Phantom Theater’s 40th anniversary season continues when author, aviator, and adventurer Susan Edsall performs her one woman show, “Buen Camino” on July 25 and 26.
Edsall found her once perfect life thrust into disarray after experiencing an unexpected and devastating loss. Then one day while shopping at her local grocery store, she inexplicably heard a voice. Whose voice, she still doesn’t know, but it told her to embark on the Camino de Santiago, an ancient pilgrimage across the expanse of northern Spain.
Following its instructions, Edsall proceeded to hike 540 miles through unrelenting rain and temperatures that rarely got above 50 degrees. It was a discouraging journey until the eighth day. After leaving the bustling town of Logroño, she had another spiritual encounter.
“I was walking by myself on a dirt path through the forest, rain dripping from the branches onto the hood of my rain jacket, when I suddenly heard a woman’s voice say, ‘Let’s walk together, shall we?’” Edsall recalled. “Except there was no woman. It was a spirit. It didn’t feel weird – it felt comforting. She started talking to me about the burdens I was carrying and suggested it was possible to drop them, though it might take some time. Nothing like this had ever happened to me before – ever – but I was in such a state of despair that I simply nodded.”
This voice, along with others, accompanied her for the remainder of her trek. Their clarity and gentle persistence helped guide her towards a kind of freedom and finally inner peace.
When Edsall set out on the Camino de Santiago she had no intention of creating a show about the experience. But while at The Pilgrim’s Blessing in a church in O Cebreiro, the idea for a show began to take root.
“Walking the Camino was the most profound experience of my life,” she explained. “I felt compelled to find a way to tell the story of what had happened to me. I walked 70 miles past Santiago to Finesterre, where I had rented an apartment on the beach for a week. I sat at the kitchen table and, over seven days, wrote my show as a way to answer: what just happened to me?”
Alone on stage, Edsall transforms into 23 characters to take the audience along for her solitary walk through 540 miles of rain, resentment, and redemption.
It has already captivated audiences in Los Angeles, where the play received the Encore award at the Solo Stars festival in December. After its run at Phantom Theater the show travels to Edinburgh, Scotland, where Edsall will perform it at the Festival Fringe.
Phantom Theater presents Buen Camino, Friday, July 25, and Saturday, July 26, at 8 p.m. in the Edgcomb Barn in Warren. For more information and to purchase advance tickets, visit www.phantomtheater.org
Photo by Provided.
The caption: Susan Edsall finds redemption on a grueling pilgrimage in her one-woman show, “Buen Camino.”
