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Month: August 2025

Doubt: A Review

Doubt: A Review

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Last weekend (August 15-17), I had the privilege of attending performances of Journey Theatric Sanctuary’s production of Doubt: A Parable. This was presented at the Rose Lehrman Arts Center on the HACC community college campus in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.

Doubt: A Parable is a Pulitzer Prize and Tony Award winning play by John Patrick Shanley, about a nun who is Principal at a Catholic school and suspects a priest of taking liberties with a young boy. She attempts to get to the truth of the matter, enlisting the help of a younger nun, and of the boy’s mother – hindered as she is by the Church’s strict patriarchy, which makes reporting her concerns according to the rules a hopeless cause. It’s a challenging script with a difficult subject matter.

Director and Journey Theatric Sanctuary founder Troy Cooper assembled a stellar cast of four actors, each of whom was perfect for their role. Griffin Yeyna opened the show as the priest, Father Brendan Flynn, giving a sermon on the topic of faith and doubt. In a later monologue in the role of teacher, he came across as an easygoing authority figure. But in his scenes with the nuns, he sometimes squirmed under their questioning, and sometimes lashed out with indigant rage.

The main character in the show, the stern and determined Sister Aloysius, was played by veteran actor Aileen Lynch-McCulloch, who brought her experience to bear to bring out the layers in her character. Sister Aloysius was hard-headed and persistent in her pursuit of the truth, adamant in her beliefs on the proper relationship the clergy should have with their parishioners and students. She employed a kind of Socratic method in her probing questions as she recruited the younger nun to her cause, and as she interrogated the priest. She also had a worldly sense of humor that got laughs from the audience at times, breaking the tension in the very taut script.

Her counterpart, Sister James, was a less experienced nun, played by Jess Mooney in just her third role on stage. Mooney brought a sweetness and eager naivete to her character, which made her susceptible to Father Flynn’s charisma, and hesitant to see his potential dark side. Janae Yellock as Mrs. Muller, the young boy’s mother, had only one scene, but she brilliantly portrayed a 1960s era black mother, used to navigating a world of both male and white supremacy. Mrs. Muller’s strategy for guarding her son’s interests was an unsettling and eye-opening surprise for Sister Aloysius.

These four actors did excellent work expressing the subtleties of their characters’ different viewpoints. Each, in their own way, had blinders on that limited their perception of the whole truth of the matter at hand. Each, consequently, faced their own doubts. Caught up in the turmoil of these conflicting perspectives was the fate of one little boy.

The design of the quite beautiful set helped underscore this theme, being split into two sections with starkly different appearances and color palettes.

Journey Theatric Sanctuary’s production of Doubt: A Parable was tense and emotionally powerful, doing justice to the company’s stated mission of demonstrating the transformative power of theatre. I wish it had had a larger audience and/or a longer run, because there was so much talent brought to bear which deserved to be seen.

I note here that Griffin Yeyna and Aileen Lynch-McCulloch have appeared together before, in Reading Theater Project’s November 2023 production of Lauren Gunderson’s Silent Sky. They have great chemistry on stage, and I would love to see them opposite one another again. Also, in the interest of full disclosure I must mention that I have known Aileen for many, many years and she is my dearest friend.

Journey Theatric Sanctuary’s website is here: https://www.journeytheatricsanctuary.com/
I wish this new theatre company the best of luck growing its program and expanding its outreach.

Introducing “Darkest Hour”

Introducing “Darkest Hour”

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I’ve had this blog for over eight years now. My posts cover a variety of topics (just look at the list of categories). Some of them are personal, about my own life story, while others focus on my interests and hobbies, which is nerdy stuff like board games, books, film and theater, science fiction. Plus – as you know if you have followed this blog for long – analyzing history and social change, particularly through the lens of theories of historical cycles like generations theory.

Those latter posts can get pretty involved. As it turns out, there is a platform out there where lots of folks are posting the same sort of deeper social analysis, and I’ve decided to shift my own content of that nature over to there. So I have started a Substack publication.

Behold!

Looks pretty cool, huh? A bit ominous, too, I admit.

If you are reading this blog post soon after it was published, you are probably one of my subscribers and got it in an email. If you are interested in my involved social commentary as much as lighter fare like my posts about what’s going on in my life or movie reviews or whatnot, please subscribe on Substack as well. I would appreciate the support. And don’t worry, the lighter fare will continue to go up on this blog.

You can click on the image above to get to my Substack, or go here: https://stevebarrera.substack.com/

That’s all, thanks!

