A friend suggested contacting Teng and offered to introduce the playwright to the songwriter. Shaffer was familiar with Teng’s music but had never met her. She had the script and lyrics but she needed a composer. Shaffer hadn’t worked on a musical before. “So I would take these incredible experiences I had traveling in other countries, some fiction but mostly real stories, and make them into plays.” “Before I became a mom, I have two kids now, I used to travel a lot,” Shaffer said. She wrote and performed solo plays, but a trip to Central America led to her first multi-character play, which premiered in Ann Arbor. At Oberlin College, she took creative writing classes. She acted in college productions and regional theater. Shaffer, who lives in Ann Arbor, has written several plays that have been produced throughout California and in more than 40 cities in the U.S. I went to his classes every Monday night for five years.” I used to live in the Bay Area in California, and I used to go to Spirit Rock Meditation Center in Marin where Jack Kornfield is a famous teacher. I had already been studying Buddhism for at least 10 years. “Everything I’ve written has originated with my own interests and experience, which is true of most people. “I have been studying Buddhism for a really long time,” she said. The play grew from Shaffer’s personal interest and involvement with Buddhism. The Fourth Messenger, featuring Vienna Teng by Vienna Teng and Tanya Shaffer ![]() Can Raina be won over can we be won over?” And also, to kind of be the voice of the audience who might be skeptical of this person. “I wanted a character to stand in opposition to her, I wanted both sides of the equation to be represented in this piece, both the faith she’s had in what she’s teaching and another voice to stand against that and to see how they might come together, so there would be an inherent conflict. Here is a world-famous spiritual teacher with something to hide,” Shaffer said. The reporter Raina is a challenge to Mama Sid and her followers. Mama Sid weighs the costs of being a spiritual teacher and forsaking the norms of a personal life. A young, aggressive reporter for a scandal sheet called Debunk Nation thinks the guru is hiding something and is determined to find out what it is. The musical is set in current time and centers on a religious leader called by her followers Mama Sid (her name echoing the Buddha’s given name, Siddhartha). ![]() The Fourth Messenger premiered at the Ashby Stage in Berkeley, California, in 2013 and was presented at the New York Musical Festival in 2017. “So it took me five years to find my way into it and then many years to workshop.” “I started to think how would people view this story if it was a woman, and I wanted to update it and make it feel very relevant and contemporary,” Shaffer said. She said she had trouble deciding how to handle the story about the historical Buddha and his teachings. ![]() Shaffer didn’t pursue the idea for another five years. And it came to me that it would be cool as a song and dance, the temptations standing under a tree and then thinking the whole story would be a musical because it has that scale of a hero’s quest, and so I got excited on the retreat and for many hours forgot about my breath and I thought about the musical.” Then for many days and nights, all the temptations of the world are trying to get him up. “I was thinking about the story of Buddha’s enlightenment, where he was found under a tree and vowed not to get up until he found enlightenment. “The idea came to me on a nine-day silent retreat when I was supposed to be clearing my mind,” she said. In an interview with Shaffer in 2020, she described what inspired the musical while she was on a spiritual retreat. The concert-style performance will be a benefit for The Ark, Ann Arbor’s popular home for folk, jazz, and alt-country. Now, almost three years to the day, The Fourth Messenger, with book and lyrics by Tanya Shaffer and music and additional lyrics by Vienna Teng, will finally get its Midwest premiere at The Ark on March 18. Then the pandemic hit and the musical was canceled. Three years ago, The Ark was set to be the venue for the Midwest premiere of The Fourth Messenger, a musical with a modern perspective on the life and teachings of the Buddha. Vienna Teng and Tanya Shaffer collaborated on the musical The Fourth Messenger, which premieres at The Ark on March 18 after a three-year delay.
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