A spiritual autobiography is presented through a requiem-mass and folk-blues concert atmosphere, set in the haunted Mississippi delta. The phrase “praise be the wrecking ball” is explained as a metaphor for the brain, linking inner life to destructive and transformative force. The creator and original performer treats the piece as her life story, while emphasizing that clarity is not the primary goal. The work is characterized by mystic poetry and ecstatic catharsis, producing brightness and splendor. After more than a decade of development, the performance is reimagined with another actor embodying “H,” while the creator shifts toward holding the pen as a holy act and letting performance energy “chill.”
"“When I say 'praise be the wrecking ball' I mean my brain. That one's a metaphor.” It's also an act of channeling - because the brain in question really belongs to Animal Wisdom's creator and original performer, the truly alone-in-her-class composer Heather Christian. “It's my life story,” Christian writes in a program note, “as clearly as I can tell it (which is not very clearly at all).”"
"At heart, she is a mystic poet. Ecstatic catharsis is her métier, and Animal Wisdom is luminous with it. Christian has been working on the show for more than a decade, and though she originally conceived it with herself at the center - belting its clarion refrains and whaling on the piano with a virtuosity somewhere between Rachmaninov and Memphis Slim - she has, in recent days, reimagined it with another actor embodying the figure of “H.”"
"It's a shift that may simply reflect aging and changing - these days, Christian told me last fall, “the holding of the pen is the holy thing” for her, and “the peacock in me can sort of chill.” But it also offers a glimpse of insight into that startling image of the wrecking ball. Why would one of the American theater's most brilliant and heart-forward makers see her own mind as"
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