Emergent Drama
By George Halitzka
On Good Friday last year, I went to see a nearby church's passion play. As soon as I walked in, I was impressed! Their set took over the whole sanctuary; the music was well chosen and the costumes authentic. Spectacular pyrotechnics highlighted the resurrection. (Okay—confession time—I even sinned by envying their robotic lights.) In short, the production seemed to have everything going for it!
But long before the last scene, I found myself hoping it would end soon. I even prayed that the couple sitting next to me were already Christians, and not encountering Jesus for the first time. The show had become downright painful.
Now, this congregation obviously had a passion for evangelism, and a desire to do excellent work! Hundreds of volunteers gave huge amounts of time and energy to make it all happen. So what went wrong?
Somewhere along the way, it seems they forgot the fundamental principle of theatre: Their play wasn't telling the truth.
Telling the Truth
"Whoa, back the truck up!" you say. "This was a passion play, right? You know, the kind about Jesus dying and rising again? That's Truth with a capital T!"
I couldn't agree with you more. So let me be clear: In one sense, the play was telling the Truth! It contained lots of Scripture about Christ; a veritable sermon on the way of Salvation. But that's the problem: It was a sermon, not a drama.
When you watch your favorite movie for the 25th time, the fun isn't in seeing how it will end. The fun is in the conflict—watching characters choose, mirroring the human experience as they make up their minds. You want to see them acting kind of like you, so you can walk around in their shoes. Once the conflict's over, you sigh happily and press "stop" on the remote.
But when characters in a passion play get saved in 90 seconds flat, there's no conflict. When Jesus has no struggles and seems so divine that He's no longer human, I can't relate. When the characters seem to know the ending long before they get there, it's pretty hard to care about the story.
Jesus saved prostitutes, first-century IRS agents, and even the scum who hung on the cross next to Him. But when we're not honest about human experience (even the ugly parts), the great sinners in our audience won't be able to encounter a Great Savior.
Emergent Drama
If you've been hanging around the Kingdom very long, you've probably begun to hear about the "Emergent Church"—that is, congregations specifically trying to reach Gen. Xers and Millennials.1 Loosely speaking, that means anyone currently between 18-35 . . . and by many accounts, they're the least-churched generation in American history.
When you present a play, it's no longer sufficient to mount a spectacle with high production values. The next generation isn't coming to church to be amused, but to encounter God in a tangible way. They want to experience all that it means to be human; understand new things about relating to God and others. So if your play is just "family-friendly entertainment," you may want to look at other scripts. If there are 90-second conversions and preachy scenes and all the problems are neatly tied up with a bow, don't bother mounting the show. They won't come.
Consider two Broadway hits from the past decade. Rent inspired an obsession in the younger generation—my own sister listened to the soundtrack nonstop for months. The story concerns a group of Bohemian artists coming of age in New York City, and all of their real-life struggles—from paying the rent to coping with the AIDS epidemic. The gritty reality of the play, from its grunge-inspired ad campaign to the hard-rock score to the taboo social issues in the story, made Rent's score one of the anthems of a generation.
More recently, Wicked has taken the country by storm. It may be a "conventional" book musical, but its style and plot have very little in common with Rodgers and Hammerstein! It re-imagines the Wicked Witch of the West, Elphaba, as a sympathetic character. She grows up; falls in love; makes friends—and faces rejection more because of her green skin than her "evilness." It ends by asking questions that Christians should consider about sin—plus faith and redemption. Along the way, it tells a universal narrative of love and friendship, stripping off the sugar coating to transform a kids' fairy tale into a play for grownups.
These musicals teach us that to engage our culture, plays must be willing to confront difficult topics; topics the church has often avoided: doubt. Family conflicts. Pornography. We need to show life in all its complexity and difficulty, without neglecting to bring our Savior to bear on everything. In this generation, hypocrisy—whether onstage or in life—is a bigger hurdle to the Gospel than ever. So our characters need to act like real people, not sitcom characters.
Rent and Wicked also teach us to consider the style of our productions. That doesn't mean we should imitate secular entertainment—but we do need to learn what sort of storytelling is relevant to our audience. As media critic Marshall McLuhan famously pointed out, "The medium is the message." Our stories are shaped by the way we choose to tell them. So for a generation drowning in electronic noise, we must strive to communicate our narratives in the most compelling ways possible.
Church drama has to become less about life as we wish it could be in the Christian subculture, and more about bringing God to the places where people live. You know—the way Jesus taught.
How Should We Then Direct?
Some churches have seen the problems of their past productions. They've noticed that huge passion plays and five-minute silly sketches aren't connecting with the next generation. They've gotten embarrassed by the bad rep that church drama has in some people's minds. So they've given up on theatre, either reverting to prepackaged videos—or nothing dramatic at all.
But God's people could hardly make a bigger mistake! Instead of adapting the form and content of drama, we've simply thrown out one of the most potent ways we can connect with the next generation. By some estimates, the Bible is more than one-half stories. In a story-obsessed culture, what more powerful way can we communicate than with drama?
We need to adapt our form to not always resolving things neatly at the end. Sometimes, it's more compelling when characters we care about don't get saved—because then we, the audience, don't want to make the same mistake! (Besides, isn't that how it works in real life sometimes?)
There's no patience in the current generation for "preachyness"—for better or worse, there's a suspicion of anyone with an "agenda." So our plays must become less about telling and more about showing; less about overt proclamation and more about characters who live by example.
We should be willing to experiment with other aspects of form, too—for example, performing a one-act Christmas play with worship music "bookending" it, instead of an outright musical. Or maybe we could produce interactive theatre instead of the kind where audiences sit passively and watch.
