Stage

Against the backdrop of a pandemic and an acrimonious election, a group of acclaimed actors were on Sunday set to stage an online reading of an appropriate religious text: the Book of Job.Groundhog Day star Bill Murray was cast as Job, the righteous man tested by the loss of his health, home and children.Staged on Zoom, the reading was aimed at Knox county, a Republican-leaning area of Ohio, and designed to spark conversation across spiritual and political divides. The structure of a reading followed by dialogue is a fixture of Theater of War Productions, whose artistic director, Bryan Doerries, went to Kenyon College in Knox county.Theater of War held its first Job reading in Joplin, Missouri, a year after a tornado killed more than 160 there in 2011. The company has performed more than 1,700 readings worldwide, harnessing Greek drama and other resonant texts.By using Job’s story “as a vocabulary for a conversation, the hope is that we can actually engender connection, healing,” Doerries said. “People can hear each other’s truths even if they don’t agree with them.”The cast headlined by Murray featured other noted actors including Frankie Faison and David Strathairn. But Matthew Starr, mayor of the Knox county town of Mount Vernon, was cast as Job’s accuser. The Republican, a supporter of Donald Trump, said he hoped the event could lead to less shouting and more listening.“God does not say that bad things aren’t going to happen but he does tell us, when they do, we’re not alone,” Starr said. “That’s the hope for me, is that we get a chance to lean into our faith, we get a chance to lean into our neighbors, we get a chance to lean into each other, our family, a little bit more.”Knox county, a community of about 62,000, lies about an hour east of the Ohio state capital, Columbus. Most in the county work blue-collar manufacturing jobs. The county is 97% white and voted for Trump by nearly three to one. An exception is Kenyon College, a small liberal arts school outside Mount Vernon. Voters there and in the village of Gambier voted eight to one for Joe Biden.Marc Bragin, Jewish chaplain at Kenyon, said he hoped the reading would help people look beyond their differences. Pastor LJ Harry said he did not believe Knox county is as divided as other places in the US. The police chaplain and pastor at the Apostolic Church of Christ in Mount Vernon said most in the area were united in their support for Trump and for law enforcement.Harry said the biggest point of contention was over mask-wearing, with many resisting Republican governor Mike DeWine’s statewide mandate. He also likened Knox county’s need for healing to that of a patient who has left intensive care but remains in a step-down unit.Harry said the message he hoped people took from the Job reading was that “God has this in control, even though it feels like it’s out of control”.In the biblical tale, God uses Job’s losses to share broader truths about suffering. The story ends with the restoration of what was taken, and more.“Our hope is not that there’s going to be a group hug at the end of the thing,” Doerries said, “or that we’re going to resolve all our political differences, but that we can remind people of our basic humanity: what it requires to live up to basic values such as treating our neighbor as ourselves.” More