The Story of Naomi—The Book of Ruth

From Gender to Politics

Giles, Doan

• Publisher: Cascade Books
• Year: 2016
• eBook ISBN: 9781498206198
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Religion

The book of Ruth is probably best known as a romantic love story that, through the expression of loving devotion, overcomes tragedy and ends with the founding of the most famous family in all of biblical Israel. But the book wasn't always this way. In fact, it wasn't a book at all but rather a story told with a very different purpose in mind. Before Ruth, there was the Story of Naomi, a subversive story designed to challenge a male-dominated status quo. Through comedy, sarcastic irony, and unparalleled rhetorical skill the Naomi storyteller holds up for inspection social gender roles and the power of sexuality in a manner that resonates yet today. The Story of Naomi--The Book of Ruth goes behind the literary rendition of the story and recaptures the original oral tale, with script and performance directions that brings to life the humor, tragedy, and transparent honesty shared between the Naomi storyteller and her audience.

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The Naomi Story Script394

The Naomi Story resides in a tradition of performance, of which, the following is only one possible reconstruction. We present this reconstruction, attempting to remain faithful to the nuances of the Story preserved in the book of Ruth, yet mindful that a performance tradition admits variety in presentation. This is not the only way the Naomi Story can be enacted.

In the Performance Notes that follow, we will use a standard format for theatrical scripts. This allows us to provide stage directions to help visualize a possible performance of the Naomi Story, or in this case, The EVERYWOMAN Play. In the play script that follows with each section of Performance Notes, we have allowed for four actors and an interactive audience. The actor who plays Orpah returns to the audience once Orpah leaves. This way, she can help the narrator manage the spectators when necessary. The key actor, drawing on a storyteller tradition, is the Narrator. She not only directs the performance by controlling the temporal and spatial aspects, but is also the most accomplished of the performers, taking on the male roles at critical moments. And so our performance begins.

Our storyteller knows her audience. These are her neighbors, friends, and even those with whom she may not be so friendly. They are her community, forming what is known as a closed audience which is also assumed in our scripted EVERYWOMAN play.395

Introduction 1:1–6

1 In the days of the judging of the judges, there was a famine in the land, and a certain woman of Bethlehem in Judah went to live in the fields of Moab, she and her husband and two sons. 2The name of the woman was Naomi and the name of her husband Elimelech, and the names of her two sons were Mahlon and Chilion; they were Ephrathites from Bethlehem in Judah. They went into the fields of Moab and remained there. 3But Naomi’s husband, Elimelech, died, and she was left with her two sons. 4These took Moabite wives; the name of the one was Orpah and the name of the other Ruth. When they had lived there about ten years, 5both Mahlon and Chilion also died, so that the woman was left without her two sons and her husband.

6Then she started to return with her daughters-in-law from the fields of Moab, for she had heard in the fields of Moab that the LORD had considered his people and given them food.

Performance Notes

The Narrator steps forward. She pauses and looks out across the spectators, establishing a visual connection between the stage and the audience. She takes the time to scan the audience and make eye contact with several people. With a gesture of open arms, she begins to speak. These initial words of the introduction are critical for the Narrator to establish the storyteller’s connection with the audience. It is in this initial exchange that the act of telling links human to human in a live spatial relationship, or stage-audience pattern, which essentially governs the theatrical process.396 What she delivers in this opening sequence is most often referred to as exposition, given circumstances, or, as we will call it here, the precipitating context.397 It is information that the audience needs, tying together elements of the past and present, and pointing them toward a future. It is through the precipitating context that the audience begins to develop a sense of the potential action and energetic forces that will animate the characters. The Narrator anticipates the specific points of connection with the audience, using tone, pace, and rhythm of speech to create a shared experience. The Narrator speaks with the confidence that her audience hears what they are supposed to hear.

Narrator

In the days of the judging of the judges, there was a famine in the land, and a certain woman of the House of Bread in Judah went to live in the fields of (she coughs, as if the very word Moab sticks in her throat) . . . Moab, she and her husband and two sons. The name of the woman was Pleasantness, and the name of her husband, My God is King, and the names of her two sons were Obliterated and Eliminated . . . and these two took wives from the land of many-tongued whores. I mean from (cough, cough) Moab; the name of one was Cloud and the other was Satisfy . . .

(Perhaps she smiles gently, or holds eye contact with a spectator briefly, as a way of acknowledging they are in this story together. She takes her time, crossing slowly from one side of the space to the other, savoring the complex mix of humor, pathos, and tension as the spectators conjure images of leaving a house of bread for a place where bread and water were denied, among other word plays we discuss in Notes below. She builds rhythmically on the simple structure of naming, identifying, providing a clear sense of time and segmentation,398 or of what happened and when—they went, they died, she was left with—using simple hand gestures to imaginatively place each event before the spectators. Imagine our Narrator as you have seen characters like the Stage Manager in Thornton Wilder’s famous Our Town, a play done with absolute minimal props and scenery, the world being created and evoked from the voice and gestures of the Stage Manager who shows us where Mrs. Gibbs’ garden was, where ...

Table of contents

• Acknowledgments
• Preface
• Chapter1: The Naomi Story: An Oral Substrate
• Chapter 2: The Naomi Story: A Female Performance Tradition
• Chapter 3: The Naomi Story: A Performance Analysis
• Chapter 4: The Naomi Story Becoming the Book of Ruth
• Chapter 5: Reconstructing the Naomi Story
• Chapter 6: The Naomi Story Script394
• Bibliography
• Appendix: Act Four – Long Version
• Author Index
• Subject Index
• Scripture Index