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NARR 1:
On a bitter-cold Saturday night, Joe Rosato stands outside, holding a brass lantern. He's taking tickets to his one-man show, "Moby-Dick: The Sermon."
ACT 1:
Hello! Hi! Paying cash or online? I paid online. OK, give me a name. Posen. P-O-S-E-N. Two, Posen. Go.
NARR 2:
Audience members go through the cemetery gates, up a winding driveway. Usually, Joe has them wait with him at the top of the hill. Then, as a group, they walk down to the old stone chapel, where he stages his show. Tonight, because it's so cold, most people hurry ahead. Joe has worked as an actor, a stagehand, and a director. And he's a devoted Melville fan.
ACT 2:
I've liked this piece for the longest time, always wanted to wind up putting this thing up.
NARR 3:
In Moby-Dick, Ishmael, the narrator, goes into a small church in New Bedford, Connecticut, before he boards the Pequod. Father Mapple, a former sailor himself, delivers a rousing sermon about Jonah and the Whale. Tonight, Mapple's chapel is packed.
SOUND 1:
Chapel sound
NARR 4:
In his book, Melville notes that "there was a low rumbling of heavy sea-boots among the benches, and a still slighter shuffling of women's shoes" before Father Mapple took to the pulpit. Tonight's crowd is restless.
SOUND 2:
More chapel sound, with singing
NARR 5:
Two women, in period costume, dresses and bonnets, walk down the aisle, carrying hymnals. A candle and an old chandelier flicker against the grey stone walls. Lights and speakers outside, controlled by a computer backstage, simulate a raging storm.
SOUND 3:
Singing
NARR 6:
Father Mapple appears atop a wooden pulpit, adorned with a driftwood cross, stage-right, wearing a navy-blue wool coat. He joins the two women in song.
SOUND 4:
More singing, with Mapple
NARR 7:
Then, to paraphrase Melville, a brief pause ensues; the preacher slowly turns over the leaves of the Bible, and at last, folding his hand down upon the proper page, says....
ACT 3:
Beloved shipmates, clinch the last verse of the first chapter of Jonah -- And God had prepared a great fish to swallow up Jonah.
NARR 8:
Mapple pauses to look over his congregation. He seems to see sailors and whalers among the crowd of Brooklyn hipsters, young families, and elderly couples. Rosato says that they've had a few Melville scholars come to the show. They brought copies of Moby-Dick, to check for accuracy.
SOUND 5:
More sermon
NARR 9:
It IS a stirring sermon. Beautifully written. About Jonah and his ill-fated voyage to Tarshish.... Mapple says that man must live by the Ten Commandments....
ACT 4:
"And if we obey God, we must disobey ourselves; and it is in this disobeying ourselves, wherein the hardness of obeying God consists."
NARR 10:
Jonah disobeyed him. And ended up in the belly of a whale.
ACT 5:
"He goes down in the whirling heart of such a masterless commotion that he scarce heeds the moment when he drops seething into the yawning jaws awaiting him."
NARR 11:
The whole thing lasts forty-five minutes.
ACT 6:
"For what is man that he should live out the lifetime of his God?"
NARR 11:
Mapple appears exhausted and ill. He staggers down from the pulpit. The crowd sits in silence, transfixed, for more than a minute. Richard Kirkwood, who plays Mapple, says that the sermon foretells the story of Ishmael and Captain Ahab, and their quest for the illusive white whale.
ACT 7:
You know, I think it kind of functions as a microcosm for the book as whole.
NARR 18:
The audience gets up to go. Michael Titler praises the show.
ACT 8:
It was the idea of Melville. And Brooklyn, where I was born. And the whole thought just resonated with me and drew me here.
NARR:
You can hear Father Mapple's sermon, at the Green-Wood Chapel, on the 2nd and 3rd Saturdays of every month.
SOC:
David Gura. Columbia Radio News.