J.B. at Wilmington Drama League

Authors

• Archibald MacLeish

directed by Matthew Scott Campbell

What can a writer do, pondered Archibald MacLeish, “when you are dealing with questions too large for you which, nevertheless, will not leave you alone.” MacLeish, a poet, playwright and former Librarian of Congress, had served as an artillery captain in the First World War and learned the horrors of World War Two as director of the War Department’s Office of Facts and Figures. In 1958 he turned to the Biblical story of Job as the guiding metaphor for this Pulitzer Prize-winning play. God and Satan, actors in a rundown circus, make a petty wager over whether a man can endure the worst suffering and not lose his faith. Like Job, J.B. loses everything but refuses to surrender not so much his trust in God as his love for his fellow human beings: “Blow on the coal of the heart.?/ The candles in churches are out.?/ The lights have gone out in the sky.?/ Blow on the coal of the heart /?And we’ll see by and by. . . .”

February 21 – 23 & February 26 – March 2, 7:30 p.m.
Matinee: February 23, 2:00 p.m.