Word: gothard
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...husband to wife to child. That is "God's chain of command," the most controversial of the "universal, underlying, nonoptional principles" of family life that are being proclaimed by the Rev. Bill Gothard, 39, to mass audiences in two dozen cities from Seattle to Philadelphia. This year as many as 500,000 people, some via closed-circuit TV, will attend Gothard's traveling "Institute in Basic Youth Conflicts," which consists of 28 hours of lectures in a week's time (basic cost for the course: $45). These throngs hear about the lectures only by word of mouth...
...Jokes. Standing ramrod-straight in a business suit, Gothard lectures with few gestures, fewer jokes, no vocal theatrics and as props, only an easel for sketching and an overhead projector that flashes charts and lists of "Basic Steps" or "Root Problems" on a screen. Yet his hearers sit in rapt attention, jotting in thick red notebooks. Half of the listeners are in their teens or 20s, half are older couples, mostly white Protestant and middle class, eager for packaged help on the woes that afflict modern American families. Thousands are so enthusiastic that they take the course a second time...
After graduating in 1957 from Wheaton (Ill.) College and being ordained by the conservative, independent La Grange Bible Church, Gothard worked with teen-agers in suburban churches as well as youth gangs in Chicago. Both groups were similarly disturbed, he decided, and their family life was to blame. To counteract their personal problems, he developed a set of absolute "principles," like his theory about God's chain of command...
...Charge of the Light Brigade) lights the sumptuous sets to give a consistent aura of hallucination. Russell lashes his actors into a histrionic verve that is reminiscent in equal parts of the Royal Shakespeare Company, the Living Theater and Bedlam. The supporting cast (Dudley Sutton and Michael Gothard most prominent among them) act like a chorus and look like creatures from a Bosch triptych. Oliver Reed is suitably forceful as Grandier; it is indeed his best performance. Vanessa Redgrave, a consummate actress, is fine as Sister Jeanne, except that she tends to get lost amidst all the sound and fury...
This recognizable story is presented in long sequences, usually one take, in which the actors were allowed a maximum of freedom to improvise their own dialogue: aside from what may be some over-acting by Michael Gothard as Max, the result comes off as well as any improvised acting I've ever seen. But the distinction between acting and being in Herostratus is hazy, complicated by Levy's choice of actors whose personalities he felt were in harmony with those of the characters they were to portray. Consequently, the character can be over acting-that being the nature...