The Catholic News & Herald
March 17, 2000

"Performer brings biblical-times women to life"
By Joanita M. Nellenbach

ASHEVILLE - Who were they - the women who surrounded Jesus and Mary? You can find out who one woman thinks they were.

Olivia Woodford has written "Faith and Hope: A Mother's Story" and "The Heart of the Cross," one-woman plays that bring to life some of the Women who were - and who may have been - part of Jesus' and Mary's world.

"You watch the characters have spiritual awakenings," she said. "Women are usually silent in Scripture, and in real life, their voices are often not as strong as men's. So, to have a whole evening where women's voices are heard affirms our place in the world and our relationship to the church and God. At the same time, men are not threatened."

She has been performing "Faith and Hope: A Mother's Story" for two years. Last Advent she gave performances at Grace Baptist, Emma United Methodist, and St. Eugene Catholic in Asheville; St. Margaret Mary Catholic, Swannanoa; St. John Catholic, Waynesville; and St. Margaret Catholic, Maggie Valley, among other churches.

The play is about Mary; although, Mary herself never appears. Instead, the characters are women who knew or might have known her: her cousin, Elizabeth; her mother, Anne; Anna, the prophetess; a shepherdess watching a flock of sheep on a hill above Bethlehem; and Leah, a young woman who was one of Mary's schoolmates. The audience can see how each woman changes because of her relationship with Mary.

"I think what I do is end up putting myself in their shoes," Woodford said.

She uses few props. The most important is a shawl that she wears in a different way for each character. For Elizabeth, it becomes an apron. For Anna, the prophetess, the shawl is bundled so that she seems to be carrying the baby in her arms as she pronounces about his future. Leah, involved in the world, starts out wearing the stole seductively but finally is blanketed in it.

"I knew I wanted someone who wasn't caught up in the story," Woodford said. "Leah's attention is focused the same place as most people's. Everybody has their own time and their own season. She ends up as an old woman, dedicating her whole life to Jesus."

Woodford graduated from Boston University with a bachelor's degree in theatre and worked as an actress in New York. She did mainly Shakespeare but left "because the quality and message of the theater didn't speak to me," she said.

Moving to Asheville, she started the Healing Theater. "I wanted to create a venue where the audience was impacted," she said. "I wanted theater that initiated some kind of reflection. In one play, the "actors stepped forward to say how their characters were like them."

Woodford began working on "Faith and Hope: A Mother's Story" during six months spent recuperating from back problems. She read books, absorbing details about the time and place in which Jesus lived.

"I wrote the Christmas play in 10 days," she said, "but I thought about it for six years and researched it for five months. When I was rehearsing it, I cried all the way through. In some scenes, I still cry.

The Easter play has a 10-year history. Just as Mary is not a character in the Christmas play, Jesus does not appear in the Easter play. The women in "The Heart of the Cross" include Veronica, Mary Magdalene, Martha and Jesus' mother.

What was life like for Martha, who had to take care of the household details when Jesus and his disciples visited?

"I think, what if we just did what Jesus did and went from town to town thinking "God will provide"; well, somebody has to do the providing," Woodford said. Referring to the Last Supper, she adds, "What would you do if 13 people suddenly showed up [for dinner]?"

And then there is Jesus' mother. In this play, she does appear, standing at the cross, "not only losing her son, but losing him in such a violent, humiliating way," Woodford said. "To watch someone you love die, the purest person you've ever met, [and he's] not being embraced by the world. Am I safe in the world? Will God be accepted in my community?"

She wrote the play to perform at her own church and invited a friend who was a member of a Congregationalist Church to attend the program. "You've got to have this at my church," the friend exclaimed, which began a series of performances for people of various faith traditions, including a group of Hindus. She believes that the stories of the women she portrays are the stories of all women.