I have been involved with writing church plays and directing, acting and producing them for a while. The energy and feedback you get from an audience is not only a thrill -- but as a writer, it serves to help you hone the skills it takes to write to your target audience.
So as with all productions, it begins with a word.
That word leads to another, stringing together thoughts, motivations, overcoming conflicts, resolving in such a way that our emotions have ridden along and find satisfaction in the telling.
It is such a kick when you get an idea you want to communicate ... then you convince others that your wacky plan will work. They listen and your enthusiasm ignites their commitment to play along.
You begin the producing the play: establishing your contacts with people who will provide the costuming, props, scenery and the stage light rental company (who will charge you an amount you swear you will never ever pay again).
Rehearsals have begun now: You are blocking the action in your head long before the actors show up, assessing the strengths and weaknesses of the actors. Who will need some direction from the side? How to get this or that or thought communicated through action rather than the words you pained over.
Then it happens: That wonderful intoxicating feeling when the thought you had, and written down on paper has taken root in the actor’s minds. The thoughts grow and bloom as the characters bring something of their own and somehow the synergy of the two is transformed into being more than just a thought, now it’s witnessed, believed, and acted out, making it better than when it was simply two dimensionally typed on a page, for now it breathes.
Dress rehearsal: the magic has ripened and the fruit of your imagination hangs in the air.
Opening night: Will they get it? Will they laugh in the right spots? Will you move them to tears?
The lights go down: the butterflies in your belly are air born as you fly from one worry and care to each actor and back again to the audience.
The first line is spoken: no stumble. The fruit is plucked one by one as the audience laughs, sighs, smirks and cries... They have received it!
The miracle continues: they take your play to the very first person who asks them... "So, what was the play about?" Then out of the fertile soil of the theater of their mind, they pull one glittering and shiny seed and from that, your words live yet again.
Pollination occurs: as the telling of your idea sparks one of their own. They take that inspiration and it transmutes in expression throough the individuality of another who is made in Gods image.
That is why I write plays that carry Christian themes. I have seen someone who would never go to a normal Church service, view God from another light. I have seen lives changed and relationships healed, because one truth that would not be heard if told straight ...was heard through the ears of a character they related with.
I believe that this why Jesus told stories to us too. We are built for stories. They unify us and give us a larger story to tell, to be part of. Words, hold the framework for ideas. The truths that are told in story, take root in our own souls and then that same wonderful thing happens in side of us and: The Holy Spirit breathes.
Why would the creator God give us this ability, too? I believe it was so that we would get it, so that the transformation inside of us would happen and we would understand the power and potential in His words; so that we would recognize Him when He came, after all, he created the world with a word.
Because in the beginning… was The Word.
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