Episode Details

Welcome back to Gnostic Insights and the Gnostic Reformation on Substack. It’s been a few weeks since I recorded a live episode, and here I am. Now, I don’t have any particular Gnostic insights for you today. However, I do have some interesting news to share and a very strange experience I had a couple of days ago. So, let’s start with the news.

One of the reasons I don’t have a new episode for you this week, in particular a philosophical episode, is because I’ve been working on a stage play called A Midwife’s Trial. I wrote this play about 15 years ago, and I pulled it out of the drawer a couple weeks ago and decided to polish it and get it on its feet. I went with a friend to a little theater a few weeks ago, and they were putting on 12 Angry Men. Now, if you’ve never seen the movie 12 Angry Men, the original, there’s a newer movie, really bad, but the old classic movie starring Henry Fonda and 11 other very well-known actors of the black and white movie era—it’s a great movie. You should see it. It’s the story of the jurors in a deliberation room.

They’ve just watched a trial, and they’re in the deliberation room. The entire movie or play takes place around the deliberation table, and they are the 12 Angry Men, the jury.

My play is also a trial story, but it’s the trial side of it, so it makes like a nice bookend to 12 Angry Men. So, that’s why it reminded me to get my play back out and try it again. I had sent it around to play festivals and whatnot about 15 years ago. It made one final round, but didn’t win any prizes, so I put it away.

It’s based upon my doctoral dissertation, The Trial of a California Midwife, and it is an enactment of actual trial testimony from a couple of midwives, an obstetrician, and then the two attorneys, one for the prosecution and one for the defense, and of course the judge. Those are all the characters. And then it cuts back and forth to a reenactment of this difficult birth that is the subject of the trial. So, it’s a very interesting play. I think it’s fascinating personally, and I’m hoping that audiences will too.