Scripture Drama

Our fall conference speaker wasn’t a bad speaker at all. In fact, the woman did a great job teaching our students. I say this so you’ll know that what I saw happen wasn’t her fault. She, like many savvy InterVarsity staff and student leaders, made excellent use of video clips to introduce each of her four teaching sessions. We saw long, wonderful moments from As Good as It Gets and Dead Man Walking. Our speaker talked about the clips with us, drawing out principles of relating to others and being the kinds of people who change the world. And the students would nod and laugh and gasp and bury their faces in their hands, responding to the truth they were hearing. But then, our speaker said, “This reminds me of a situation that Jesus was in. Please open your Bibles and read with me . . .” And then it happened. I saw them getting out their Bibles. I saw them opening their Bibles. And I watched the energy drain from the room. Glazed and heavily-lidded eyes drooped down to the words on half-open pages as the stories of Jesus were read.

I couldn’t believe it: Sean Penn holds our attention better than Jesus?? I thought to myself, This is wrong! We’re more engaged by movies than the stories of Jesus. Oh, I understand why. I wasn’t born yesterday. I like a good, relevant movie clip as much as the next hip campus minister. I’ve used many a clip myself (ask me sometime about showing The Matrix to my adult Sunday School class!).

Fast-forward one year—to our next fall conference. A colleague and I had taken Bruce Kuhn’s Actor Training Workshop for InterVarsity staff over the summer. We decided then and there to act out the passages from which our speaker for fall conference would be teaching before she rose to speak. Now this was more like it: one of the passages, performed in Bruce’s wonderful storytelling form, was John 9, the healing of the man born blind. During my presentation, the students nodded and laughed and gasped and buried their faces in their hands, responding to the truth they were hearing as they watched.

One student turned to his staff worker and asked, “Is this in the Bible?” Our speaker was visibly shaken with laughter and tears as she came to further walk us through the story and make application to our lives on campus. No video clips were necessary to connect with students hearts and minds. The stories of Jesus had their intended impact.

Now let’s talk about scripture drama in evangelism. I have gone on with this, developing Always the Women: A Solo Performance of Jesus’ Encounters with Women in the Gospels. This sixty-minute piece was first performed at the Stockton Civic Theatre last May at the invitation of the producing director there. He saw the stories and thought they made great theater. Much of my work on the piece has been with directors who are not-yet-believers and presented to audiences in theaters or on-campus venues rather than in churches or I-V fellowship meetings. One night, my husband invited me to test out a piece on the GIG (Groups Investigating God, like an investigative Bible discussion) he was leading with some frosh. They watched with rapt attention and then had the best discussion ever—they got the message of the passage better by watching it unfold before their eyes than by reading and discussing. All the theater directors I’ve worked with get it, too. I can tell a rehearsal is going well when they start reacting to the story: “What’s wrong with this synagogue ruler?” “That poor woman!” “Wow, Jesus really nails them, doesn’t he?!” “Make sure they hear what Jesus says to that guy!” I had always wondered about the people who watch the stories performed, but who don’t have a lot of background to understand exactly what’s happening. Then I got this comment from a non-Christian international student who came to a performance last fall: “She definitely played each character as if she were that real character. When she played Jesus, her tone was very serious and powerful. When she played the mother of Jesus, Mary, she had filled herself up with a real happiness in the scene where the Lord had given her a son. This particular performance has convinced me to learn more about religion.” What she saw and experienced whet her appetite for more.

So what is Scripture drama? To perform Scripture drama is to present the stories of the Bible the way they were first presented: as well-told stories. The narrator speaks as though having seen these things happen with her own eyes. The characters in the story, as there is room to become them, are real people trying to accomplish real objectives in real conversations. A lot of people ask about the memorization, and I always tell them that the hard work of Scripture drama isn’t the memorization, but the solid, inductive Bible study beforehand with the actor’s scene-study twist: I have to know the characters well enough to become them and to respond to them as I become another character. I need to understand what they’re after in each story, moment by moment. I need to relate personally and emotionally to each setting, each scene, asking myself, “When have I been somewhere like this?” “What if I were Jesus here . . . ?” “When have I been in this situation?” [For a more detailed study process, see Bruce Kuhn’s adaptation of Uta Hagen’s scene-study questions on page 21]. The narrator needs to grasp what it would be like to see these things unfold and how he or she would burst into the room (or sit around the fire) and say, “You’ll never guess what I just saw . . .” Once all that is nailed down (and, as Bruce always says, “You need two hours of study and rehearsal per finished performance minute), putting the words of Scripture to what I already know is the easy part.

Why does Scripture drama work? The first reason is the nature of the stories themselves. These are the stories of God reaching people, and through them, the Word of God reaches across millenniums to grab little me by the heart (or throat, if necessary) to say, “I am here!” This is the root of my Sean Penn versus Jesus problem. As much as I love Dead Man Walking, the stories of Scripture are much more gripping and powerful. The problem is, we get numb to them as we read, thinking, Oh. Jesus brought a little girl back to life. He does that. Yes. Next. As though it happens all the time! But if we put ourselves into the place of the desperate father begging for the life of his child, if we wonder what it would be like for him to see her sit up as Jesus holds her hands . . . what could be more compelling? In Gerard Kelly’s excellent new book, RetroFuture (IVP®, 1999) he quotes Tom Wright (at the beginning of the most excellent chapter, “Screen­agers in Love”): “The Word became flesh, said St. John, and the church has turned the flesh back into words.” In his screenagers chapter, Kelly challenges the church to recover the power of the story. Scripture drama works because these stories happened (flesh), they were told before they were ever written (flesh), their messages were intended to be lived out (flesh), and if we tell them, if we show them, if the Word becomes flesh in us “on stage,” it has its perfect medium—God’s word incarnate in someone he has redeemed. I’ve joked with one of my directors that my advantage in preparing to perform stories from the gospels is that I actually believe that Jesus is present in me as I’m being him on stage. When students respond to Scripture drama so powerfully, it’s because they’ve encountered the living Word. For me, if I’m “there,” every rehearsal (and performance) is like the best quiet time I’ve ever had—emotional, challenging, intimate and real—a powerful connection with God.

I believe the time is right for more creative use of the Scriptures in our fellowships and churches. Stories are “in”—witness the shelves full of those Chicken Soup books. But how about the market for stories from the Bible? Have you ever analyzed the impact of Veggie Tales? Did you notice that last year, each major TV network aired a new version of the life of Jesus? The people around us who didn’t grow up in churches (and that’s a lot) have not heard these stories. Where we used to depend solely on movie clips or work at coming up with crafty sketches with biblical messages (but camouflaged, so as not to turn off the previously offended), we can break out the stories straight from our Bibles, well-told, and expect an impact beyond words.

—Nina is a graduate of the University of the Pacific in Stockton, California, where she danced with the Pacific Dance Ensemble and studied acting. Since then, she has been an InterVarsity staff worker at several schools in California. Nina and her husband Larry have three children and live in Stockton.