Elizabeth O’Sullivan’s “Witnessing to a Murder,” a powerful autobiographical work, is part of the upcoming Spirit in the House theater festival.

“Witnessing to a Murder,” a play by Elizabeth O’ Sullivan, is part of the upcoming Spirit in the House theater festival at Hennepin Avenue United Methodist Church.

The play is a 45-minute monologue, performed by O’ Sullivan, in which she fights with a drumbeat played by her husband, Ian Rhoades, and sings unadorned pentatonic melodies unique to this play. Onstage, members of her Quaker community “hold her in the light” and “do the work of spiritual grounding,” as O’Sullivan describes it.

Dean Seal, former Fringe organizer, author, theologian and performer, calls the work “a powerful piece of storytelling and an amazing piece of theater.”

When you see a title like “Witnessing to a Murder” and you know it’s a personal story, questions immediately come to mind.

How can we understand murder? At what level of personal pain does a person commit murder? Does killing someone relieve their pain? What gives that person permission to take another life? What is society’ s relationship to that pain and that permission? Does God really allow such a thing to happen? Is there a God? What does society have to do with the pain that radiates through the victim’s circle of family, friends and acquaintances? What does the loss of a stranger’s life have to do with us?

There are people in the world, like O’Sullivan, for whom “We are all one” is not an abstract philosophical belief. It is a reality of daily life, like the sun coming up in the morning, like your baby’s smile, like breathing, or the wetness of water. It is truth. It is a gift.

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In 1996, O’Sullivan was fresh out of college with a degree in English, beginning her career in journalism. She worked at the Minnesota Daily and at the Pioneer Press. Then, one Saturday in August, she witnessed the shooting death of a woman she didn’t know as she tried to accompany her to safety. She spent 11 years processing the event and healing her soul. At first she stopped working. She went to therapy, where she “made a concerted effort to head for OK.” She drew upon the love of her friends and family. “All the little bits of love of my life were a force lifting me up, making me OK.” After a while she worked as an advocate for battered women. She also went back to work at small papers out in Osseo and Maple Grove. In 2001 she wrote a column called Sidewalk Stories in the Longfellow Messenger.

A year after the shooting she heard something on MPR about Quakers, also known as the Religious Society of Friends. O’Sullivan had grown up without formal religious training, in a happy, loving secular home. From early childhood, O’Sullivan had a special consciousness of the spirit world; she listened to the universe. The Quakers sounded like a group she could relate to. She went, and found she was right. She and her husband have gone to meeting ever since.
O’Sullivan says, “In Quaker meetings you sit there and wait for God to talk to you.” It seems that O’ Sullivan has spent her whole life listening.

When O’Sullivan heard a woman screaming for help in her friend’s apartment building, in the summer of 1996, she went to help. (It goes without saying that her friend, as well as others in the building, called 9-1-1.) It was a “reflex” to go to the woman’s aid; “it was like pulling your hand from a hot stove. It wasn’t any kind of decision,” said O’Sullivan. The playwright says she has always felt what other people are feeling, so when she heard the woman scream, she went to her. “It was as though it was me.” She doesn’t know if she’d do the same thing again.
O’Sullivan of course is aware that she could have been killed also, but the most consistent lingering question she faced was, “If I had done something different would she have lived?” The other lingering question was, “Why did I go to the woman when she screamed?” O’Sullivan can only speculate. Perhaps it was because someone had been hurting a friend of hers at a party once and no one had helped and she was determined never to see that happen again. Or perhaps she has a natural strength because she received so much love as a child. “Kids need to soak up a lot of love to be strong—kids are love sponges.” Perhaps it was what Quakers call a “leading,” a job that God puts there for you to do. She doesn’t know.

O’Sullivan has been a Quaker for a long time now. About a year and a half ago she thought she was being called to travel in some kind of ministry. The Quakers have what are called care and accountability committees, and O’Sullivan asked for one of those to help her discern what kind of ministry was on the horizon for her.

They discovered that she was supposed to write a play. Apart from the natural processing that anyone would have to do in the aftermath of a traumatic event, O’Sullivan needed to write about the murder as an artist. She needed to write about it because she is a writer. Writers need to create formal accounts of everything external and internal that happens. O’Sullivan’ s mother, Anita O’Sullivan, who directs the play, says Elizabeth has always written. It is necessary for her to write.

