• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 3370 0

percent of the cost if Peter could raise the rest. When he had raised two million of the total, his father went ahead and gave him $200,000 of the $300,000 he had promised. Peter then raised the rest of the money himself, much of it through a grant from the Rudolph Steiner Foundation. From start to finish he struggled against heavy odds to raise funds while trying to stage and produce the show at the same time. His parents, during the same months, waived their “no donations” rule and wrote a $10 million check to Tom Murphy’s Save the Children as a gesture of friendship and support.

It seemed a little chilly—even in the name of cultivating self-reliance—to support their son’s cause with only two percent of what they gave a family friend. With hindsight, however, Peter was grateful that his show did not become a vanity project funded by his father—which no one would have taken seriously. He felt that the way his father handled it was one of his typically brilliant solutions to complex problems. It gave Peter his family’s endorsement, for which he was grateful, while still allowing him the struggle and pride of raising most of the three million needed by himself—although he could have used that last hundred thousand dollars.

Warren did not quite understand his son’s fascination with Native Americans. He (and much of the rest of the family) thought of it as “the Indian show.” Warren had never been self-reflective, and the show’s symbolic exploration of stolen identity, and the triumph of man’s will in reclaiming what was lost, escaped him.

Spirit—The Seventh Fire was a dazzling story acted by a Native American who told the story of his return from the modern world to reclaim his cultural heritage. The self-enclosed stage resembled a tent, spacious and intimate, contemporary yet historic. Peter’s music, exotic yet familiar, flowed and pulsed around the audience while Native American performers in wildly feathered costumes danced and sang against a background of epic film.

Susie had been angry at Peter all spring over his obsession with the show. Peter had a much different personality from his father, but Susie felt that he risked turning into a musical version of Warren, of jeopardizing his marriage to Jennifer. She could take in all of the effects and feelings in the show, however, and let the music intensify her other senses. She appreciated Peter’s artistic accomplishment. Warren loved music and was proud of his son, but, sitting at the premiere, the show’s multilayered kaleidoscope of visual impressions overwhelmed him, leaving him uncertain what to make of it. He looked at others in the audience and saw people clapping and cheering, which told him that the show was good. And when the Omaha World-Herald called it “poignant, sad, uplifting, thrilling, and powerful,” he was delighted. He had been internally holding his breath in anticipation of this moment for more than a year, and his relief that Peter had succeeded on such a large scale was obvious. But he also feared, with reason, a hometown bias and waited to see if the show would be well-received elsewhere.

As Spirit continued to play in Omaha, Susie went to Laguna with a group of her grandchildren. They were used to Susie indulging their wishes and giving herself to their needs, going here and there with them, the perfect grandmother; she didn’t disappoint them now. She took them shopping at the mall, like old times, sitting in a chair and pointing at things around the store, saying, “I’ll take one of those, and two of these, and one of those.”14 After this visit, she was exhausted, but began to prepare herself for the annual trip to Herbert Allen’s post–Sun Valley gathering.

The wisdom of spending another long weekend with a crowd of people at the high altitude of Cody, Wyoming, so soon after Sun Valley, seemed questionable. Some in the family were strongly against her making this trip. But Susie was doing cartwheels at the sheer joy of living, and Warren wanted to feel that everything was back to normal. Thus, the last week of July, Warren and Susie reunited for