to announce the launch of Sanctuary’s brand new website. With thanks to Lyf who
invested a lot of hours in making it all work just so, we are pleased to invite you to browse our new site
at www.sanctuarytoronto.ca.
Our e-mail addresses have changed as well from, e.g. [email protected]
to [email protected]. Please update your address books accordingly. Thanks!
Financial Update
Thank you to our many friends who support us both with their prayers as well as through donations.
In the end, the books balanced for 2007 and we even had a few dollars left on the bottom line! This is
a tremendously encouraging result! We are grateful to God for His provision through friends like yourselves and we continue to look to Him to provide for our practical needs in 2008 and beyond.
A View From Here …continued from page 2
walked him up Yonge Street and handed him off to Lyf, who was directing yet another rehearsal, and
me – I was working that night on a new recording with Red Rain .
Lyf and his cast rehearsed in the main auditorium while ‘Zach’, with his back to them, sketched away at
a small table in the corner. From up in the loft (formerly the balcony seating area for the old church),
where the band was getting set up, he looked like a child, dark head bent over the paper, elbow stuck
out to the side, completely absorbed in whatever he was drawing.
After a while, Zach came quietly up the stairs and stood in the open doorway until I beckoned him in.
He sat and listened to the playback with us. When it stopped, Zach handed me, as a gift, the beautiful
pencil drawing he had been working on.
These ‘little’ stories aren’t very impressive. Most often, the changes we see are small, incremental – just
like those in my own life. But the longer I live in this community, the clearer it seems to me that it’s
here, in these intimate moments that so often pass by unremarked, that the Spirit is most powerfully
at work.
The drawing? Two eagle feathers, a little tattered, their shafts bound with trailing strips of leather. They
are at right angles to each other, forming a cross; beams of light, describing a circle around the feather
cross, radiate from it. It’s sitting now on the corner of my desk, awaiting a frame.
1. www.streetlevel.ca 2. Somewhere In This, There’s Love, a collection of old and new Christmas songs, will be available in the fall.
ONLINE STORE
CDs
from $15.00
BOOK
$10.00
Eye of the Hurricane
by Red Rain
God in the Alley
by Greg Paul
Night at Grace's
by Red Rain
Sell the Farm…Buy the Pearl
by Dan Robins
ART - Coming Soon!!
Paintings, drawings, art cards, etc...
from the Sanctuary community
www.sanc tuar ytoronto.ca/store
Page 4
Faces of Our Community
– Tony Alexander –
If you’ve ever attended one of Sanctuary’s Arts Extravaganas and viewed a play by the Screaming Monkeys, it’s pretty certain that you have seen Tony Alexander in action. By far, one of our most prolific
‘Monkeys’, Tony has performed in 9 or 10 productions over the last few years.
Tony was born in London, England but landed in Toronto in 1963 and has been in the area ever since
– for several years, working in auto sales (we asked for a picture of him in a tacky jacket but he couldn’t
come up with one). Tony found his way to Sanctuary 8 or 9 years ago but has really come to life as an
actor thanks to the input and coaching of Lyf, Sanctuary’s actor-in-residence. In the interest of honing
his craft even further, he took two acting courses at Ryerson last year and loved every bit of them.
Be sure to catch Tony in his newest role in The Passages of Everett Manning in April!
Tony Alexander
– Shannon Blake –
Shannon, the gifted playwright behind The Passages of Everett Manning, has been a friend of Sanctuary’s
for nearly four years now since first being introduced to us through her involvement at the University
of Toronto’s Inter-Varsity Christian Fellowship group. Both as part of that group as well as on her own,
Shannon has become a regular and beloved member of our community.
Originally from Kitchener, Shannon came to Toronto for her undergrad studies at the U of T in
English. She completed those studies last Spring and is now working at Yonge Street Mission’s Evergreen Centre for Street Youth where she is the Arts Co-Ordinator for the drop-in program. We are
really grateful for Shannon’s presence in our community – and particularly for sharing her writing gift
with us.
Shannon Blake
– Eleanor Clitheroe –
Eleanor, as a member of our Board of Directors for the last 4 years, has brought to us a great wealth of
corporate experience in combination with a pastoral heart and sensitivity – a rare but valuable treasure
to find. Since leaving the corporate world 6 years ago, Eleanor has found a great outlet for her particular
combination of skills – through seminary training, now as an ordained minister in the Anglican church
and also as the executive director of Prison Fellowship Ministries Canada for the last 3 years.
While her professional life keeps her plenty busy, she still feels very rooted at home with her husband,
Randy, and her children, Jacob and Faith. We are very grateful to have Eleanor’s presence within our
Sanctuary community!
Eleanor Clitheroe
COMING JULY 2008
The Twenty Piece Shuffle by Greg Paul
In the dark corners of the inner city, the most destitute people in society are searching for anything to numb their hurting souls.
And there are some who display the most extreme mix of need and anticipation: the twenty-piece shuffle, a jittery walk marked
by wide-eyed desperation, named after the street tag for a piece of crack cocaine.
But the addiction to whatever will numb a troubled spirit is not confined to the streets. Suffering is not bound by social class, and
pain is not held at bay by white-picket fences. In a wealthy society that equates money with happiness, we often remain unaware
of our own addictions -- the things we chase to sooth our spirits. And while our need may not be as visible, it is no less real.
Greg Paul believes that the rich, the impoverished, and everyone in between can learn much from each other if they're willing
to walk together. Join Greg as he takes a look at a remarkable paradox, where the poor can miss their blessedness while the
wealthy overlook their own desperate needs, and reveals why God has always called the wealthy and powerful to care for people
who are poor or excluded.*
* From the Back Cover.
Page 5
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