DESCRIPTION:
Music and Libretto by Anthony Gatto after the novel by Flannery O'Connor [] SCENES & TIME LINKS below []

Sculpture and Installation Design by Chris Larson

SCENE 1: The Train
SCENE 2: Taulkinham (6:02);
Asa Hawks and Sabbath Lily Hawks enter (10:48)
Sabbath Lily tells Haze a story (19:48)
SCENE 3: Hazel Motes preaches 1st sermon: Church Without Christ (21:58)
SCENE 4: Haze rents a room at Mrs. Flood (29:53)
Haze gives Sabbath Lily a note (34:18)
SCENE 5: Haze’s 2nd sermon: Church Without Christ needs a new jesus (38:16)
SCENE 6: Onnie Jay Holy (42:32)
SCENE 8: Haze lights a match (54:48)
SCENE 9: Haze’s last sermon (1:02:23)
SCENE10: Onnie Jay Holy returns with The True Prophet (1:10:07)
SCENE 11: Murder of Solace Layfield (1:14:37)
SCENE 12: Last 12 minutes (1:20:10)
I. Processional; II. Recessional; III. Mrs. Flood Proposes (1:25:33)

Scene 1: The Train
Hazel Motes returns from a faraway war; discovers his childhood home and family are gone. On the train to Taulkinham, Mrs. Wally Bee Hitchcock asks Haze, “Are you going home?”

Scene 2: Taulkinham
In the strange air of Taulkinham we hear a seedy Potato Peeler Hawker and the lonely voice of Enoch Emery. The blind preacher Asa Hawks and his daughter Sabbath Lily enter handing out pamphlets, “Jesus Calls You.” Haze tears up a tract Sabbath Lily gives him. Haze gets a close look at the scars on Asa’s face and the blind man taunts him.

Scene 3: Hazel Motes preaches his 1st sermon
Insults by the blind man provoke Haze into a sermon of blasphemy. Haze invents “The Church Without Christ.” Enoch hears Haze’s 1st sermon and it confirms his premonitions.

Scene 4: Haze rents a room
Haze follows Asa and Sabbath Lily to the boarding house of Mrs. Flood. Asa shows Haze a newspaper clipping about how he got scars on his face from blinding himself. "He did it with lime. Blinded himself for justification and hundreds were converted," says Sabath Lily. Haze replies, “Nobody with a good car needs to be justified.” Before he leaves Haze gives Sabbath Lily a love note, a cruel joke lost on her. Enoch’s premonitions continue: “He had wise blood like his daddy.”

Scene 5: Haze’s 2nd sermon
Haze preaches on his car, “The Church Without Christ...needs a new jesus!”
Enoch hears this 2nd sermon. He thinks the new jesus must be the shrunken figure he saw in the museum.

Scene 6 Onnie Jay Holy
Onnie Jay Holy suddenly appears wanting to monetize Haze’s “new jesus” idea. “I wisht I had my gittarr here...because when you talk about Jesus, you need a little music, don’t you friends?”

[TO BE ADDED: Scene 7: Haze discovers Sabbath Lily in his car]

Scene 8: Haze lights a match
To see if Asa is really blind, Haze sneaks into his room in the middle of the night and lights a match. Startled awake, Asa says, “Now you can go. Now you can leave me alone.”

Scene 9: Haze’s last sermon
“Where you come from is gone, where you thought you were going to never was there, and where you are is no good unless you can get away from it. Where is there a place for you to be? No place. In yourself right now is all the place you’ve got.” Enoch completes his mission by delivering the new jesus to Sabbath Lily. Haze throws it away. Sabbath Lily cradles the shrunken figure: “I seen you were mean enough to slam a baby against a wall. Because you didn’t want nothing but Jesus.”

Scene 10: Onnie Jay Holy returns with The True Prophet (Solace Layfield) and the new jesus idea.

Scene 11: Murder of Solace Layfield
Haze murders Solace Layfield for imitating him. Later a patrolman stops him and destroys his car. Haze has a massive realization.

Scene 12: Last 12 minutes
With his car destroyed Haze recognizes all he saw and believed was false. He sees God’s love, despite himself, and he can’t stand it, so he blinds himself. He walks ever weaker, until he dies. Finally, Mrs. Flood sees him lying in his bed and welcomes him home.