Word: shaffer
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BIRD AND CO-PRODUCER Deborah Shaffer use hundreds of still photos, patches of newsreel footage, and the music the Wobblies sung to document both the conditions of the era (in the lumber camps, "they were afraid the bindlestiffs would carry out the plates so they nailed the plates to the table and washed them out with a hose after they were finished eating") and the nobility of the Wobbly effort. The still photos work better than the newsreel footage--the herky-jerky pace of old movies jars the viewer, and even then everyone insisted on waving and posing for movie...
...bizarre come-on for Barnum & Bailey. Not at all. The 200 clowns were a congregation. The popcorn pass-along was part of a two-hour Christian Communion service conducted entirely in mime and gesture by the Rev. Floyd Shaffer, the red-and-white clown, who is really a Lutheran minister from Roseville, Mich. Both services and parades were among the highlights of a weeklong workshop on the use of clowning, mime, puppetry and dance in Christian worship and ministry that attracted some 350 people to the campus of New Orleans' Loyola University. More than 400 attended a second gathering...
...Last Supper, ordinary bread and cheap table wine became eternal symbols of Jesus' love and sacrifice. At Pentecost, a group of illiterate fishermen were turned into inspired preachers who could speak to every man present in his own language. "Isn't that Christ's message," asks Shaffer, "that even ordinary people can become divine through his love...
...tradition. Clowns often had an important role in medieval church services: they played the part of "holy interrupters," popping up to illustrate a theological point through mime, magic or even mockery. Gradually, however, they began to satirize the church and secular society. "This did not make clowns very popular," Shaffer notes. They fell out of favor with the church and eventually were declared satanic. Thereafter clowns kept to the secular world of the circus-at least until their current revival...
...GREATER PROBLEM with Kugelmass stems from the fact that it simply does not belong with the Shaffer plays. Including it not only makes the evening too long (more than three hours), but also emphasizes the play's own inferiority. Kugelmass appears even more withered and yellow when juxtaposed with the other, better shows. Therefore, unless Kugelmass can be sparked with the same humor, vitality and depth as the Shaffer plays, perhaps it would be best left to succumb to another of biology's theories--survival of the fittest. Ear and Eye are excellent, even with some marginal performances, and deserve...