For a few years in the 1980s, Ed Townley was one of the busiest people in Chicago theater. He worked at Wisdom Bridge, acted with the Practical Theater, and directed shows for Pegasus Players and Apple Tree. He wasn’t making a lot of money. “But I was comfortable,” he recalls.
He moved to Manhattan in 1968, where he got a job with Joseph Papp’s New York Shakespeare Festival. Papp had just scored a big success, transferring the musical Hair to Broadway, and he purchased a building on Lafayette, where he opened the Public Theater.
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“That was a wild time.” Townley says. “Papp attracted some of the most creative, exciting, talented people. You worked your ass off for him.” But Papp struggled to meet his payroll. “I remember you got paid on Thursday and you got there early and ran like hell to the bank.”
“Then, to everybody’s surprise, I recovered. And that was the beginning of my sobriety.”
“I left Manhattan State and got a furnished room on 32nd Street,” Townley says. He got a part-time job and went to AA meetings every day.
Years before, he had attended services at a Unity church in New York. “I went because a cute guy asked me if I would come with him.” But he hadn’t gone since. Then one night he found himself in a Unity church in Old Town.
Overcoming these fears, he’s worked hard to meld the spiritual and the creative since being ordained in 1991. He was given his first church in Portland, Oregon, where he reformatted services to encourage worshippers to express themselves. He wanted to break down the wall between pastor and parishioner. He opened up the church for music and poetry readings, and soon he staged a small theater production.
