I loved summer tours with the
Portrait Players. Some of the reason was totally selfish. I had written the
main play and wanted to see how audiences would respond. The College preferred
that we split the tours with another professor so we are not away so long. That
was a good thing, as I think my wife would have preferred that I didn’t go at
all some years. My trade off college rep was Norma Bailey. She was always
terrific and a great help. In the first year she took the first half of the
four-week tour.
The team went to Western Canada.
It was fundamentally the same tour I made with the college choir years before.
We had already taken the play to a number of churches near the college so it actually
began closer to Alberta.
I wanted to learn and so took some
notes and made some observations along the way. First and foremost was that a
play in the church was a strange thing. We were opening most of the churches to
the concept of drama in the church. Many were not sure about how to respond to
even the idea let along the presentation. Some congregations were a little
hesitant, but seemed to warm up by the end of the show. Pastors were a little
more reluctant. They were less concerned about how most of the congregation
responded they worried about that one parishioner who might object.
We had a pretty simple
presentation. We hauled the few props, but used whatever seating might be
available at each stop. We had no lighting. So did not haul a trailer. There
were some semi-pro groups making their way around the country with the same drama
premise. They usually did a number of short pieces so could adjust the length
of their presentation. We were doing a play and the time was set. The Maze ran just under an hour.
The response made me wonder if a
play was the right approach. We did a play because I wanted to tell a story
that called for a response. Most short skit presentation was open-ended simply
causing the observer to think about a response.
The second thing I learned was
that churches really wanted college tour groups to come Sunday mornings when
they get the most people, but neither they nor us knew how to handle a “play”
on a Sunday morning. It was perfect for a music group, but it was terrible for
a play. No matter what we said, they always wanted to do what they normally did
on Sunday morning: 20-30 minutes of singing, 10-15 minutes of announcements and
offering and then turn it over to us for the next 40 minutes. We could not cut the
play down to fit the remaining time. It was not unusual to see a few people
leave before the play was over. I felt bad, but didn’t know what to do about that.
For most churches, the only “play”
they had ever seen done was a Christmas pageant or choir cantata. I knew we
were pushing boundaries. Every church was kind and very accepting of us with
one exception. Morning services were always a problem. The pastor always said
they didn’t know how long it would be. I kept my mouth shut and took their
comments. We had sent written instructions and I verbally explained it again
when I arrived and then again Sunday morning trying to make sure they
understood. They didn’t.
They team often talked about the
play and continued to find new interpretations. Some people grasp the deeper
spiritual meaning of The Maze, some
found it funny, some saw both sides, some only one. It did not connect as
deeply as I had hoped. When I got home and was evaluating the process with Rev,
Rose told me how to open the drama door to drama in the churches. “Tell a
missions story.” He said. I immediately began to look for a story to tell and
ran into the book No Time for Tombstones.
No comments:
Post a Comment