Amazing Grace

This scene is probably one of my favorites in the whole play. It possesses such beauty and hope within a very dark story. This moment taught me a lot about finding the varying shades within a production and how important that is to have. Without these moments of light, the play runs the risk of becoming too harrowing and from my experience audience members tend to shut off when this happens. In order to have the maxium impace the play needs to show the dark and the light so the audience are able to engage with it and not feel like they need to turn away and ignore the horror. A lot of the feedback I heard after our first show was how influential this scene was, being the defining moment where a lot of audience members started crying. I heard many people saying that the reason this scene was so powerful was because they knew that it was real, and someone somewhere decided to actively protest against the hatred filled words of Fred Phelps by dressing up as angels.

The layering of the scene is beautiful, there are key moments where I always feel a huge rush of happiness and hope during the singing. I think the contrast of seeing someone preach such horrible views alongside a group of people emitting nothing but love is immensely powerful and effective. The difference in these two ways of life becomes clearly outlined on stage, and it takes us on a journey of love trumping hate. Singing in that scene is a experience that brought me joy and happiness, I hope those feelings were felt by the audience as well.