The idea of theater was already in the works. Elizabeth has many connections to theater, both longstanding and recent. Since early childhood, she’s been familiar with the world of play-acting. Her father, Terry O’Sullivan, was a popular soap star in the ’50s and ’60s on “Search for Tomorrow,” “Days of Our Lives” and “The Secret Storm”; and her mother has been an actor and director in the Twin Cities for four decades. More recently, Elizabeth wrote a 10-minute play, about advocacy work. And in 2006, when carpal tunnel halted Elizabeth’s freelance writing stride, she got a part in a production at the Guthrie.

Elizabeth’s 11 years of healing, her need to write, her theater experience, her spirit-filled existence and her grounding in Quaker practice converged to bring about this play. “ ‘Witnessing to a Murder’ doesn’t feel so much like theater, it feels like ministry,” says O’Sullivan.

She appreciates all the support she has. “It’s just beyond the level of what I can do by myself.” The play was already performed last summer at Manna Fest, but now it has to be re-rehearsed and re-memorized. It’s hard work, especially while raising two kids. “It feels like walking on water,” she said, clearly not saying she’s miraculous, like Jesus, or Barack Obama. She explained, “It’s like I don’t know how I’m doing this. I have a huge sense of support under me that’s different from solid ground.”

The care and accountability committee is helping her to figure out logistically how she can do the play and take care of her family at the same time. They’ll help discern when the play comes to an end.

In the meantime, O’Sullivan is rehearsing at home, upstairs when the kids are downstairs and downstairs when the kids are upstairs going to sleep. Elizabeth’s mother gives gentle guidance and prompts lines. The words are intriguing. Ian balances on a stool in the kitchen, his drumbeat a crackling cry.

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You could say that O’Sullivan has always listened to the universe. In a certain way God told her whom to marry. She became friends with her husband the first day of college orientation. A few weeks later they were working on a Habitat house. He was on the roof and called down for someone to pass him the nails. She heard something in his voice that made her see them together as a middle-aged couple, crabby but loving. She followed the vision.

O’Sullivan said when she performed at the Guthrie it felt a lot like speaking in a Quaker meeting. “If you feel like the spirit is calling on you to give a message, you’re supposed to stand up—there are physical sensations related to that, things tip in a certain way.”

“In your play, do things tip, or tilt, to invite the presence of God?” I asked.
“Things tilt because God gets loud,” she answered. “If God speaks to you and you try to block it out, if you fight it, it’s very scary. It’s OK if you accept it.”
O’Sullivan elaborated on her sense of connection to all things. “Everyone is being talked to all the time. The basic things we do to live are all connected with God—drinking water, eating and preparing food, etc. I can hear the plants, their generosity. I can’t get away from communion. Life is always sustained by life. All of it belongs to God … At the deepest level, all people are blossoms of God.”
She continued, speaking again about plants. “I pray with them and for them. St. Francis prayed with and for the birds. There are spirits in all things and they are there to praise God.”

For her, the biblical narrative is a living text: “In the story of the withered fig tree, Jesus was in dialogue with the tree. The tree chose to die, and Jesus was upset with the tree’s decision. [When Jesus calmed the storm] he talked to the lake and the wind [directly]. He didn’t tell God to make them stop, he talked to them.”
The play, “Witnessing to a Murder,” is the work of an open, listening soul. “Things you assume are true you can’t always assume. It’s like trying to see the back of your head,” she says.

The play will be performed Tuesday, May 27, 5:30 p.m.; Thursday, May 29, 7 p.m. ; Friday, May 30, 7 p.m.; Saturday, May 31, 2:30 p.m.; Sunday, June 1, 4 p.m. Hennepin Avenue United Methodist Church is located at 511 Groveland Ave., Minneapolis. Tickets are $12, general admission; $10, students and seniors; $8, children and groups of 10 or more. Tickets are available at the door. To order advance tickets for a service fee of $2.50, contact Uptown Tix, 651-209-6799 or 1-888-279-0089 or info@uptowntix.com. For more information, go to:

www.elizabethosullivan.com.