Life in the Blue Zone

Life in the Blue Zone

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We live in Berks county, Pennsylvania, just south of Reading, which I have described as living in the purple zone. We’re in a Democratic Congressional district, surrounded by Trump supporters. But right now I’m visiting my Mom in Northern Virginia, near Washington DC, and I gotta say, it is refreshingly blue zone here. By which I mean, clearly liberal Democrat in its political leanings. There are lots of lawns around here with signs like these:

Granted, having four signs in a row is a rarity, but lots of lawns have one or two like this

The neighborhood my Mom lives is a middle class idyll, lush with vegetation and flowers thriving in the summer season. The plant life here loves the heat and humidity, which I am not as used to since I moved up north about ten years ago. I can tell I’m south of the Mason-Dixon line.

The lovely Crepe Myrtle, beautifying Southern neightborhoods since 1790 (per Wikipedia)

The houses were built in the mid-twentieth century, and are a bit crowded together, with well-cared for and nicely decorated lawns. It’s much neater here than where I live; Pennsylvanians are fine with leaving piles of junk in their yards. That’s part of our “pursue your happiness” mentality (we started this whole experiment, you know).

There are birds and butterflies everywhere when I go on my walks, as well as the occasional adorable four-legged creature like a squirrel, rabbit, or chipmunk. It makes sense because the neighborhood is basically a forest filled with houses.

What’s great, and what really reminds me that I’m not in MAGA-land any more, is the ethnic and religious diverity here. I hear a variety of languages when I’m out and about. I see women wearing traditional head coverings. There are loads of Spanish-speaking people, and not just working as contractors on the houses, but living in them. And no signs of the frosty brigades.

It feels like I’ve gone back in time to the Obama administration!

Of course, we could never afford to move here. The low-end prices on the houses is $700K. So we’ll just have to stay on our dirt farm in Pennsylvania, and get along with our Trumpy neighbors. But it’s nice to visit the blue zone from time to time.

A well manicured lawn in the blue zone, with the latest sign of the times
Yes, the Boomers Did That

Yes, the Boomers Did That

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I was struck by this post on Thomas P. M. Barnett’s Global Throughlines substack, because of how well if dovetails with generations theory: [POST] Conjoined at birth, separated by death?

Here’s an excerpt so you can see what I mean:

In my reading, the Greatest Generation’s influence peaked around 1965 and began its slow surrender to the whims and desires of the Boomers from that point on. So, yeah, while we can say that the Boomers came of age during a period of immense social change, driving movements such as civil rights, anti-war protests, and shifts in cultural norms (e.g., feminism, environmentalism), they didn’t really dominate the workforce and political elite until the early 1980s (the shift from Hippies to so-called Yuppies).

Again, the Boomers were blessed from the start, growing up in a time of American confidence and expansion. Like most would-be “revolutionary” generations, after the raucous efforts of their youth, the real talent went into business and technology and the leftovers went into politics. As such, the Boomers remade our world with the information revolution but passed very little meaningful legislation, instead succumbing to a bizarrely counter-productive ideological polarization as they aged.

The Boomers accumulated vast wealth, but also presided over growing income inequality. Their consolidation of political power and economic resources created serious barriers for younger generations, and has contributed to a serious decline in our nation’s institutions — almost all of which now are held in low esteem as the Boomers begin to depart.

The Boomers’ long reign likewise distorted America’s perceptions and understanding of the Greatest Generation’s greatest legacy — namely, the international liberal trade order we now call globalization.

I see these parallels all the time with geostrategists like Barnett. They are pattern-seekers and they inevitably detect the same pattern of generational change found in Strauss-Howe generational theory. Barnett doesn’t see it in Strauss-Howe terms (that there are generational archetypes and cycles), but he does get that Boomers (Prophet archetype) grew up in post-war prosperity, and that they attacked the institutions established by the Greatest Generation (Hero archetype) in their youth (1960s), and dismantled them when they came into political power (now).

Different thinkers might come up with different explanations for these kinds of sociological patterns, but the fact that they all see similar ones tells me they are looking at something real.

Barnett laments what Boomers have done to the international liberal trade order, but it’s hardly surprising – they’ve been bitching about it for decades, at least in their right-wing camp. If you read Barnett’s substack posts, you will see that he see some good in this desrtruction, as it is pushes us along to needed reforms in the world order. And, of course, the destruction and recreation of the world order is exactly what Strauss and Howe predict as part of their “Fourth Turning.”

I will conclude this post by noting that I plan to start writing more on substack; I will probably post all my social commentary there, and only post more personal or ligher fare on this blog. Here is my substack link for some teaser posts I already have out there: https://stevebarrera.substack.com/