Everybody Director’s Note
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From Director Paul Takacs
Branden Jacobs-Jenkins’ adaptation of the 15th century morality play EVERYMAN, offers not only an examination of mortality and the mysteries of the afterlife, but also a caution for these fractious times we find ourselves living in.
Just as in the days of its inspiration from the Middle Ages, the world today, finds itself in the grips of a plague and we are more conscious than ever before of our mortality. At the same time, our society is growing ever more splintered and contentious in its beliefs and values. As a result one could argue that kindness, compassion, understanding, and empathy are becoming increasingly in short supply, giving way to intolerance, rigidity, insouciance, and resentment.
In the original play, “Everyman” is called upon by God to give an accounting for his life at the threshold of his mortality. Encountering all the elements that defined his days he seeks to find the meaning and worth of his earthly existence and possibly a companion to join him in the afterlife when he passes on. After his friends, family, possessions, and faculties all desert him, he realizes that it is only his Good Deeds that will define him and journey on with him into the next world. As it says in the original play:
For then Mercy and Pity do him forsake.”
Conversely, in Jacobs Jenkins’ version it is Love (and perhaps also the evil we do) that defines us and sees us through to the next world; an idea sorely in need of a reminder today.