Houston, Texas – March 4, 2024 – An Introduction Press Release:
Saint Julian Press is proud to announce that a new play in verse, The Lamp, will be published on March 31, 2026.
A New Play in Verse
The Lamp: In Conversation with St. Luke
Releasing March 31, 2026
Over the past few weeks, in the wake of the violence and loss we have witnessed in American cities, we’ve been working quietly on something new — a full-length play written in poetic verse.
The Lamp: In Conversation with St. Luke, a new play by poet/playwright Ron Starbuck, is a civic lament in verse, written for theater in the round and presented in three movements. It stands in conversation with Luke 11:34–36 — “Take heed therefore that the light which is in thee be not darkness” — and with the tradition of modern poetic drama.
The play unfolds in an unnamed American city. Labor rises before dawn. Kitchens open. Concrete sets. Towers catch the morning light. Yet beneath the brightness, a line is already forming — quiet, procedural, almost reasonable — between those who are seen and those who are merely useful.
What begins as policy hardens into posture. What is spoken as order becomes action. A single irreversible moment alters the city’s moral temperature.
But The Lamp does not rest in catastrophe. It follows what happens next — when the event leaves the street and enters language. Words like “necessary,” “law,” and “order” begin to soften consequences and normalize what has occurred. Fear becomes vocabulary. Justification becomes calm. The question shifts from What happened? to What are we willing to accept?
Structured in three arcs — visibility, violence, and normalization — the play resists polemic and refuses sentimentality. Its tragedy is not driven by villainy but by reflex, misjudgment, and a system trained to expect threat. The deeper cruelty lies not only in the moment of action, but in the architecture that prepares it — and in the language that absorbs it.
At the center of the drama stands The Voice — Conscience, implied as Jesus yet never named — speaking in a register that may be heard as scripture, as St. Luke’s witness, or as the interior summons of moral awareness. The ambiguity is intentional. The question is not who speaks, but whether we are willing to listen.
Performed in the round, there is no front and no safe distance. The audience becomes part of the civic circle. Watching becomes participation.
The play concludes without applause cues. It ends in sustained silence.
Not as dismissal — but as invitation.
Publication Date: March 31, 2026
Paperback: $18.00
Publisher: Saint Julian Press, Inc.
Language: English
Paperback: 86 Pages
ISBN-13: 978-1-955194-52-5
