The Chimney by Ron Morin

Can people of different beliefs love one another? The twenty-first century seems to hang on this question, as ideologies, having become political movements, slug it out on different parts of the globe. Can the rational co-exist with the spiritual? Can science (the West) and religion (the Middle East) co-exist? Or will the world continue to erupt in a never-ending war of terrorism and imperialism?

These are some of the questions raised by The Chimney, which is about the corrosiveness of trauma. Does suffering have meaning? Is there such a thing as redemption? Is there such a thing as forgiveness? Or are there acts of cruelty so hideous, so vile that they can never be atoned for?

The Chimney, a play about relationship, puts voice and body to these questions.

An anti-war tragedy, The Chimney is a dramatic blend of history (France under Vichy) and Ron Morin's imagination. A sister and brother, traumatized by the murder of their mother, take that loss and despair and build from the ashes two different structures of meaning, two identities that are worlds apart. The sister becomes an aspiring Jewish mystic; he becomes a rich atheist and scientist. In the sister's view, the truth is absolute and resides in emotional authenticity. In the brother's view, the truth is relative and resides in physical matter. How much of their identities can they sacrifice to accommodate the other? When the curtain rises on The Chimney, this sister and brother will meet on their father's death, after almost forty years of enforced separation. Their beliefs will conflict until a stranger brings them an unsettling truth, which will set off more reverberations as history forces them to confront the unconfrontable.

Ron created The Chimney from three sources. The central image, a chimney, he saw when in 2002 he toured the death camp of Auschwitz. From the nightmares of that chimney came the urge to write. But more was needed. Then in 2003, an abrupt collapse of an old friendship caused Ron to review the foundations of his own belief system. The play, however, only came together after Ron, one day cruising the Net, stumbled upon an article about Mr. LePen, France's most famous fascist, who was demonstrating against non-nationals at a monument in the Jura Mountains, a monument commemorating the death of 149 Resistance fighters during the German occupation. After some study and a little distortion of that history, Ron had the bones to hang his drama on.

A five act play with three characters, The Chimney plays for approximately one hour and fifteen minutes. The Chimney debuted on May 25, 26 and 27, 2007 at the Rockport Art Association in Rockport, MA, directed and produced by Nan Webber and Theatre in the Pines, a community theatre.