ANGEL REAPERS
By Martha Clarke and Alfred Uhry
Directed by Martha Clarke
A collaboration between Pulitzer, Tony, and Academy Award winning writer Alfred Uhry and MacArthur Genius director/choreographer Martha Clarke, ANGEL REAPERS is a multi-disciplinary work suggested by the life of Ann Lee (1736-1784), founder of the Shaker movement. Mother Ann, as she became known, was a visionary, a mystic, and a powerful spiritual leader. The staging will not be biographical in the usual sense, but more loosely constructed, slipping in and out of reality and embracing Ann's visions and those of her followers. The plot will be woven throughout with movement, song and dance to bring to life this extraordinary 18th Century woman and the singular world she created.
Actual Shaker hymns and dance movements will help tell the story in a spare setting of traditional Shaker furnishings. The cast consists of 9 dancers plus two lead actors, Ann and her brother, William Lee. The cast will sing a cappella Shaker music (12-14 songs) throughout the piece. Collaborators include Jane Greenwood, who will design period costumes, lighting designer Chris Akerlind and a music director.
The story of the Shakers is quintessential Americana, yet details of Ann's life are not widely known. She is compelling as a female leader; an outsider who formed a religious movement and converted many followers to a strict way of life. She preached celibacy and demonstrated that through shaking and trembling movements, sin could be purged from the body. These gesticulating, dancing motions gave the Shaker sect its name. Ann was frequently imprisoned for blasphemy and dancing on the Sabbath. She preached that sin could be avoided through equal treatment of men and women; her ideals of gender equality only added to her persecution. Mother Ann and her brother led missions to find converts to their celibate way of life so their religion could continue. The Shakers were pacifists, but they were feared, ridiculed, and brutally attacked. Constant persecution and hardship took its toll on the community, and eventually the movement failed.
ANGEL REAPERS is set in the late 1700s, almost the end of Ann's life. She sits alone in a plain wooden chair in a severely furnished room. Ann has had a hard life and it shows. We go back some dozen years to when the Shaker community was thriving. Through movement, we see how the community is structured, following a strictly celibate code. The women sleep on one side of a hall; the men on the other. They rise early and work in near silence all day, rarely speaking except to utter Shaker tenets such as, 'There shall no one come to worship God with sin unconfessed. No male or female shall keep private correspondence or union. Neither shall they touch each other, unless necessary.'
Daily routines are expressed through rhythmic, repeated movements and counter-rhythms. The plot is fortified throughout with Shaker songs, dancing and confession meetings. At times there is talking in tongues and summoning of spirits. The movement vocabulary is influenced by eyewitness accounts published in Shaker journals, such as this from The Testimony of Christ's Second Appearing, 2nd Ed., 1810: "After sitting in silent meditation, they were taken with a mighty trembling...exercised in singing, shouting, or walking the floor under the influence of spiritual signs-or swiftly passing and repassing each other, like clouds agitated by a mighty wind."
Ann is clearly the community leader. Her younger brother William is Ann's devoted second-in-command. There is strong chemistry between brother and sister, never mentioned, but clearly apparent. As the Shaker movement grows, the bond between Brother William and Mother Ann becomes tighter, fuelled by an unmentioned sexual tension. Prominent followers desert the community. The bonds of celibacy become untenable. The men attempt to shake off carnal feelings by dancing naked and singing a Shaker song. Mother Ann insists on joining them, but William will not permit it. He collapses and dies shortly after. Again Ann is bitterly alone; her own death soon follows.
Ann Lee's story is an important part of history that remains relevant in American society. It shows the contradiction between the prim prudery of Shaker tenets and the wild, sexual nature they suppressed. Their worship practices--ecstatic shaking, speaking in tongues, drinking "spiritual" wine--were compensation for repressing natural human impulses. This conflict between morality and sexuality still prevails in our culture, where nudity is taboo, abstinence is preached, and sex education and contraception may be forbidden. In ANGEL REAPERS, this dichotomy will be explored in a unique collaboration by two contrasting artists: one whose work is typically rooted in narrative structure, and one who tells stories through movement and image-making.