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Recording Dad’s “Richard Johnson” performance
By RickMeasham | January 26, 2008
For about 10 years Dad has been visiting churches, bringing to life William Carey — the first Baptist missionary to India. He’d dress up in traditional looking attire and stride into the church as a young Carey, off to India for the first time. Full of youth and life.
Later in the service he’d don a bald wig and would hobble in as the old Carey in his last days looking back on his life. On more than one occasion he had to deal with people wanting to help the ‘old man’ out to his car — even though they could see it was a bald wig and they’d seen him minutes before as a young man!
He had plans up his sleeve to do other characters too: John Wesley was one. However Dad left this ‘mortal coil’ before he had time to put plan into action.
However, he did have time to write a script for a Richard Johnson performance. Richard Johnson was Australia’s first ever minister. He arrived, with his wife Mary on the First Fleet on January 26th, 1788. Dad had spoken to the minister of a church in Sydney that has a service each year to commemorate Richard Johnson, and they’d spoken about Dad performing the piece this year. After Dad passed away, June contacted the minister to let him know that Dad wouldn’t be making it. But also mentioned that the script was available.
I preferred, however, not to just hand over the script to someone else to read in whatever way they wanted. I felt the best thing for Dad’s legacy, for me and for the rest of the family was to have one of us read it. Dad had some notes on various things he wanted — like the sound of a kookaburra and ship noises. So I’ve spent the time working on this recording.
The performance is set on the evening of January 26th, 1788. Right now, here in Australia it is the evening of January 26th, 2008 — exactly 220 years later. Recording this for Dad has been a real privilege and has been a great blessing to me. I hope you get something from listening.
You can download the audio (5m 30s, 1934kb mp3) or the script (29kb odt). The mp3 here is low quality. If you’d like a CD quality file, please feel free to ask.
Script © 2007 Jack Measham, recording © 2008 Rick Measham. All rights reserved. This recording and script must not be played or performed in any public place without permission, however licenses will be granted freely on request.
Topics: Movies | 3 Comments »
February 2nd, 2008 at 9:18 pm
Very impressive and indeed a fitting tribute to dear Jack.
May it bring glory to the Lord on the day and into the future.
February 2nd, 2008 at 9:50 pm
Thanks for sharing this Rick, very enjoyable. I remember seeing your dad’s ‘William Carey’ at Burnie Baptist, his old William was indeed very convincing. I think you’ve inheritted some performance skill!
August 26th, 2008 at 11:16 pm
You bring not only Richard Johnson to life but Dad also … thanks mate