Jackie’s a Star!
Jackie and I posing between performances.
Last weekend, my wife and I finally got our chance to perform in our church’s Easter production, a musical drama called Son of God, Son of Man. As I’ve said in previous posts, we were asked again this year to have our donkeys participate in the play, and our role would be to handle the animals while they were on stage. It doesn’t sound tough, until you look at the role that Jackie, our larger donkey was asked to perform. She was to be the donkey that Jesus Christ rode into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday. This was a tall order, when you understand the magnitude of the production. She would be on stage with close to 100 people, under hot stage lights, a full orchestra playing music just off to her right, waving palms, people dancing, and a strange person on her back.
This is the crucifix scene from the show, to give you an idea of the scale of the production.
I was a little worried the day before the first performance. We had a “almost” dress rehearsal on Wednesday evening. We would run through the show without stopping and we’d all be in costume. The weather was gloomy. I had been in South Dakota all day for work. I rushed from the airport to get to rehearsal, and by the time I got there, we were already running behind. My friend Peggy, who was helping to handle Jackie on stage, was already there warming up with Jackie. As part of the warmup, we’d walk Jackie around and I would spend some time riding on her back, just as the actor who portrayed Jesus would do. I was getting a very bad vibe. Jackie was restless. She didn’t want to stand still. She lurched around when I was on her back, rather than moving smoothly. I just knew something wasn’t quite right. It came time for her performance. We took her back stage and she didn’t want to hold still. Dustin, the actor that plays Jesus came back to climb on her back for the big scene and every time he was about to step across from the mounting step to her back, she danced around and stepped out of reach. Finally, it was time for his big entrance, and he couldn’t get on Jackie’s back! So, we did the only thing we could think of. Jesus walked into Jerusalem with a perfectly good donkey walking behind him for that performance. Yikes!
The good news is that this performance was the anomoly. The next four performances, Jackie performed just like she was supposed to, with her final performance on Saturday evening being her best by far. Hallelujah!