Why Drama?

The role of drama in the church is modeled after Jesus's use of parables. He used stories to illustrate truth, but a lot of times, no one really understood what he was talking about. The parable of the Prodigal Son is one of the few parables that he actually explained.

In the same way, drama preceeds a sermon to illustrate whatever truth is being expounded upon. Is this the only approach? Of course not. I'm sure there are other ways that drama can be used to glorify God. Within the confines of Sunday service, drama is not the main attraction. Just as music and song preceeds the sermon to help people's hearts turned towards God; drama serves the same purpose.

The problem is, you need to buy into this model for it to be effective. Just like any other organization or any other team, if the participants do not by into the goals of the team, the team members become an additional impediment to achieving the goals. This should not be confused with team members having ligitimate criticisms and reasons why a certain goal is either unattainable or should not even be persued.

Achieving goals is a multistep process:

1. Define a problem. To help people connect to the sermon.
2. Propose a solution. Based on experience of other churches, (specifically Willowcreek) and the model used by Jesus; perform before sermons.
3. Propose a course of action to achieve the solution. Buy or write scripts. Act out the scripts.
4. Evaluate achievements. Look at our past performances to see what worked and what didn't. For those that worked, what about the scripts or the acting made it work. For those that did not work, what about the scripts or acting didn't work.
5. Refine. Once you have theorized possible reasons why the goal has not been achieved, propse course of action to remedy the process.

Now, if we look at what CG.Drama has done, we have a pretty good understanding of the higher level processes. Our approach is modelled not only after tried and true processes by other churches, but also by God himself.

Now, the only possible points of failure are either in the writing or the acting. Let's look at what we have performed so far and evaluate each on individually. For the purposes of this discussion, I will limit myself to reviewing our pieces with dialogue.

Lamp Stand
This was written specifically targeting the Children's Ministry. We were also given a specific story that we needed to tell. As such, it was written with very thin characters and an obvious plot for the children.

It may not have been our best performance, but it was our first attempt at performing dialogue. Considering how young the team was at the time, it was a great milestone and really showed us what could and couldn't work.

Lessons learned: Scene changes are very difficult and very painful. We cannot perform anything that requires precise timing of thrown objects.

Triple Helix
This was written under short notice. We were told to perform for Christmas service. Due the weather, we ended up performing the piece on Sunday.

Trying not to fall into cliches while, at the same time, trying to write something interesting and topical, limitted to a single scene and teenage actors, the final result is what we got.

Again, not our best performance, but another milestone in the development of the team. This was the first performance that was performed on Sunday, the goal of CG.Drama to begin with.

Lessons learned: We need microphones. The sanctuary is too big and the acoustics too poor to rely on voice projection alone. We also need to coordinate with the speaker so that the theme of the drama and the theme of the sermon are in synch. The audience needs to be initialized before the drama. We need to have programs containing, at minimum, the synopsis of what is being performed.

Perspectives
Most of the 2003-2004 ministry year we spent working on a series of monologues. We got together in pairs and each group picked a black and white picture. The pairs then created their own scenes based on the picture and monologues based on the scene. The purpose of this was to push ourselves as actors and showcase our skills as actors.

This was a milestone in the sense that it was the first time that we performed self written monologues.

Lessons learned: Spot lights are very loud, bright, and hot. If there's even 10 seconds of dead air, it is too much. Putting on two shows in the same day is extremely taxing on the emotions. People arrive almost an hour late for matinee shows. Matinee shows are generally only 50% filled.

Boba Nite 2004, et al
For last year's Boba Nite, CG.Drama performed a collection of different sketches. Most were followed up by a very brief message, talking more about the context of the piece rather than a full fledged sermon. This was the first time slice of life dramas were performed.

This was a milestone in the sense that we prepared 4 different slice of life sketches simultaneously.

Lessons learned: We need to get used to get used to wearing and speaking into wireless mics. When doing set changes, those that are about to perform cannot be a part of the set change. The actor has enough to think about without being distracted by moving furniture around.

The Eagle Has Landed
Our first sketch prepared for Sunday service not associated with a holiday. This was also the first sketch developed based on extrapolations of what would be preached. This was also the first time we had understudies.

Not a major milestone, but still a first for the team in minor ways.

Lessons learned: The stage in the sanctuary is way too small. We need to talk to A/V at least a week in advance to let them know that we will be performing so they can have all the equipment planning set up. The podium takes up way too much space. We need props.

True Plymouth Rock Stories
Developed from a sketch for VGM Taiwan missions, this would be the first piece that CG.Drama would put together that did not require a followup message. This was also the first time that we performed specifically for the Mandarin congregation.

This was a milestone in the use of video and sound to accent the story.

