Kate Southern as Wendy Darling in Neverland
This last year has been a transformative year in the realm of my personal spiritual understandings. For the past 9 years, I've remained sort of 'undeclared' when it came to aligning myself with a certain spiritual idealogy or religion, due to the troubles I experienced while practicing conservative Christianity. However, the magic of defining my beliefs in the construct of a 'religion' was a journey that led me back to my early roots in my teenage years. In short, I was led back to Wicca.
It all started when I was cast in two plays back to back that dealt with feminine empowerment, that of Vagina Monologues (once again I went down that rabbit hole, or perhaps different holes, as it were), and that of Dixie Swim Club (which chronicles the history of five female friends throughout the changes of twenty years of their lives together and apart) of which influence led me to a deeper understanding of the power of the feminine divine connection within us all. In addition to that, I was filming season two of my production company's original webseries, "Nate & Laura & How They Met" which highlighted the power of female friendship in helping women pursue their highest calling and purpose in life. The mixture of all three of these experiences and the characters infused within me gave me a deeper appreciation for my connection to the divine Goddess. Furthermore, my connection, sometimes postive and sometimes negative, with my female co-stars helped deepen my understanding of the depth of layers within each of us in all of our connection to the divine feminine.
With that, I took a pause after completing all three productions and rested for a few months before heading into rehearsal for the adaptation of Peter Pan, "Neverland" put on by the Applegate based professional theatre company, "Wanderlust Theatre Company". I was cast as "Tootles", the lost boy. As I prepared for the role, I originally thought that the lessons gleaned from this production would be that of becoming in tune with the divine masculine, as the spring months had been a focus on the feminine. But, as is always the case, the Universe had a different lesson to impart.
Valerie Harper
8/22/39-8/30/19
This last August, the great Valerie Harper passed on, succumbing to her ongoing battle with cancer. This caused my soul to pause and reflect back on my childhood adoration of Valerie from her 1980's show, Valerie's Family. In that, she played the warm, funny, engaging mother of three boys. I admired her greatly and saw her as the epitome of what a mother should be. If Harry Anderson was my TV dad then Valerie Harper was my TV mom. (Really, Universe, in 2018 you took my dad, in 2019 you took my mom, thanks a freaking lot!)
So, the focus on my character, Tootles, took a drastic shift from my connection with my masculine side to my need for a mother. As I followed the journey of Tootles in his adoration and connection with his new mother, Wendy (expertly played by Kate Southern, see above), I felt the relationship and the story wash over me, rooting itself deep within. As Wendy gathers her boys around for story time, telling them about the mother's heartbreak over the loss of her children, but enduring patience in the knowledge that they will one day return, I gazed up into the heavens and felt the smiling, watchful eye of Valerie ever watching over me and a healing warmth filled my soul.
Photo Courtesy of Wanderlust Theatre Company
In this photo, left to right, Tiffany Schechter, Hannah Schechter, Kate Southern,
Brandon Kinsey, Julius Pratt, and Lia Rose Dugal
Most assuredly, it wasn't that of Valerie Harper but she represents a visual of the invisible, that of the divine Goddess. This time not as friend or sister, but as supreme mother. And so I say with Tootles:
“I do like a mother's love,” said Tootles, hitting Nibs with a pillow. “Do you like a ... Ah, now we are rewarded for our sublime faith in a mother's love.'---J.M.Barrie
No comments:
Post a Comment