Theatre-Intime's 'J.B.' tackles the Book of Job

What if every tear you shed, every loved one you lost, every anguish you had to bear wasn't part of some cosmic justice, wasn't the icy harmony of a clockwork universe's crystal spheres falling into their allotted course? What if your suffering wasn't under the caring eye of a benevolent force, but was instead the subject of a quarrel between God and Satan?

Unlucky Job found himself in just that position. In the Book of Job, God allows Satan to destroy the life of pious Job to prove that true faith will endure even when every reason to believe has vanished. Job loses his children, his wealth, his home and his health — every sign, in short, that his devotion to God was noticed and appreciated.

Despite all his suffering, Job holds firm to his faith. He is rewarded in the end, and all his goods restored. But even with the sores healed and new children on the way, a question lingers. What kind of God can stand by and watch a life destroyed? And what kind of man can believe in such a God?

Poet Archibald MacLeish, having fought in the slaughter of World War I, and having witnessed the carnage of World War II — the dropping of the atom bomb in Hiroshima, the London Blitz, the firebombing of Dresden — asked himself those questions, only to decide that his faith and the world he saw developing no longer overlapped. He turned to the Book of Job to search for a way of understanding the evil he saw all around him — the result was his masterful verse drama "J.B.," opening this weekend at Theatre-Intime, in a production directed by Kate Callahan '01.

In MacLeish's version, as in the Biblical story, the action starts out as a plan between two quarreling forces that decide to use a third party to play out their dispute. His setting is not the lofty fields of heaven, however, but rather a worn-down circus tent; and his God and Satan are two rundown actors (Todd Barry '00 and Ben Waterhouse '00), who begin what they think is a performance only to find that their theater is not so neatly contained and that they are no longer quite in control of the action they so casually initiated, as the boundaries between their personal involvement and Biblical script blur.

As the action moves inevitably toward the confrontation between Job (Wilson Sumner '01) and God, the actors shift from determining Job's course to questioning their own, trying to understand what masks they wear — a God with closed eyes and a grimacing Satan — really signify, and what man's relationship to them should be.

"Gird up thy loins like a man," God instructs Job. "I will demand of thee, and declare thou unto me. Wilt thou disannul my judgment? Wilt thou condemn Me that thou mayest be righteous? Hast thou an arm like God? Or canst thou thunder with a voice like Him?" Job responds carefully, "Therefore have I uttered that I understood not: things too wonderful for me, which I knew not. Hear, I beseech thee, and I will speak: . . . I have heard of thee by the hearing of the ear . . . But now . . . Mine eyes seeth thee! Wherefore I abhor myself . . . and repent."

What is this new vision of God that Job has received? That this dialogue contains a crucial change in the understanding of the Covenant between man and God is clear, but what that change is has been debated for centuries. Some see the story as a demonstration of man's insignificance in comparison with the incomprehensible majesty of God and a condemnation of man's arrogance in presuming to understand God. Others see Job's trials as the truest test of one's faith in God's love and God's perfect plan. Still others find it hard to have faith in a deity who would so casually barter away a good man's life to Satan for the sake of winning a bet.

Carl Jung suggested in his analysis of God's speech that the Book of Job portrays God less as an anthropomorphic figure than an elemental force as unstoppable and as unselfconscious as fate, jealous of man's self-awareness and his analytic faculties. Whatever the answer may be, Job's faith at the end of his journey is at the same time more fragile and more certain, as he reevaluates his idea of his god and of himself.

The Biblical Job story focuses on Job's relationship with God. In "J.B.," Job's relationship with his wife Sarah (Sasha Kopf '02) becomes a plot line of equal, if not greater importance, to his relationship with God. Sarah simply refuses to accept what she sees as God's unwarranted cruelty and makes a break both from God and from J.B. What does it take to have a relationship that is both true and enduring, that will outlast tragedy as well as joy?

God and Satan attempt the destruction of Job in order to find the answer to this question; J.B. and Sarah must see their union destroyed before they can rebuild their lives together. However unpredictable and unknowable the Almighty may be, however brutal the vagaries of fate, their ability to start over together, to rebuild their love, provides the opportunity for real redemption. By blending the original text with his own darkly lyrical prose, MacLeish gives the dialogue between the mortal actors the same epic force as that between supernatural powers, and makes the covenant forged between J.B. and Sarah as potent as that between J.B. and God.

In its skillful blending of the secular and the sacred, "J.B." is a means of coming to terms with questions of faith, with despair and with hope, of finding, as Job and Sarah do, the one blooming branch amidst the devastation, a means for continuing on despite the casual cruelties of life. Callahan first encountered the play in high school while trying to come to terms with a seemingly insurmountable series of tragedies in her own life and, drawn to its theme of "the problem of evil in a modern sense — war, rape, drunk driving, death that can't be construed as an act of God," decided to make the show her directorial debut at Theatre-Intime.

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A talented actress who has been in numerous on-campus productions, Callahan usually looks at plays and sees a role she'd like to play, or a particular character that intrigues her. With "J.B.," however, she said, "I felt drawn to it as a director. It's a cliché, but I had a vision for the show — I could see how I wanted the play to work, how it would develop, visualizing every little exchange and every theme."

She had originally envisioned the show as a small-scale production, her own examination of a play with deep personal meaning, but was pleased to discover that the show had a broader resonance, as her auditions overflowed with talented actors. The cast is a mix of some of Princeton's most experienced performers and first-time actors.

"My most difficult but most rewarding challenge as a director was to find the common ground, to facilitate and channel their energies," Callahan said. "By now, I've relinquished ownership — the actors know the show best, since they're the ones who have been living in these characters for so long. The show has a strong message; my goal as director is to let it stand on its own. I don't want to make this easy, and I don't want to put things in neat categories. I want to make the show a personal experience that will touch people of all backgrounds. Some will find it depressing, some exhilarating."

She hopes that whatever their personal convictions, audience members will grapple with the show's issues. She remembers reading a review of another show, described as "not the kind of show where you go to a coffee shop with your date afterwards and talk about the existence of God." "This is that kind of show," Callahan said. "Princeton students want that kind of discussion."

Dean of Religious Life, Rev. Dr. Joseph Williamson agreed. He sees tension between the sacred and the secular — as students try to integrate what they learn in the classroom with a broader perspective on human existence — as an integral part of life in the University community and of his own goals as an administrator.

The performance of "J.B." Williamson saw as a graduate student when the show first opened helped him appreciate "the importance of both sides of the argument. The human drama as portrayed in the arts stimulates our search for community and self-expression and links those things to the religious dimension as well, to something that provides meaning. Through it, we engage one another in these questions of meaning — the passion, pursuit and vision religion intends to provide."

St. Catherine of Siena, answering the perennial question of how to lead a good life, said that "all the way to heaven is heaven"—with all its glories and tragedies, and the courage we use in both situations.

The questions we ask, and the answers we find for ourselves. Or, in MacLeish's words, "There's always someone playing Job."

Theatre-Intime presents "J.B." Thurs., March 23 - Sat., March 25 at 8 p.m.; Thurs., March 30 - Sat., April 1 at 8 p.m. and Sat., April 1 at 2 p.m. Call (609) 258-4950 for reservations.