Lessons learned: If technology is a key factor in the sketch and there's no power, the show cannot go on. It's very difficult to try and shout over a fire alarm. Murphy's law. Sound check is vitally important when using prerendered video. When purchasing a laptop, make sure to get the extended warranty. When performing at Rutgers CCF, you won't get home until almost 11pm. Thank God for wireless networks.

Looking back at what CG.Drama has accomplished in the last four years since its inception with mimes; we've come a long way. We've slowly approached our goal of performing on Sundays. Not every performance or script has been our best work, but we have tried our best each time we've gone out. We've also laid down a lot of milestones for such a young ministry.

There are two forces at work within our church. First, there is the Mandarin congregation who pretty much run the church. They do not fully understand the role of drama in the church. Our Thanksgiving production was an effort to try and show them a bit of what we were doing. It turns out we couldn't have chosen a worse day or worse piece to perform.

Then there is the English congregation which is a very interesting audience. About 50% of the congregation are youth ages 12-18. The other 50% consists of adults ranging from 20-50, most of which are clumped around the 30 mark. Half are college educated. Half are still attempting to complete high school. In order to reach such a diverse audience so that the adults aren't bored or disinterested, while, at the same time, not so over the head of the youth that they miss the point, is exceedingly difficult.

Looking at our history, we've only performed on Sunday three times. The response for these performances have been pretty well received. The audience generally laughed at what was supposed to be laughed at. But when it comes to being understood, the reviews are more mixed.

From the earlier pieces, the meaning wasn't as clear. This was especially true with Triple Helix. The message following the piece was vasty different than the intended meaning. This can be blamed on the fact that it was originally intended for Christmas Eve and not the following Sunday. The actors were also unmiced so 80% of the congregation couldn't hear what they were saying.

The Eagle Has Landed was received better. Some people didn't understand it initially, but once they heard the sermon, the meaning and the association became much more clear.

Granted, we're not out looking for peoples' approval. If we were doing that, we'd be doing sappy crap. Not only would it not push us to excel at our craft, whether it be writing, acting, or directing, but we would be undermining the art and the amount of work that we put into each production. But the audience not connecting or not understanding the drama that we perform is a legititmate criticism.

Based on the feedback that I have heard, it appears that I have been overestimating my audience, at least in terms of the youth that we are performing in front of. Like I said earlier, it is extremely difficult to prepare a piece for both youth and adults. Adults have had much more life experience and can also make associations much more quickly because of the experience.

The difficulty of preparing a drama for both youth and adult is compounded when it is trying to illustrate an abstract Biblical truth. The Eagle Has Landed had to do with belief. The belief of something based on evidence, regardless of its veracity, and dogma. The sermon being preached was about Israel's unbelief of Jesus's godhood. This is not to say that this is an excuse, but that it's just really difficult.

Trying to write and perform compelling dramas in an age of film and television is an arduous task. People are used to seeing certain things acted certain ways and certain stories and relationships portrayed in certain ways. Trying to not fall into television or movie cliches and trying to compete with action and special effects are almost impossible.

I know this sounds like a bunch of excuses, but that is not the intent. The purpose of all this history and all this explanation is to try and show exactly how difficult it is to write for our purposes. It doesn't help that all the responses I get from the audience are: "It was good." "I liked it." without any qualifiers or reasons for their opinions. What can I do but take their compliments at face value? Why should I expect people to lie to me?

Now if word on the street says that people don't "get it", we need to examine why. I've already illustrated how my job as the writer is hard, but that isn't an excuse. It also doesn't help that I don't know who this feedback is coming from. Is it an eight year old? 15? 26? Were they paying attention? Did they read all the materials that were provided them? Did they pay attention to the sermon that followed the drama? What are the person's expectations coming to see the drama?

With all these unanswered questions, the chances of correcting something that may not be broken are high. We don't have the benefit of focus groups to tell us how we should be targetting our audience.

So far, all the criticsms I'm hearing are about our performances on Sunday morning; which we've only had three of over a span of one year. As I've already discussed, there are a lot of other issues involved with preparing for a Sunday performance other than just the writing. There needs to be coordination between the writer and the pastor. But since the pastor usually doesn't know what he will be expositing on until the week before and the writer needs to give a script to his actors a month before performance day; it makes the prediction of the topic almost impossible.

Again, this is not an excuse. This is the way it is. As we continue to perform on Sundays, the process will become more familiar and the disconnect will be less likely to arrise.

So what can we take away from this discussion? Writing is hard enough without all the external varibles and conditions that need to be taken into consideration.

How can we refine our process? We could try surveys after the fact and use the responses to refine the following performance. We could also try prescreenings, much like Hollywood. Both of these approaches have their pros and cons.

Our next major performance is Boba Nite of the Living Dead. There is the possibility that we perform for Easter, but that is not in the original schedule. We'll see what we can do by then.