Play A Fundraiser For Temple Shalom

It sounds like the setup for a bad joke or a great “Waiting for Godot”-style tragi-comedy:

God and Satan meet for their periodic cribbage game at Job’s house. But Satan announces he wants to play something new, a game he’s made up called “Job.”

Doris, the one-woman Greek chorus, stops by, as does Dionysus, the Greek patron of the theater, and the Messenger, presumably the one you’re not supposed to shoot.

In Springdale playwright Dan Borengasser’s script, Dionysus thinks characters going in and out of five doors makes the tale a farce. Doris says the fact there’s a Greek chorus means it’s probably a tragedy. And God and Satan are kind of leaving the outcome to Job.

“Lord Byron once said, ‘All tragedies are finished by a death; all comedies are ended by a marriage,’” Borengasser says. Dionysus “realizes that they’re heading for a tragedy unless he can create a second act that ends with a marriage.

When he finally figures out exactly what’s going on, he begins his plan to turn this tragedy into a comedy.”

“If you like to see old stories told a new way, then don’t miss Dan Borengasser’s ‘Goat Song Revel,’” Ohio State University at Newark proclaimed when the play was produced there last fall. The play won third prize in the first-ever Ohio State Newark New Play Contest and made its debut there.

Darla Newman, a member of Fayetteville’s Temple Shalom, saw “Goat Song Revel” as a staged reading during TheatreSquared’s Arkansas New Play Festival last year.

“I thought, ‘Wouldn’t this be perfect as a fundraiser?’” she says, since it’s a story from the “Jewish Bible, which Christians call the Old Testament” and because “the mixture of tragedy and comedy is such a Jewish thing!” But it was a chance encounter with Jules Taylor, who played “Doris the Chorus” at the new play fest, that solidified the deal.

“She’s pulled the cast together and gotten the support to make it happen,” Newman says of Taylor, “and I’ve pulled together a committee” for additions like a silent auction. The cast includes veteran actors Taylor, Mike Thomas and Jason Suel.

Temple Shalom, established as a Jewish congregation in 1981, moved to its new building on Sang Avenue in the fall of 2009, but Newman says there’s still plenty of work to be done. Funds raised by “Goat Song Revel” will go toward those needs. The congregation numbers about 60 families, she says, and the temple can accommodate audiences of about 100 to 110 for the performances.