Building Bridges: Communicating Bible Truths through Drama

By L. Ruth Carter

Drama is a ministry that can involve many people in a church congregation. This book discusses stagecraft, dramaturgy, and how to use drama in the church. The first chapter describes how communication broke down in the Garden of Eden, and how it has affected our relationships with God and with each other. By looking at who we are as body, mind, heart, and soul, the second chapter discusses how the use of drama can increase good communication. From there, the book gets into practical issues of setting up a drama ministry, stagecraft, and the roles different people play in the vibrant, creative medium of drama. The chapters are:
1 London Bridge has Fallen Down
2 A Case for Drama
3 Building a Drama Group
4 Stagecraft
5 The Director
6 The Actor
Appendices
Strategies for Planning Large Productions
Character Analysis Sheet
Feelings List
Character Traits

• Language: English
• Publisher: L. Ruth Carter
• Release date: Mar 28, 2014
• ISBN: 9780993667916

L. Ruth Carter

Writer, public speaker, actor, singer—I am a storyteller. Although I have held many jobs through the years in retail, administration, and Christian theater, I always come back to my love of stories. The very best stories are those that focus on and glorify Jesus Christ.After spending many years travelling around Canada, the U.S., and Europe with an itinerant drama ministry, I now live in Cottage Country, Ontario with my father and my dog, Scooter.

Book preview

Building Bridges

Communicating Bible Truths

through Drama

By L. Ruth Carter

Copyright 1997 and 2014 by L. Ruth Carter

Smashwords Edition

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Scripture quotes are from The New King James Version, copyright 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc.

Cover graphic is from Microsoft clipart.

Table of Contents

Preface

1 London Bridge has Fallen Down

2 A Case for Drama

3 Building a Drama Group

4 Stagecraft

5 The Director

6 The Actor

Appendices

Strategies for Planning Large Productions

Character Analysis Sheet

Feelings List

Character Traits

About the Author

Other Books by L. Ruth Carter

Preface

In 1997, my brother Stephen started teaching music at Millar College of the Bible in Pambrun, Saskatchewan. His job description included drama, and although he’d had some stage experience, he wanted a manual to help him with that side of the performing arts. He asked me to write something for him. I had recently completed over 17 years of touring with a Christian repertory company, the Covenant Players (CP), and thought, hey, I can do this! I immediately started to work on this manual. It soon took on a life of its own as I was passionate about the power and value of drama in church ministry and outreach.

A lot of years have gone by since I wrote this manual, and drama ministry in the church has waxed and waned. My involvement with Covenant Players was during their heyday. With over 500 people touring in small groups all over the world back then, we saw how drama could work in just about any setting, venue, audience, situation, and language. They were heady days for me, and I loved the work. The number of Covenant Players has sharply declined in the last decade and a half. Many factors play into this, and it seems other Christian drama companies no longer tour as extensively as they once did, and even in-house church drama groups aren’t as prolific as in the golden days of the 70’s, 80’s, and 90’s.

I did a bit of a survey on Facebook to find out about the state of Christian drama these days, and got a variety of answers and observations.

David Knoll, who travelled with me in CP, and now works as a balloon artist (http://www.sirprize-balloonartist.com) in Lynwood WA, suggests, I believe ‘para-church’ drama ministries have been affected by the level of expectation and production quality as a result of the bar being raised to a higher standard....I believe churches have become more selective with what they put in front of their people based on excellence and those that God has gifted in the performing arts.

Chuck Neighbors of Master’s Image Productions (http://www.mastersimage.com) performs his one-man stage productions all over the U.S. and Canada. He has noticed a decline in itinerant drama troupes, but says there are more solos and married couples touring. He says, Even the professional companies, like AD Players, Lambs, Taproot, etc...while they may have touring companies, are less focused on that than they were many years ago.

Brett Hutchinson, former Covenant Player who toured extensively in Europe, and now residing in Juneau, Alaska, has thought a lot about the decline of para-church drama ministry because he saw it happening even while he was on the road. Serene and I started children’s drama groups in four churches since leaving CP. As far as the trends go, the worship movement has led to many churches taking things in-house. We had already begun to make this shift before leaving CP, booking more workshops and helping churches train actors and launch their own drama ministry. The decline, in general, has been fewer itinerant ministries. Is there a need for church drama? Yes! For resources and training as part of a worship and outreach strategy. Especially at key times like Easter. We’ve been able to bring hundreds of unchurched or unafilliated people to church through drama.

