October 1, 2009 - Opening Night - Performing Arts Center, Murrieta Valley HS, Murrieta, CA - The Diviners is set in a 1930’s Depression-Era small, highly religious town known as Zion, Indiana. The play is centered around Buddy Layman, a local boy whose mother died while keeping him from drowning in a river. The trauma as a result of the event has left the boy with a simple but curious mind, and both an uncanny gift for sensing water, as well as a crippling fear of it. He refuses to go anywhere near water, and thus has not washed in years, nor been baptized.

When C.C Showers--a former preacher jaded by the way organized religion has become more of a show than about a true connection with God--comes to town searching simply for work, everyone immediately views him as Buddy’s savior, the one who will finally be able to heal Buddy and bring him to the Lord. Soon, Buddy and C.C. become connected on a deeply profound level as C.C. tries to help the boy through his pain and physical condition. Along the way, he discovers that by helping heal Buddy, he is also helping heal the bitterness in his heart.

Somethings, however, do not always go according to plan.

The Diviners’ message is one of faith. Not all things can be understood or changed or seen or explained, but that does not mean that they are not real. One must accept that which they are given, what they are meant to do and what is meant for them, because it is hardly ever clearly explained, and is almost always fleeting. “Turn the earth to the earth like a child to his mother . . . We turn to each other and call it a blessin’.”