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The Holy Ghost People
Dramatic Verse
It's easy to dismiss the Holy Ghost People. They travel door-to-door in white sheets spouting pseudoscience about time travel, wormholes, and a new galactic gospel. Most of the town has already laughed them away. But when the Holy Ghost People start to perform "miracles," denial becomes difficult, and conversation quickly shifts to what ought to be done.
It's easy to dismiss the Holy Ghost People. They travel door-to-door in white sheets spouting pseudoscience about time travel, wormholes, and a new galactic gospel. Most of the town has already laughed them away. But when the Holy Ghost People start to perform "miracles," denial becomes difficult, and conversation quickly shifts to what ought to be done.
85 pages, Paperback
First published February 26, 2014
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Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews
July 7, 2021
i love a little nonsense in service of mystery and intrigue, but this was excessive even for me
August 10, 2016
THE HOLY GHOST PEOPLE is a fascinating hybrid of verse and dramatic prose, boasting the swooping, boundless syntax of a poem, yet unfolding and billowing within the structure of a play. As a dramatic piece it may challenge the reader's conception of stageability, often constructing and reveling in its own expressionistic grammar (both verbal and visual). But its experimental approach to language and narrative leads to some really fascinating and provocative moments, as well as some striking images, particularly as the central conflict--that between the visiting extraterrestrial Holy Ghost People and the skeptical, earthbound Speakers--escalates in a palpable and violent crescendo.
Thematically, this play-in-verse offers a profound and nuanced--if occasionally elusive--exploration of the tension between doubt and faith, between skepticism and belief. Rather than dealing in simple binaries, however, Young characterizes both the Holy Ghost People and the Speakers as complex entities, neither of them coming across (at least to me) as either totally reliable or totally unreliable, either "right" or "wrong."
It's tempting, for example, to attribute a certain amount of revelatory weight to the Holy Ghost People's accounts, but at the same time there's something unrelenting and cold about their god that might give the reader pause. Meanwhile, although the Speakers are unsophisticated, closed-minded, and (ultimately) violent, they also--according to their character description--"do not necessarily believe in the god the holy ghost people accuse them of believing in." Whether that would be a step up or a step down from the Holy Ghost People's estimation of them, however, seems unclear.
In the end, it's that embrace of ambiguity that gives THE HOLY GHOST PEOPLE its potency. It lives in that ambiguity--rests in it--while also acknowledging the tensions and chaos that can and do inevitably arise between doubters and believers when they're forced to share the same space, the same planet, the same universe.
The play indicates quite emphatically that the Holy Ghost People and the Speakers "drink from the same water"--or at least they think they do.
Which begs the question--can that ever be enough?
Thematically, this play-in-verse offers a profound and nuanced--if occasionally elusive--exploration of the tension between doubt and faith, between skepticism and belief. Rather than dealing in simple binaries, however, Young characterizes both the Holy Ghost People and the Speakers as complex entities, neither of them coming across (at least to me) as either totally reliable or totally unreliable, either "right" or "wrong."
It's tempting, for example, to attribute a certain amount of revelatory weight to the Holy Ghost People's accounts, but at the same time there's something unrelenting and cold about their god that might give the reader pause. Meanwhile, although the Speakers are unsophisticated, closed-minded, and (ultimately) violent, they also--according to their character description--"do not necessarily believe in the god the holy ghost people accuse them of believing in." Whether that would be a step up or a step down from the Holy Ghost People's estimation of them, however, seems unclear.
In the end, it's that embrace of ambiguity that gives THE HOLY GHOST PEOPLE its potency. It lives in that ambiguity--rests in it--while also acknowledging the tensions and chaos that can and do inevitably arise between doubters and believers when they're forced to share the same space, the same planet, the same universe.
The play indicates quite emphatically that the Holy Ghost People and the Speakers "drink from the same water"--or at least they think they do.
Which begs the question--can that ever be enough?
April 8, 2014
Even that is a fluctuating notion. I've read the script yet another time (3 total, for those keeping score at home) and I keep seeing interesting things in it. I don't know that Mr. Young manages to achieve the full engagement with the ideas here - there's a lot of good work but I think the play remains a little cool, a little insular. But it has intrigued me immensely as a theatermaker, which might well be the greatest compliment I could give it. I can see a way in which this play is augmented by its staging, a way in which it more fully achieves the potential on the page. And isn't that the idea, in the end? That a play only fully comes alive when it lands on the stage? (I realize, looking at the Plays Inverse website that they're all about the reading-experience of the play too. And while I dig this... well, I'm about the doing, too.)
TNBBC: http://thenextbestbookblog.blogspot.c...
and at RB: http://ragingbiblioholism.com/2014/04...
TNBBC: http://thenextbestbookblog.blogspot.c...
and at RB: http://ragingbiblioholism.com/2014/04...
May 10, 2014
When I started, I was as skeptical as the "Speakers" Young creates. But this play/poem takes the hearts of both of those terms and mashes them together. It takes that eerie voiceless lyric that is so contemporary and so often (for me, at least) disorienting and puts it in the mouth of an actor—or in your mouth reading as an actor. It forces you to move the language in ways that you might not were it not a play. And it forces you to conceive of the stage/action/tension/stakes in ways that are outside the bounds of conventional drama. And, on top of that, these formal creations push right to the heart of the questions Young's language raises: questions of the divine and our place in it, of belief, of time. It is an experiment in the best sense of the word: it teaches us something new.
