Professor David Burke began our tour two days before opening night for the production Brigadoon behind the set itself. I introduced myself and went to shake his hand.
“Oh I shouldn’t,” he said, holding up his hands so I could see how they were covered in shades of black, green and gray paint.
I had interrupted him while he was working on the set piece for the production of Brigadoon that would run from Thursday to the following Tuesday.
He lives for set building.
“I was a college drop-out for about five years,” he said. “For those five years I was not in college, I became a carpenter. I moved to Idaho as a hippie.”
This reminded me of my time in theatre, how when you show up to auditions there were times when you were cut from a show and had to take a break from the stage. While other times, you got the comedic role and the next you were the one to bring the audience to tears.
Burke has constant humility in his leadership and the willingness to even do the clean up required to prepare the stage for that night’s dress rehearsal. But beyond that, he has become a mentor and leader to many of the students in the department.
“He’s like a father figure to many of us,” Noah Leake, senior accounting major, told me after curtain call of the opening night of Brigadoon.
He has guided many of the students, even the students who are not theatre majors, but who have been drawn to the stage.
“If I ever skipped a chapel I was always in his office talking to him, just about life,” Leake said.
Burke is not a man of few words, but as we sat in the audience looking at the set that they created he finally told me, “We are not praising God for saving us, we are praising Him for creating us.”
God was the first creator, and to be more like Him, you need to learn to create, to allow yourself to be molded like clay into what God has designed you for.
Ultimately, that means listening to God when He calls you in a different direction. Burke told me that his plan was to retire when he was 70 and had been around the theatre for 35 years. The Lord had different plans because of his heart condition that caused him to need a double bypass open heart surgery.
“God, I will stay as long as you want me to stay, and I will only go when you clearly tell me it’s time to go.”
It was when Burke was in the hospital recovering from the surgery that he heard the Lord tell him that it was time to take his bow, move aside and allow someone else to lead.
Since February 1, 2019, the cast and crew along with a team of outside volunteers have worked to design and create the sets and costumes from the ground up, just as Burke had done with Union University’s theatre program when arriving here 34 years ago.
When he arrived at Union University in 1986, he told me there was a stage that was about 20×20, made up of platforms that were all different heights. “They had taken carpet and stapled it over the top of it so people wouldn’t trip.”
Since then, he has built platforms for the chairs in the audience, purchased the chairs and lighting and recentered the purpose of the department. A purpose not only to entertain but to enlighten, to teach and to glorify the Lord in all things.
Now it’s show time. The costumes have been finished and the ticket ripped at the door.
Brigadoon. Burke’s first musical in college as a performer, when he played the role of Jeff Douglas, is now his last show as director.
Within moments the audience will be laughing and sitting at the edge of their seats. With all the accents, all the costumes and the 50 ft wide and 13.5 ft tall set, the audience is immediately thrown back to a land that will bring sacrifice, love and maybe a little magic.
By the end of Act One, the audience is ready to join the chorus.
“It makes me want to pull out my kilt,” Michael Horton, senior psychology major, said once the lights came up.
Brigadoon will throw the audience through all forms of emotions, whether it’s laughing with or at Jeff Douglas, played by Timothy Fletcher, or crying along with Fiona MacLaren, played by Grace Runkle, who gives a wonderful performance and pulls at the heartstrings of the audience. This is a show that draws on all of Union’s talent to bring such a professional performance.
As Burke takes his final bow and prepares to say goodbye to his role as director on March 19, 2019, Brigadoon is something that shouldn’t be missed by anyone.
Performances of Brigadoon will run in the W.D. Powell Theatre through Tuesday, March 19. You can purchase your tickets at http://www.uu.edu/theatre/.
