IN THE GREEN a new musical 

by GRACE MCLEAN

Hildegard Von Bingen– (c. 1098 – 17 September 1179), also known as the Sibyl of the Rhine, was a German Benedictine abbess and polymath active as a writer, composer, philosopher, mystic, visionary, and as a medical writer and practitioner during the High Middle Ages. She is one of the best-known composers of sacred monophony, as well as the most recorded in modern history. She has been considered by a number of scholars to be the founder of scientific natural history in Germany. In the Green is a fictionalized origin story about Hildegard. 

At the musical’s opening, Hildegard is delivered to the convent at age 8 because she has stopped speaking after the death of her sister.¹ We find out that Hildegard has become broken. She is played by three women– Hildegard Mouth, Hildegard Eye, and Hildegard Hand. Jutta, the “anchoress” in charge of the convent, teaches Hildegard that to become whole again she must watch, wait, and dig while giving up all other connections to the world. Jutta herself has embraced living as if she were dead. Through the passage of time Jutta gives Hildegard advice such as to stop eating so she will not bleed, to stop sleeping so she can be ever watchful, and to keep digging a hole which Hildegard discovers is to be her own grave. 

Though Hildegard strives to comply, she cannot help but question Jutta’s teachings.² Through questioning, Hildegard finds herself in an underground place where she meets Shadow whom she discovers is a part of Jutta that she has severed and buried away. Shadow urges Hildegard to remember and tell the story surrounding her sister’s death, helping her reconcile the parts of herself she had blamed for what happened. In turn, Hildegard brings Shadow up to Jutta and tries to get her to accept that hidden part of herself and tell her story. Jutta is overwhelmed by Shadow who begs her to forgive herself. But she cannot overcome the shame and guilt she feels and ultimately rejects Shadow and chooses death. 

Hildegard has learned that the dark parts of herself must be recognized to be able to see sunlight again. At the end of the musical, Hildegard has taken over for Jutta and made important changes becoming known for her healing and teaching. She has built a strong community of followers and gone out into the world preaching based on the visions she has experienced for most of her life. 

When a young woman, Sigewize, is brought to meet her, Hildegard expects that the woman is there to be healed and asks her to relate her story. Sigewize tells Hildegard that she is a Cathar. Cathars were a group of people living in Southern France who were considered heretics by the Catholic church as a result of their refusal to pay tithes, their rejection of authority of the Catholic church and their teachings rejecting materialism and embracing celibacy. Hildegard had visited Cologne and given a fiery speech exhorting listeners to reject heresy and accept the teachings of the Catholic faith. Sigewize tells Hildegard that as a result of her speech in Cologne, the crowd sought out Cathars and burned them at the stake, resulting in the death of Sigewize’s entire family. 

The show ends at the moment that Hildegard receives this information. The question of how she will respond, is left unanswered. It is up to the audience to discuss the questions raised. Can someone who does great good also cause great harm? What was the history of the Cathars? Should we judge historical figures by today’s standards? What role did Hildegard actually play vis a vis people regarded as heretics? What were Hildegard’s teachings? What are the parallels to world events today? What questions does this story raise for you? We hope that this piece of theatre will move you to seek answers. 

¹In real life, scholars have posited that Hildegard may have been autistic explaining her slow development of speech, visual thinking and learning, and other extraordinary traits she exhibited after her emergence in to the world after Jutta’s death.

² Interestingly, though she spent 30 years under Jutta’s care, in the narrative “Vita”of Jutta’s life that Hildegard commissioned, she herself made no statement about Jutta other than that “She was crowned by a good death”. This terse response by Hildegard to the death of the woman who had served as a mother figure, inspired Grace McLean to imagine why that relationship might have been fraught.

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