Babylon Wrap-Up

I can't believe how quickly the weeks are passing by this spring! Of course, "spring" seem like a misnomer as the temperatures have fallen and snow has been coming down most of the day. "A little bit of winter hid and came out in the spring," as my daughter described it (and thus began a poem the entire family contributed to this morning). That was a lovely start to the day, but nothing much seem to function as it should from that point on, and I was racing to get another scipt done before this evening's meeting.

We made it to Daniel 6, where we explained how Daniel got into the lion's den in the first place, and then got him out. So it's goodbye to the "denizens" and off to dreamland and from there to Patmos, where we switch dreamers and John the Revelator will take center stage. I have numerous problems to solve there, both in ideas and execution, but before I get to that, let me wrap up a few things from the Babylon segment.

We've had three different kings in the past three weeks, all performed by a very talented fourth grader named Beth. She had done Nebuchadnezzar in earlier episodes, and she helped to develop him into a very childish character. Belshazzar, Nebuchadnezzar's grandson, is known primarily for giving the big party at which God's hand appeared and wrote words of judgement on the wall. I played that up and developed him as a brain-dead party dude, egged on by a couple of "Bill and Ted" type buddies. Then tonight we had Darius the Mede, who was more pompous and self-important, egged on by a couple of his presidents (Jackson and Johnson) to pass the law forbidding prayer to any other than the king during "Darius the Mede Month." The last two weeks the flashback characters were handled as puppets in a separate acting space, rather than the live actors, and the children were involved as puppeteers.

When I first developed the lions, I thought Lenny and Leonora would be more important, with Lex remaining a gruff presence mostly offstage. As it turned out, Lex was the most important and the central story arc ended up being how he came to like and respect Daniel (whom he originally thought of as a forbidden delicacy he was determined to find some way of eating). Quite unexpectedly as I wrote, Daniel began using the stories of bad kings he had known to teach Lex how to be a better king, and he assured the lion that some day he would return to the wild and to his dominion (as Nebuchadnezzar did after his seven years of living like an wild animal). Thanks to a heavy sewing session last night, I was able to get Lex's mouth opened and working in time for tonight's opener, the ol' lion-tamer-putting-his-head-in-the-lion's-mouth routine. Nora startled him and reflexively he swallowed, then gagged on the prophet, which put Daniel in danger and called out the angel Azmaveth, but when they were finally able to explain they told everybody that Daniel was simply looking into a cavity which was giving Lex trouble. That display of trust, and the final farewell when Daniel left the den tonight proved what good friends they had become.