Gideon and Jeremiah come to Edinburgh

How two God-fearing men from New York brought God's Pottery to the Edinburgh Fringe 2006

by Jeremiah Smallchild and Gideon Lamb

Hello Edinburgh! It’s Gideon Lamb and Jeremiah Smallchild of God’s Pottery here, happy to have come to your ‘bonny’ city all the way from New York, New York, America. We just wanted to tell you a bit about how we thought of our show, although it’s more like how the show thought of us.

Did you know that a fly flying forward through an airplane cabin is going the speed of the plane plus the speed he’s flying himself? We learned a lot about ‘Inertial’ from a bespectacled gentleman sitting near us on the airplane trip across the Atlantic (Ocean). Others may have called him ‘nerd’, but we called him ‘friend’ and ‘Doug’. He taught us many things about science, like the concept of Absolute Zero, which is a temperature at which no lower temperatures can be measured—it’s just too cold! This is the kind of learning we seek out and welcome—a scholar will never reach the summit of Mount Knowledge, for it is so high and vast, but the climb can be amazing. Well, much like the fly in the airplane, we’re moving forward with our own speed, plus the ‘Inertial’ that LaVert has given us. LaVert is a sick young boy we met recently in Harlem (a very urban part of New York City), and the reason we have come to Edinburgh.

Here’s how we met LaVert: we were traveling up to Central Park a few Sundays ago for our Weekly Worship Walk, when we got distracted by our own singing/playing/rejoicing on the subway train and ended up all the way at 125th Street! (Harlem!) We decided to explore this new land filled with so much wonder, and eventually found ourselves in a Harlem church, where we met young LaVert Washington (Please do not confuse this LaVert with the 80’s R&B band LeVert, singers of the classic quiet storm hit ‘Casanova’) . He told us of his illness, and we decided right then that he needed our help, and the help of all those we meet. And this is where you come in - we’re raising money with our show, and you can help with that by coming to the show and experiencing the treat of Song and Learning glued together by Fun.

Of course we needed some seed money to get things going in order to raise money for LaVert. (‘You need to spend money to make money’ -Financial Wizard). That was not a problem for us - we have had lots of experience with fund-raising through involvement with numerous church groups, including Healing through Hugs (HtH), an organization where everyone wins through hugs; BaLaNCE - Building a Life around Never-ending Christian Ethics, a core training and Bible study group; and SwoRD - Seeing without Realizing Difference, a diversity skills program we started ourselves. Our involvement with these groups has prepared us for our most challenging fundraising leadership initiative yet: helping our young friend.

The journey over here was easier than expected, even though we’ve both had to deal with ‘jet leg’. ‘Jet leg’ is a condition where the trip itself takes all the energy out of one’s body and multiplies it by the number of hours of time difference, making it difficult to walk. So we’ve been ‘sluggish’, but we’ll soon be running swiftly like ‘Chariots of Fire’ through your high-lands. We travel with a lot of ‘props’ for our show, and we thought the transport thereof might prove difficult, but we were wrong. The airlines did a great job with that one, A-Plus. You may wonder what the props are for since this is not ‘Friday Night Dinner Theater with Lance LaFoy’ - well, we work with the Youth on a number of projects, and one of our teaching programs is called “Life Skillz.” It’s a reality-based series of exercises and improvers that show a better way to handle some of the pressures and difficult situations facing the Youth today (drinking, alcohol, drugs, premarital intercourse, rudeness, etc). Well, we use a lot of teaching aids in this part of our Work, and they can be difficult to transport, especially over the seas. But everything made it!

And it’s great to be here! We’ve enjoyed walks along your Royal Mile, which we have jokingly nicknamed the Royal Smile from all the friends we’ve met along the way. Once the fish and chips shop across the street opens (closed for vacation), we’ll sample that famous British treat. Also, kilts! Hopefully we’ll have a chance to ‘blog’ later and let you know how everything is going—we can tell you more about our show, and maybe a little about our ‘flat’ (apartment).

We’re excited to be here, and we’re thrilled to meet people from exotic different cultures (Scottish, English, Dutch, etc, etc). It seems Edinburgh has representatives from many countries and religions here for the festival, and we are big fans of Difference. Even when things get tough on the ocean of life, remember that we’re all aboard on the same ship: the Friendship. We hope to share an oar with you. See you soon!

Your Friends,
Gideon and Jeremiah

END

(c) Jeremiah Smallchild / Gideon Lamb / God's Pottery 2006


God's Pottery present The Concert For LaVert at Pleasance Courtyard till 28 August 06 at 16:00 (1:00). Fringe Report covers an extract at the Pleasance Launch here here

Fringe Report (c) Fringe Report 2002-2012