Summer, 1863. The Civil War. Louisiana.
“Hear it. Here it comes, a tide of a tale…”
In …and Jesus moonwalks on the Mississippi the River calls to us, insisting we listen as she weaves a story of the South in the midst of the Civil War.
“Do lean closer. Quietly closer./ I shall quilt it into your ear.”
Accompanied by a flash of lightning and a crash of thunder, the River conjures the wounded body of Demeter, an escaped slave who has sought the banks of the Mississippi searching for a lost daughter. Demeter is the “thread of history needing to be needled-in” about whom the Mississippi longs to tell us. Thus begins playwright Marcus Gardley’s poetic journey back in American history.
The summer of 1863 saw two major victories for the Union Army. In the North, the Battle of Gettysburg devastated the Pennsylvania countryside, leaving tens of thousands of soldiers dead, but proving essential to contain the northward advance of the Confederate Army. In the South, the long and brutal Siege of Vicksburg, Mississippi ended with Confederate surrender the day after General Lee lost at Gettysburg. This second Union victory gave the North a much coveted military prize: control of the mighty Mississippi River.
But in the world of …and Jesus moonwalks on the Mississippi no mortal would imagine claiming authority over the River/Storyteller. She is Nature embodied, and she cuts her way powerfully through the Southern towns suffering under the Confederacy’s ill state. She stands between two groups of journeyers, whose stories she narrates, wresting them asunder geographically as well as emotionally, with home and love always being just on the other side of the River.
Jean Verse and Christopher Johns (aka “Yankee Pot Roast”) meet on the killing fields outside of Vicksburg. Christopher was blinded by cannon fire during a battle, and lies waiting for Jesus to come take him to Heaven. Instead of his Savior, however, Christopher is found by Jean, who seems more interested in taking his money than his soul. Jean has defected from the Confederate Army and is trying to find his way back to his love, scavenging at battle sites to survive. The two men form an unlikely bond as they move West towards the Mississippi River, becoming interdependent as they work their way through the lush environs surrounding the Mississippi.
West of the River, in Natchez, Louisiana, a once prosperous household has fallen to ruin from the hardships of war. Cadence Verse, mother of Blanche and adopted mother of the ebullient Free Girl, drunkenly laments the ongoing war and her husband’s absence. Demeter, whom the River introduced us to earlier, comes upon this household while traveling South. Unbeknownst to all but the Mighty Mississippi, a meeting of worlds, stranger and more significant than imagined, is contained within the run-down Verse plantation house.
Gardley includes an epigram to his play, a quote by the great playwright Federico Garcia Lorca: “A play is a poem standing up.” …and Jesus moonwalks on the Mississippi uses poetic language to enrich a historical-imaginative landscape with anachronism and contradiction. Words define and obfuscate meaning at once; characters save and destroy one another simultaneously. The reality of the historical setting does not supersede the occurrence of magic in this world. Jesus is both a guiding spiritual force for an entire population and the very close, imaginary friend of a seven-year-old girl.
With comic wit and tragic elegance, …and Jesus moonwalks on the Mississippi achieves a balance found only in the best plays. The Summer Cabaret is thrilled to present this original work by one of Yale School of Drama’s most talented graduates.