But that’s about full-time touring groups who work their craft. What about in-house drama ministry? Ellen Jervis, whose drama ministry has been in local churches, addresses both issues.

"You are asking about two different things I think. There are traveling drama / improv teams and then there are in-house drama teams who just perform at their church. I have noticed David Christman and Colin Hearn (once called ‘Mad Dog and Englishman,’ now called ‘Theater Off the Cuff’) don’t seem to travel as much and have established careers with community theater groups in their towns but they still travel some.

As for church drama teams, I see that dwindling because evangelical churches seem to be going more and more emergent…everything seems to be going to the screens so to speak. If you can film your bits and get them to a screen, it’s more likely your drama talents will be used in services. There are less and less live sketches being used. These days you have to be a film company.

Lorie Neighbors, wife of Chuck, writes, "As far as churches doing drama, ours is a great example. About 15 years ago, Chuck was hired as an independent contractor to be their artist-in-residence. It is considered to be a mega church in Salem, Oregon, but that number pales by comparison to other true mega churches. It had a thriving drama ministry—we did large-scale presentations at Christmas and Easter, and something short in the worship service about once a month. The interest in memorized dramas began to dwindle, with the leadership preferring ‘story’ offerings. They wanted it to be ‘real’ and not look like a Saturday Night Live piece. At present, there is no drama ministry, and we do virtually nothing at the church. It is a sad sign of the times."

Our school, writes Hali Reimer Chaplin, a counselor at Steinbach Bible College in Manitoba, used to have students clamoring to be a part of the drama troupe, but that interest has dwindled in recent years, just as interest in multi-media presentations has been increasing. I think it’s an inevitable shift with YouTube, GodVine, and digital video in general being so easily accessible and generally easy to produce.

John Alexander, who runs DramaShare (www.dramashare.org) an on-line drama resource service for churches, has seen a lot of change in drama ministry, but that doesn’t mean it’s dead. He writes, " I do believe that overall, the use of drama ministry in most churches is changing quite dramatically, (no pun intended).

"I definitely see the preferences of the pastoral staff, (senior pastors and particularly worship pastors), to lean towards other methods of special presentations, such as video. The reason I receive from the pastors is that live presentations are more difficult to control: ‘live performances tend to run over allotted times’. Part of this comment is quite legitimate, drama types traditionally don’t accurately time their presentations in advance. This is why DramaShare scripts are timed to include walk-on, walk-off and set-up time….

"But as closely as I can gauge it, the main actual reason for reduction in dramatic ministry is that the vast majority of pastors are not advance planners. And drama demands much more advance planning than any other form of ministry. What tends to happen is the pastor (on Wednesday) will ask the drama person for ‘something for this Sunday,’ and the under-utilized drama department, (without proper rehearsal), jumps at the chance, and the result is less than impressive.

"Now does all this mean drama in the church is dying or dead? Not at all. What I find is although pastors may prefer other methods, if drama is done right, the congregations are demanding more live drama. So I guess the ball is back in the court of drama types to do their ministry well.

I find that churches are dropping drama and then going back at it again a year or two later. As a result, from the perspective of DramaShare growth over the past 30 years, we are seeing a continuing modest growth.

One of my responders from Australia remarked that her church—a very big one—said that they no longer do drama because drama creates too much drama! That’s something I’d very much like to address because we artistic types do get too carried away sometimes! That drama we create is sometimes off-stage as well as on. Yep. I’ve been guilty of that, too. Other people mentioned, as did David Knoll above, that quality is a problem. Quality of the writing, quality of the performing. It takes hard work to put a dramatic sketch together, and it’s hard to find just the right piece for a specific occasion.

I will discuss several things in this manual:

Our need for communication, and how communication broke down in the Garden of Eden;

How Jesus mends our communication, and how God made us to be in communion with Him and others;

How drama specifically can be used as bridges in communication;

Building a drama group;

Stagecraft specifics.

Chapter 1:. London Bridge Has Fallen Down

A. Communication: Why the Bridge Falls Down?

Communication.

Creativity.

Two of the most exciting things about being human.

When God made Adam and Eve, it was so He could have their companionship. He spent time with them in the cool of the evening. They talked. They communicated.

This communication encompassed all that they were. Adam and Eve enjoyed a friendship with God that incorporated every aspect of their beings: heart, soul, mind and strength. God made them as physical entities, inhabiting a specific time and space. He would visit them in that time and space, walking with them in the