K The Ken Bradbury Foundation

← The Works

Cotton Patch Gospel

2017 · Hoogland Center for the Arts, Springfield, Illinois

Cotton Patch Gospel is a bluegrass retelling of the life of Jesus, lifting the Gospel of Matthew out of first-century Palestine and setting it down in modern-day, rural Georgia. The musical — the last work of songwriter Harry Chapin before his death in 1981, with a book by Tom Key and Russell Treyz — draws on Clarence Jordan's "Cotton Patch" translation of the New Testament. The story begins with a young couple, Mary and Joe Davidson, who learn they are to have a child before they are married. An angel visits Joe, tells him this is the will of God, and instructs him to give the girl his letter jacket and marry her. On their way to Gainesville, Georgia, for an income tax audit, Mary goes into labor; with no room at the Dixie Delight Motor Lodge, they break into an abandoned trailer out back where Jesus is born, wrapped in a comforter and laid in an apple crate. Baptized by a wild preacher named John the Baptizer, Jesus gathers his followers and sets off for Atlanta with a mixed air of excitement and foreboding.

Ken Bradbury directed the show and performed in it himself, playing banjo and accordion alongside a band of regional musicians who provided all of the show's accompaniment live onstage. "You seldom see this show performed," Bradbury noted, "since it requires nearly all the actors to play their own musical accompaniment onstage. It's tough to find good actors who can do that or talented musicians with stage experience." Hoogland manager Gus Gordon, who produced, had wanted to mount the piece for years; because of its demanding casting requirements, no one had been willing to tackle it. Bradbury assembled the cast largely from Jacksonville-area performers — many of them veterans of his earlier productions such as Genesis: the Musical, Couplings, and Potluck — and the result was, in production coordinator Rich McCoy's words, "hilarious, but it packs a real emotional punch."

Musical Numbers

Drawn from the band's playing notes, the score included:

Cast

Production Notes

The production ran two weekends at the Hoogland Center for the Arts in Springfield, Illinois — March 3–5 and March 10–12, 2017 — with 8 p.m. performances on Fridays and Saturdays and 2 p.m. matinees on Sundays, staged in the venue's large main theatre. Ken Bradbury directed and performed; Gus Gordon produced. The creative and technical team included Andrew Schmidt on sound, Gene Hinckley on lighting, Steve Varble on set design, Barb Gatlin as stage manager, and Rich McCoy as production manager.

Bradbury's journal traces the show's long road to the stage. Gordon had first floated other musicals — a Johnny Cash show, a Buddy Holly script — but Bradbury "couldn't find a heart in" them and countered with Cotton Patch Gospel. Much of the early angst came from finding the right guitarist; after a dozen suggestions, Mark Mathewson proved the perfect fit, replying to the invitation, "You had me at 'Me on accordion.'" Bradbury famously gave Carrie Carls her first autoharp lesson during a five-minute break in the hyperbaric-medicine unit where she worked as a nurse, after she asked, "Great! Now, what's an autoharp?"

In a characteristic Bradbury touch, the cast wrote a page of mock reviews for the program, spoofing outlets from The Atlanta Journal ("Yankees Havin' Some Fun at Our Expense!") and Variety ("Boffo Kudo's for Hicks from Sticks!") to Sports Illustrated, which recast the bluegrass ensemble as a football team trading arpeggios, cadenzas, and a "coda of victory."