Emerging from the Appalachian mist for three moonlit performances, In Some Dark Valley: The Testimony of Reverend Brand is coming to the Santa Cruz Actors’ Theatre this month with a haunting solo performance by Robert Bailey.
Most recently performed at the Hollywood Fringe Festival in Los Angeles, where it was awarded “Best of the Fringe,” the play, directed by Billy Siegenfeld, explores the life of a religious fanatic in the aftermath of the American Civil War as he discovers within himself “the key to softness.”
Inspired by 1940s recordings of Southerners from all walks of life, singing traditional songs, Bailey wanted to explore the roots of the real people who have lived and died in the South.
“I was fascinated by field recordings of white and black Southerners, of regular people singing songs that had been passed down, ballads, hymns, stories of hard lives. It sort of resonated with me. I grew up in Virginia so I am from the South, and I wanted to put this music into a theater piece, and somehow during Covid when I was by myself I realized I could make a solo piece,” Bailey says.
During the pandemic, while he was adapting Henrik Ibsen’s verse tragedy Brand into Some Dark Valley, Bailey kept finding himself exploring how this country’s deep roots have been twisted to a point where we cannot understand each other.
“What I kept coming back to was that we were going through this period in our country that I didn’t understand. I didn’t know how we got here, how we got to people not even born in the South marching the Confederate flag through the Capitol—I have a lot of respect for this class of people in the area of the country I grew up in who come from very hard backgrounds and realities and rely on each other and religion to get by. It’s been a part of the American story since the beginning. People shipped over from England and expected to do the work, and if they lived they lived. If they died they died.”
Bailey explains that the character of Brand, a moral hero and a monster at the same time, “comes from that place—it makes me upset that these very deep roots are twisted in the fabric of our society that we can’t understand what’s going on.”
Siegenfeld and Bailey, who went to Brown University together, are a true actor/director dynamic duo. Siegenfeld’s work involves building performances out of primal human behavior, and Bailey’s training with legendary Polish director Jerzy Grotowski, who empowered actors to explore their relationship with the space itself, makes for a team that brings not only Reverend Brand to life but also each character he embodies throughout the play.
“We’re seeing a person who has a twisted mentality about religion, which we’ve seen a lot throughout history, where they believe they are right. He is a fanatic, and as a fanatic, he uses that belief, that dogma, to not treat people well. Throughout the play he meets people who are not like him … people with good hearts, softness and compassion, including his wife, including an older black woman. His journey thrashing around like number 47 [the 47th president] is suspenseful. Is Reverend Brand going to stop being an asshole fanatic? We don’t know,” Siegenfeld says.
Performances are Nov. 22–23 at 8pm and Nov. 24 at 2pm at Center Stage, 1001 Center St., Santa Cruz. The Nov. 23 show is a benefit for the Hurricane Helene relief fund. santacruzactorstheatre.org
