This Thursday and Saturday, UD senior Joe Beumer is proud to present the North American premiere of Francis Warner's 'Moving Reflections.' The play will be presented in Immaculate Conception Chapel at 7 p.m. Thursday, Dec. 7 and 3 p.m. Saturday, Dec. 9.

'Moving Reflections' is a dramatic and poetic account of the writing of the Gospel of John. Its two acts deal with the clashes between the Jewish and early Christian cultures as well as the animosity between the Romans and early Christians. Telling John's story in A.D. 30, just after the crucifixion, and then in A.D. 100, the play demonstrates the persecution and hostility early Christians faced when trying to spread their beliefs.

Beumer has chosen this play as a part of his senior honors thesis, which entails applying Shakespearean staging techniques to a contemporary playwright.

His chosen author, Francis Warner, is an Emeritus Fellow at Oxford University and an Honorary Fellow at Cambridge University. He is also a poet who has written 16 plays. 'Moving Reflections' was commissioned by St. Giles Cathedral, in Edinburgh, Scotland, where it was first produced in 1982. It has since been performed multiple times in Europe, but this is its first hop across the pond.

This play was selected because 'it would work for the Shakespearean style of production and it dealt with subject material that I thought would be very interesting to our campus as a Marianist and liberal arts institution,' Beumer said.

Shakespearean staging techniques include a thrust stage with no solid set, in this case only three doors. There is also no difference in lighting between the stage and the audience and there are no recorded sounds of any kind. The costuming is not to period, it is simply suggestive of the role. For example, Emperor Tiberius has a laurel crown to suggest his status as ruler of Rome.

Despite his role as instigator of this production, Beumer is not functioning as director. In keeping with the Shakespearean staging style, there is no director. Instead, the production is a collaborative effort among the cast members with Beumer acting as more of an actor-manager, in accordance with theater in Shakespeare's time.

In keeping with this Shakespearean theme, the play itself is written in a poetic style similar to Shakespeare's. Much of the dialogue is in iambic pentameter, with many historical and philosophical allusions.

The play's title is itself a philosophical allusion to Plato's Allegory of the Cave, which is explained in the play.

The emperor, Tiberius, says, 'We live, as Plato taught, our earthly life inside a fire-lit cave, in which we see only the shadows of reality, moving reflections, prisoned in our flesh.'