Gloria had no interest in doing acting. Lots of her friends, who knew how well she sang, tried to get her into community musicals or light opera, but she wasn't interested in that either. Her voice was a gift from God, and it was to be used in God's service. She also had no interest in acting: she said, whenever the topic came up, that she had spent far too much time and trouble figuring out who she was, why should she try and pretend to be someone else?
She did, however, get *me* into acting. (At least, into formal acting. I'm a teacher, and teachers do a *lot* of informal acting.) "Walk to Bethlehem" was a famous Christmas event on the North Shore, put on by West Vancouver Baptist Church. The church had an interesting building, or set of buildings, which could be configured into multiple stages for multiple scenes. Therefore, a multi-scene play was put together where the audience moved and the actors stayed put. The actors only had to act in 1ten minute segments or playlets, and they did it multiple times per night. The audience would, literally, walk to, and through, Bethlehem. Seeing the different scenes, and then walking on to the next one.
I knew about Walk to Bethlehem, of course: everyone on the North Shore knew about Walk to Bethlehem. Thousands of people saw it every year, and many people saw it regularly every year. At one point they added an additional scene at the beginning. The regulars in the production, of course, all had their favorite regular parts, so they were having a bit of trouble casting this new scene. One of Gloria's friends suggested that I try out, and Gloria thought that it was a good idea as well. So I tried out and got the part of Jonathan the Fuller.
This particular scene does not take place at Christmas time, but seven hundred years before. This initial scene is the prophecy of the Messiah's birth by the prophet Isaiah. This prophecy, according to scripture, takes place in a fuller's field, so then they wrote in the part of a fuller: Jonathan the Fuller. That's me.
A fuller was a cleaner, a launderer. A fuller would clean clothes. Since oxydol had not been invented yet, certain other materials were used to clean clothes. The scene itself, as laid out, had grass representing the fact that it was a field, and a child's wading pool representing a pond. (There should have been a stream, for rinsing, but that would have been entirely too difficult to create in a fixed set with the resources available.)
The character of Jonathan the Fuller is primarily there for comic relief. Jonathan the Fuller is a self-important little guy, who is only concerned about his own business, and really isn't aware of, and doesn't understand, the significance of what is going on around him. He thinks that the refugees, streaming into Jerusalem from a war, will make him rich, and he's quite happy about that, not paying any intention to the fact that Jerusalem, itself, is under threat.
Most of the action takes place on a gravel pathway that is laid out in the scene. For the pathway, the set designers used pea gravel. This decision was obviously made because pea gravel is easier to clean up, after the production, then regular gravel. However, pea gravel is pretty treacherous stuff to walk on. The first year that I did this part, I played a part that was played, by the other team of actors, by the author of the script. Unfortunately, on the first night that he played the part, he slid on the pea gravel, fell, and put his back out. (The first entrance of Jonathan the Fuller is of him rushing out of a shed at the back of the scene, and down the path. It's a bit tricky, appearing to be rushing, but still placing your feet *very* carefully as you "rush.") Therefore, I had to play all of the performances that year. I played Jonathan the Fuller in front of 6,000 people that year.
Gloria was a hard worker, but she wasn’t just a worker. At least, not in the strictly commercial sense. Of probably greater importance to her was her work for the church, devoted to her God. She taught Sunday school. She was involved with junior choirs, and their musical plays. She made costumes for those plays, as well, combining both her musical and seamstress talents. Many of those costumes are still stored, used, and sometimes loaned out from this church. Again, a number of those church activities were chosen because her girls were involved in them. As her job responsibilities increased, and her health declined, church work necessarily declined as well, but she always maintained a keen interest in a number of congregations that she had helped over her lifetime.
Gloria helped in another way. An awful lot of the costumes that were used in the production of Walk to Bethlehem, had, in fact, been created by Gloria. They had been sewn up many years before, to support a variety of *other* Christmas plays in theatricals that the church had put on before it got into Walk to Bethlehem in a big way. So, the costume that I wore, as Jonathan the Fuller, had, in fact, been sown by Gloria, originally intended as a shepherd.
I played Jonathan the Fuller for about a decade. It was fun, and I looked forward to it as a Christmas event every year. Eventually Walk to Bethlehem was just too big a production for the church to sustain every year. It took away from the church being able to do much of anything else over the Christmas season. Latterly it was reduced in scope, and, in one production that was put on with a number of scenes on the sanctuary platform, I played both the part of Jonathan the Fuller, and John The Innkeeper. During those years, nobody could have told you who Rob Slade was, but *everybody* in West Vancouver Baptist knew who Jonathan the Fuller was.
Previous: https://fibrecookery.blogspot.com/2025/02/mgg-619-gloria-health-2.html
Introduction and ToC: https://fibrecookery.blogspot.com/2023/10/mgg-introduction.html
Next: https://fibrecookery.blogspot.com/2025/03/mgg-621-gloria-handy.html
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