July 26, 2016
I heard this poet, Joshua Young, read portions of this play-in-verse @ROZZTOX and it had me wanting to see it performed ethereally by the multitudes in the "galaxy shift" of that black stage flocked by red like "god will come for you in in the ether-light of dreams" (p. 13). The rhythmic preachy staccatos of "we drink from the same water" (p. 21) and judge one another as "they are here to make us feel bad. they are here to show us our sins" (p. 54). Read it and be saved.
May 15, 2014
Joshua Young takes fascinating subjects (the universe & religion/fundamentalism/belief) and intertwines their fates in surprising and rewarding ways. It's a wild ride!
December 31, 2014
I was skeptical during the first few pages, but oh! -- what a wonderful handling of doubt, the divine, truth, religion, and fear. I've never read anything like this, but I'm so glad I have.
December 4, 2014
I'm biased because I published this, but here's what other folks are saying about THE HOLY GHOST PEOPLE:
"Like Samuel Beckett, Joshua Young's brilliant play in verse captures the 21st century struggle to manifest truth when 'God's justice implodes in the stardust.' Young's Speakers and Holy Ghosts express a weary but hopeful skepticism about the soul in this exciting new work of eschatological theatre." - Carmen Giménez Smith, author of Milk and Filth
"When a poet writes a play I'm there! What I love about Joshua Young's poems being off-center I love about his play THE HOLY GHOST PEOPLE. Yes, you want to see it performed, but reading it creates a stage no theatre can live up to. Come drink from the same water; Joshua Young is a remarkable Virgil to chaperone our sorry asses to where the real world is the written." - CA Conrad, author of The Book of Frank
"THE HOLY GHOST PEOPLE is Our Town meets Waiting for Godot. The familiar world of parking lots, farmers' markets and dive bars is transformed by a new kind of stranger. The Holy Ghost People remind us of the serious questions about the afterlife and memory, ghosts and nonbelievers, science and illusion. In alternating choruses with the skeptical Speakers, the play invites us to question easy binaries. What is proof of the holy? Of the profane? What happens when love turns to pity? Is faith an illusion? A drug?" - Connie Voisine author of Cathedral of the North
"Joshua Young is one of the most ambitious and exciting writers out there, and THE HOLY GHOST PEOPLE is his most daring work yet. In his exploration of the cosmic crossroads of faith, science, dogma, and community, Young gifts us a profound, disorienting, and darkly comic play in verse." - Nick Courtright, author of Let There Be Light
"With THE HOLY GHOST PEOPLE, Joshua Young introduces the bombast and fervor of Jesus Christ Superstar to the frantic lyrical inventorying of Jubilate Agno. While the players argue about the nature of belief and reality, we fall more in love with our crowded, profane world." - Madeline ffitch, of The Missoula Oblongata & author of Valparaiso, Round the Horn (Publishing Genius, 2014)
"Like Samuel Beckett, Joshua Young's brilliant play in verse captures the 21st century struggle to manifest truth when 'God's justice implodes in the stardust.' Young's Speakers and Holy Ghosts express a weary but hopeful skepticism about the soul in this exciting new work of eschatological theatre." - Carmen Giménez Smith, author of Milk and Filth
"When a poet writes a play I'm there! What I love about Joshua Young's poems being off-center I love about his play THE HOLY GHOST PEOPLE. Yes, you want to see it performed, but reading it creates a stage no theatre can live up to. Come drink from the same water; Joshua Young is a remarkable Virgil to chaperone our sorry asses to where the real world is the written." - CA Conrad, author of The Book of Frank
"THE HOLY GHOST PEOPLE is Our Town meets Waiting for Godot. The familiar world of parking lots, farmers' markets and dive bars is transformed by a new kind of stranger. The Holy Ghost People remind us of the serious questions about the afterlife and memory, ghosts and nonbelievers, science and illusion. In alternating choruses with the skeptical Speakers, the play invites us to question easy binaries. What is proof of the holy? Of the profane? What happens when love turns to pity? Is faith an illusion? A drug?" - Connie Voisine author of Cathedral of the North
"Joshua Young is one of the most ambitious and exciting writers out there, and THE HOLY GHOST PEOPLE is his most daring work yet. In his exploration of the cosmic crossroads of faith, science, dogma, and community, Young gifts us a profound, disorienting, and darkly comic play in verse." - Nick Courtright, author of Let There Be Light
"With THE HOLY GHOST PEOPLE, Joshua Young introduces the bombast and fervor of Jesus Christ Superstar to the frantic lyrical inventorying of Jubilate Agno. While the players argue about the nature of belief and reality, we fall more in love with our crowded, profane world." - Madeline ffitch, of The Missoula Oblongata & author of Valparaiso, Round the Horn (Publishing Genius, 2014)
April 16, 2014
Insane - thought provoking, and creepy! Haven't read anything quite like this - I loved it!
October 16, 2018
Excellent book!!!
November 24, 2015
This was the weirdest damn book I've read in a while, and thank God. I loved it.
Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews