An engaged chronicle of the time
By David Bradley
Shakespeare's Hamlet tells us actors are the "brief chronicles of the time." If so, the record left by Ceal Phelan, the actor, teacher, and director who moved Philadelphia audiences for decades and died this month at 63, points us to what a life in our time can be when lived with imagination, sensitivity, and conviction.
Ceal believed theatre belonged in the heart of a community, that telling stories of mothers and queens and even fantastical creatures, and teaching others how to inhabit those characters, was a way to build understanding, connection, and peace. Her life was a testament to enduring values - relationship, truth, and the call of conscience.
She and her husband Peter DeLaurier cofounded the Delaware Theatre Company, and have been central ensemble members at People's Light and Theatre in Malvern since 1989. She acted and directed throughout the region, and taught special-needs students, college kids, and senior citizens from Germantown to Kimberton. She moved among these varied stages with quiet purpose, her path charting a vision of a larger stage - one that made room for voices from all walks of life.
Her 40-plus-year career included numerous standout performances. Yet I'm drawn to a moment far removed from the spotlight. We were at a vocational high school in Chester County, creating a student production of Brecht's The Good Person of Setzuan, in which the gods come to earth looking for just one good person who can convince them the world is worth saving.
At the dress rehearsal, the girl playing the lead didn't show up. Ceal did the role, script in hand. She, of course, delivered, her final scene a heartfelt plea to the gods to give goodness a chance. A student approached her afterwards. "You were really crying," he said, amazed she could so fully embody feelings that weren't even hers.
For Ceal, theater was an opportunity to walk in someone else's shoes. It was an act of empathy and connection and embracing difference. It was her heartfelt plea for goodness and healing a broken world.
From the News Desk
But unlike April, Ceal would never proclaim it. She just did it. She wrote letters to Congress and did community organizing with the Willistown Monthly Meeting. She was honest to her core, with an integrity that combined art, education, and activism as a single act of passionate imagination.
At People's Light in 1999, Ceal played Miss Helen, the reclusive artist in Athol Fugard's The Road to Mecca. In her art, Miss Helen strives for "a city of light and color more splendid than anything I ever imagined." The indelible final scene had Ceal illuminating the stage, candle by candle, as she defended her vision. This was Ceal: a Quaker forever holding people "in the light," a woman who lived with cancer for 10½ years and still worked with fervor as an artist and citizen.
Fully aware of the shadows, and of the time it takes to truly light a path through a broken world, Ceal Phelan offered an affirming flame. Our own chronicle may be too brief, she knew, but it can be a worthwhile story if it makes a long-term commitment to place, to learning, to greater understanding, and, finally, to imagining what can change.
David Bradley is a longtime company member at People's Light and Theatre. E-mail him at bradleydt@gmail.com.
No comments:
Post a Comment