Jefferson, Dickens and Tolstoy Meet at Bridge Street Theatre
By Bob Goepfert
CATSKILL- One of the most difficult things for a playwright to accomplish is to make a serious topic seem funny.
On November 14, Bridge Street Theatre in Catskill opens “The Gospel According to Thomas Jefferson, Charles Dickens and Count Leo Tolstoy: DISCORD.”
It’s a work that finds three great thinkers in a place that might be Purgatory or Hell. There they are charged with creating one bible out of the original four.
As a premise, it sounds as funny as current events.
Which might make Scott Carter the perfect person to write a funny play about the pursuit of wisdom and spirituality.
The pursuit to understand that something larger than ourselves exists has been a driving force for most of Carter’s life.
He tells of being diagnosed as asthmatic at age 2. The now 72 year old writer tells how after a stand-up gig in New York City in the 1970s, he had a severe asthma attack that nearly took his life.
That set him on what he alternately calls “the big laugh question” or “the Russian novel of life question.” This pursuit of deep theological questions led him, among many places and religions, to the Jefferson Bible and the Dickens Bible.
Originally the play was about Dickens, who Carter calls a deeply religious and funny man, debating the serious thinker Jefferson about their individual beliefs.
He groans as he tells that while doing an interview with Bill Moyers, he learned of a Tolstoy Bible. “ I knew immediately I had to do a rewrite” he says. 100 drafts and 50 workshops later, “DISCORD” is the final product.
Carter describes the trio “as living totally different lives and following different theologies.” The implication being there is more than one way to live a life of which you can be proud.
As a writer, Carter has a bio too vast to be fully detailed. Suffice to say, he started in show business at the age of eight doing public appearances as Mark Twain. He moved on to stand-up comedy, playwriting and writing jokes for television personalities.
Eventually he became a major television producer. He estimates he’s produced over 1100 episodes of live television. The vast majority of those were for “Real Time With Bill Maher” for which he was executive producer and writer. He played the same roles for its predecessor “Politically Incorrect.”
Interestingly, “ DISCORD” uses the same essential format as does “Real Time.” It has three diverse individuals having opposing views on an important topic.
Though the play might sound top-heavy intellectually, Carter, who in a telephone interview, insists the work is “very funny.”
He references Mark Twain, who said of his lectures that the most important thing to win an audience was to get them laughing.
Indeed, to perhaps signal the tone of the work, Carter names George Bernard Shaw, Oscar Wilde and Tom Stoppard among his favorite playwrights. He calls them people who wrote “comedies of ideas.”
However, an even better example of the play’s heartbeat can be found when Carter recites the opening monologue from Act III of “Our Town”. At the cemetery, the stage manager says, “We all know in our bones there is something eternal.”
Carter says the play offers three distinct versions of what that “something” might be. “I hope the audience leaves trying to figure out what is their own something.”
“The Gospel According to Thomas Jefferson, Charles Dickens and Count Leo Tolstoy: DISCORD” previews on November 14 and runs November 15 – 24, Thursdays through Saturdays at 7:30 and Sundays at 2:00 at Bridge Street Theatre, Catskill. For schedule and ticket information go to bridgestreettheatre.org