Perhaps we'll leave the church walls and present a good "secular" play in another venue, or open our casting to people who don't know Jesus yet. (As an actor friend of mine says, the biggest impact we make with our plays is usually on the cast, not the audience.)
If you do sketch drama, the cutesy humor and preachy endings that mark some scripts isn't engaging people anymore—if it ever did. Topical, even satirical, humor—and endings that sometimes remain unresolved—will make people think.
But we don't just need new forms for our work, we also need new content. Are we willing to tell stories that place Biblical events in a contemporary context? (Not in a humorous vein to make people laugh—but in a serious vein to help folks contemplate the underlying themes?)
How about narratives that confront "taboos" in the church, like racism or depression? Will we direct plays that challenge our audience to pursue social justice (e.g., working at a homeless shelter or supporting AIDS orphans in Africa)? Will we dare to choose a Christmas script that features a single-parent home, instead of the perfect middle-class family around the tree?
We need more compelling stories in the church; stories that show by example that Jesus loves the whole world. Even the big-time sinners.
New Form: From Garden to Tomb
Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christcame out at Easter 2004. For Easter 2005, I directed the Easter production at my church. And before I even started writing a script, I knew we had a problem: a multi-million-dollar blockbuster is a hard act to follow.
However, we had one thing that the Passion film didn't: live actors. So we decided to make the most of them.
We created an interactive version of the Stations of the Cross. Our audience members, or guests, walked through eight "stations" depicting the events leading to Christ's death. At each station, they stopped to watch actors pantomime the events in contemporary dress, while a narrator read the relevant portion of Scripture. Finally, the audience was invited to live in the scene with an experiential element.
For example, at the third station, our audience watched Pilate condemn Jesus to die, then wash his hands in a basin. Meanwhile, the narrator read the Biblical account of the trial before Pilate. Finally, the audience was invited to enter the scene by washing their hands in Pilate's basin. It provided a compelling illustration of the truth that we've all betrayed Christ in our own lives.
From Garden to Tomb didn't have the eye-popping special effects or professional actors from The Passion of the Christ. But it delivered a transformational experience that people couldn't find at the Cineplex. There are some things that film just can't accomplish, and placing people (literally) in the middle of the action is one of them. In a world shaped by interactive media, interactive theatre can make Scripture relevant for a new generation.
New Content: The Father's Gift
When you think "Christmas," diseased lepers may not be the first people that spring to mind. But when you think "Incarnation"—that is, Jesus living and dying in human flesh to bring hope to the world—perhaps you should think of Father Damien, the "Leper Priest."
Father Damien was a Catholic missionary to Hawaii in the late 1800s. He volunteered to minister in the notorious Molokai Leper Colony, at a time when leprosy was a death sentence. Father Damien eventually contracted the disease himself and died from it, but not before he brought hope to thousands of people. Father Damien made his home among despairing, diseased, sin-battered people. In other words, he lived "incarnationally"—like Jesus.
When I directed a play about the life of Father Damien for a church in 2005, people had two main reactions. Some thought lepers at Christmas were disgusting. Some were convinced that an evangelical church shouldn't present a play which involved (even by necessity) Catholic beliefs.
But others told me The Father's Gift helped them ponder the Incarnation of Christ in a fresh way. After all, Jesus came to earth precisely to save people marked by the leprosy of sin. One eighteen-year-old guy who struggles with doubts about God told me he understood Jesus' sacrifice in a new way, and a 70-something gentleman told me this was the first time a play at church ever made him think.
Emergent Drama will not be without controversy. When you try to illustrate the Incarnation in a way that doesn't involve bathrobes and "Silent Night," some people won't "get it." When you do a "heavy" play at a time of year when many prefer warm-fuzzy musicals, there are folks who won't appreciate your work. But those who have ears will hear what the Spirit is saying.
Change is Good
In January 2000, I was exhausted. I'd just fought battles with everyone from the Worship Pastor to my Stage Manager to mount a 25-minute play for Christmas at my church. The play was a retelling the Nativity in a contemporary context, and it seemed like the whole thing had been not only difficult, but a waste of time. I was a little depressed—wondering why I bothered, and whether God had shown up at all.
Then I got a note from my stage manager. She'd just had a "chance" encounter with a hurting teenager who attended the play. The teen told her, "Watching that play was the first time I ever saw Jesus as a real person."
Suddenly, I wasn't feeling quite so depressed any more. I decided that maybe, Emergent Drama was worth every minute of frustration it caused.
Unfortunately, frustration is often a factor when you try something new onstage. Change is a dirty word in church. Really, continuing a long tradition of Passion Plays that are more preaching than drama will guarantee your job security. Nobody will raise their eyebrows when you do goofy five-minute drama sketches to make people chuckle. Of course, chances are that nobody will be transformed, either.
But there are people in the next generation who are longing to encounter Jesus. They're hoping your church isn't one more hypocritical, irrelevant body of Believers to cross off their list. So I hope your drama ministry will try experimenting with form and content. And I pray your next play doesn't just tell the Truth about God, but also the truth about human nature.
You may have to fight some battles. You may see some failures. But it'll be worth the struggle if one person can say on the way out of your next performance, "I finally see Jesus as a real person."
Isn't that what ministry is all about?
George Halitzka is a freelance theatre artist who has a passion for engaging people with the story of Jesus. Visit him online at www.dramabygeorge.com.
1For those familiar with the theological eddies swirling around the Emergent movement, I am not endorsing the unorthodox beliefs held by some Emergent leaders. Rather, I'm using the term "Emergent Church" more generically, to refer to groups of Believers who are striving to reach the next generation with the Gospel of Jesus. That's how the Emergent movement began in the first place.
Originally published at LillenasDrama.com on March 14, 2008. Copyright © 2008 by George Halitzka. All rights reserved.