Psalms Project
In 1986, while I was still a student at St. Charles Borromeo Seminary, I took an elective course on the Psalms taught by Father James Foley. One of the class assignments was to come up with a “Psalms project” that could be used in parish ministry. I decided to write a radio drama based on the wonderful book by C.S. Lewis entitled Reflections on the Psalms. With the help of fellow seminarians Kevin Gallagher (questioner), John Gibbons (angel), and Gary Pacitti (technical production), the written radio drama was transformed into a twenty-seven-minute audio recording. To be sure, the dialogue is somewhat stiff, the acting is a little wooden, and the present version (made from an audiocassette copy) is by no means a good sound recording, but I hope you find the listening worthwhile. At least the insights by Professor Lewis are timeless, and you might even discern my own voice in the role of Saint Augustine!
Piccoli is a girl who is so little that she can sleep comfortably in an ordinary matchbox or sit, curled up, in a walnut shell. But she is unusually strong for her size.
She is also brave, enterprising, and ingenious—without being in the slightest stuffy about it. And she is rather stylishly dressed in red and black stockings.
This is the story of Piccoli’s narrow escapes and heroic exploits in a world full of enormous people and things. It is also the story of how she makes friends with a boy named Terry. Piccoli shows Terry how to Use His Head and learn arithmetic. Meanwhile, Piccoli performs many courageous deeds. She foils a robber and almost gets swallowed. Once, when she loses her way, she thinks up a brilliant scheme to get herself mailed back to Terry’s house.
The adventures of Piccoli, who believes (and demonstrates) that size is no issue as long as you Use Your Head, have been set down by Philippe Halsman. He forthrightly addresses the story to children, with never a wink at the grownups. We believe young listeners will be entranced. Here, unmistakably, is the kind of magic all of us remember from our childhood: a tale at once so full of enchantment and so meaningful that it remains in the young person’s heart and imagination—to lend sparkle and grace to the more prosaic vistas of his grown-up years.
PHILIPPE HALSMAN, the author of Piccoli, is best known as a photographer. Having successfully trained his camera on many of the great men and women of the world, he is also the creator of more covers of Life Magazine than any other living photographer.
Over the years, Mr. Halsman’s two baby girls grew into two daughters who wanted to listen to fairy tales. Since he couldn’t remember any, he invented a tiny creature named Piccoli. He pretended she was living right with the family and they had the most exciting adventures. Every evening his stories about Piccoli not only entertained his children, but did a lot for their education. Piccoli taught them to use their heads and to be polite. She was good with good children, but was critical of naughty children who—by a strange coincidence—had the same faults as his daughters. Pretty soon friends heard of Mr. Halsman’s Piccoli stories and urged him to put them into a book. Flattered, he assembled these tales which were published by Simon and Schuster in 1953, with illustrations by Paul Julian. He was still more flattered when Siobhan McKenna, the distinguished actress, agreed to record his story. And now the delight is yours.
“SIOBHAN McKENNA comes to us through the historic movement which Yeats was the great exponent of—the movement to verify a national culture that seemed on the verge of extinction. She has brought the Gaelic language into the theatre—a really momentous achievement. As a scholar she translated Saint Joan and produced it in the Gaelic Theatre in Galway. She is the first accomplished actress to come out of that theatre. But it would be wrong to confine Siobhan McKenna to things Gaelic or even to things Irish: her playing of Saint Joan in London has made theatrical history; in the Stratford and Edinburgh festivals she has had leading parts, and has impressed New York with her playing in The Chalk Garden. The ‘Siobhan’ part of her name means ‘White Spirit.’ She is married to the distinguished Irish actor, Denis O’Dea. The distinction of her acting comes perhaps from two strains in her: she has the strongly emotional nature of those women who made the poignant folk-poetry of Connacht and she is the daughter of a professor of mathematics and the sense of measurement in her world.”
PADRAIC COLUM
Siobhan McKenna was born in Belfast, Ireland, in 1923, and was educated at St. Louis’ Convent and the National University of Ireland. She made her first appearance on the professional stage in 1940, at the An Taibhdherc Theatre, Galway, in Tons of Money, and later played Lady Macbeth (in Gaelic) and many other roles in the same theatre. At the Abbey Theatre in Dublin, between 1943 and 1946 she appeared in many plays, both English and Gaelic. Her London debut in 1947 as Nora Fintry in The White Steed firmly established her as an actress of first rank, a position confirmed by later London triumphs in the roles of Helen Pettigrew in Berkeley Square and Maura Joyce in Fading Mansions.
The Chalk Garden, her first play in America, immediately established Miss McKenna’s fame. Said the New York Times: “Miss McKenna’s cool and beautifully poised Miss Madrigal is a creature of controlled passion.” She has been seen by the national television audience in such plays as The Cradle Song, of which one critic said, “Miss McKenna’s touching performance was almost too much to be borne.”
In the title role of George Bernard Shaw’s Saint Joan she brought forth this comment from one critic: “In thirty years of playgoing, this reporter cannot remember a first act anywhere which built to such a crescendo.” From another: “It is the kind of performance of Saint Joan one might have wished the old gentleman had lived to see…. The passionate conviction with which she projected the Maid of Orleans was based on years of study.” Her 1956 performance of Saint Joan in New York will go down as one of the greatest characterizations in theatrical history.
Directed by Arthur Luce Klein
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