NEW YORK, NY.- When I’ve had the opportunity, as a wandering Jew, to visit the houses of worship of friends, I’ve never felt much in danger of conversion. But if I did, it would surely be the music that got me.
That’s also been true for me when visiting the church of Heather Christian: I’m not sure what faith she’s selling, but I’m a sucker for the way it sounds. In “Terce: A Practical Breviary,” which opened Sunday at the Space at Irondale in the Fort Greene neighborhood of Brooklyn, she offers a new installment in what is evidently a plan to remake the Catholic Mass of her childhood in egalitarian if cryptic new terms.
She’s doing so one rhapsodic service at a time. In 2020 she offered “Prime,” her version of the 6 a.m. liturgy. “Terce,” produced by Here as the centerpiece of this year’s Prototype festival, advances three hours to midmorning. (The title derives from the Latin for “third.”) By then, a congregation would presumably be awake enough to absorb its sunlit richness.
That richness does not depend on the usual elements of plays or prayer: characters and narratives, pipe organs and priests. “Terce” is not theater except to the extent that religious ritual, being a parent of theater, bears a family resemblance.
And it’s more of a spectacle than a service. Instead of emulating a leader-follower dichotomy, “Terce” draws from the talents and experiences of a singing, dancing and playing ensemble of 38 “caregivers and makers” — some professional and even virtuosic like Christian, some amateur and unpolished. Keyboards, guitars, woodwinds, strings and percussion are part of the instrumental mix (music direction by Mona Seyed-Bolorforosh and Jacklyn Riha), but so are key rings, silverware, an eggbeater and a vacuum cleaner.
As those homely implements suggest, “Terce” focuses on the work of people not often celebrated in liturgy: those who keep house, cultivate gardens, nurture children. A program note describes the approach as a “lens of the divine feminine,” albeit one that does not reject maleness.
The Heather Christian Version of Psalm 118, which in the King James Version begins, “O give thanks unto the Lord; for he is good,” makes the shift clear. “If Creation stepped down to be among us in the city,” Christian sings, “She would not dress in Gucci or argue loud across the table.”
Though the specific references can seem hermetic — this is still private prayer, even if turned outward — the vision is clear enough. References to mothers, plants and foods abound instead of kings and Armageddons. (Hazelnuts figure heavily.) The blood frequently mentioned is not Jesus’, but “her own.”
The music, too, is idiosyncratic: For 60 minutes, plainsong, gospel, electronica, soul and the New Orleans funk of Christian’s upbringing layer into each other like atmospheric thermals. You ride them, completely trusting, with no idea where you’re headed. Like Christian’s astonishing “Oratorio for Living Things” in 2022, “Terce” aims to overwhelm the critical ear through the strangeness, relentlessness and fullness of its sound.
The sonic experience (sound design by Nick Kourtides) is matched by an immersive physical one. In Keenan Tyler Oliphant’s rich staging at Irondale, the ensemble, wearing Brenda Abbandandolo’s many clever cuts of denim, swarms around and among the audience of 190, who sit in a large oval just two rows deep. The modest, almost runic choreography is sourced, the program says, “from our own mothers,” including Christian’s and Oliphant’s.
Throughout, video screens display text and illustrations; some include imagery reminiscent of stained glass, and one, drawn live at the performance I attended, a turnip. Hanging in the hollow above the oval, moodily lit by Masha Tsimring, is Nick Vaughan and Jake Margolin’s vast rigging of ropes and pulleys and fabric panels, suggesting a ship and also a spiderweb.
Faith being both of those things, the image is fitting. I sometimes felt safe in the hold of something larger than myself and sometimes helplessly ensnared in its oddity. That you can’t see everything happening on the other side of the oval — and that the harmonies you hear depend on which performers are nearby — enhances the idea that, however communal the expression, transcendence is intensely personal and fleeting.
“I grasp it,” Christian writes in her adaptation of a prayer by the medieval anchoress Julian of Norwich, “for a moment and in bliss.” And then: “I lose it.”
Been there. Loved that.
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‘Terce: A Practical Breviary’
Through Feb. 4 at the Space at Irondale, Brooklyn; prototypefestival.org. Running time: 1 hour.
This article originally appeared in
The New York Times.
