Sanctuary!

May 21, 1968, I am blithely walking down Newbury Street or one of those streets frequented by Crazy Jane where the rich people shop, when I see an unusual sight. A group of scruffy dressed young people (that is not the unusual part) are playing recorders, beating drums, and falling down on the sidewalk. (That's the unusual part). Street Theater!.

For the past several months, I'd been part of a rag tag theater company who rehearsed in a church basement and we were in the middle of readying a production of Brecht's The House of Bernarda Alba. This was sometime after my disastrous experiment in conjugal living with Rick the actor in Dorchester, where we pretended to be a young married couple. The landlady was so sweet, I hated to abandon her after only a week, when I realized all of Rick's charms were skin deep. ( know this is so unfair. I'm sure he is a truly kind and humanitarian, loving man, but in those days, it was true passion and radical inspiration I was after).

So things at the Theater Company were decidedly frosty. Rick had even left for a few days himself to go back to Florida and see if his former girlfriend wanted to marry him.  She didn't.

I was playing one of the three sisters. I was, you might say, integral to the performance, not because of my stellar acting abilities. A turnip could probably have delivered the lines more convincingly, but because we were a tiny troupe with no one to spare.

But the street theater people intrigued me. so I followed them, as they drummed and fifed and fell down and got up, and finally ended up at a church around the corner. the Arlington Street Church on the corner of Arlington and Boylston Street.

At the top of the stairs two men, flanked by many others. One is in military uniform. Someone has a megaphone and is telling the gathering crowd that they are taking sanctuary in the Church, an ages old custom of providing a safe haven for the persecuted. This was a moment in history.

They are Bill Chase and Robert Talmanson,  Bill a civilian resistor, Tally, as Talmanson was know, AWOL from an unjust war.

The guerrilla theater performers are there in aid of them, of drawing attention to them and their cause. I approach the leader, a woman named Susan. I offer to join their troupe. How can she say no? Volunteers are always welcome, acting talent is optional. I have found the Movement I have been looking for. Direct action, not letter writing, report writing, making phone calls in aid of getting others to go to far off Washington for demonstrations. Right here at home.

And a theater troupe to boot.

Now I must tell Rosemary, the director of our church basement acting group. I can no longer pose as a sister in a Bertolt Brecht play when the real world is beckoning. I am relieved, no more Rick the actor, casting moon eyes at me. But terrified, The wrath of Rosemary is well known. Guilty, as I am leaving them all in the lurch. Can they find a replacement.

As predicted Rosemary is pissed; calls me a prima dona. "But it's for the Movement!" I cry. I am called; I must answer.

She is not impressed. But history is happening on Arlington Street. Surely they can find a stand in for my poor performance, even on short notice. I leave one church basement rehearsal space and head for another church's nave and sanctuary.