Nothing Like Being On the Stage...

As some of you know, one of my passions is performing in some way or fashion. Recently, I was given the blessing to start up the drama ministry at our church. We have a great small group of folks that love to get up on stage and really make something special. When we first started, we put together some great sketches (mostly from Willowcreek) that struck the heart with a clear message which were quite funny due to what everyone brought to their characters.

Enter the spring (In Texas spring starts in January because our winter is maybe a couple of weeks ---- and that is a stretch!). I sent a script to Woody, our Pastor, and Robin, our Worship Pastor, and asked them to take a look at and see if we could do it sometime during Easter week. The church had a great and thriving drama crew years ago, so most people had never seen something like a 30 minute dramatic presentation that was a little...no a lot...on the non-traditional church side of things. They read it and both agreed that it was moving, heavy and really needed to be on its own night instead of a Sunday morning. I completely agreed.

From there, the Lord really took over. I asked a great friend, Madelyn, who was a theater major at Florida State University, to come over and direct the cast. She, of course, did a fabulous job and brought more out of all of us than we could have without her.

The cast assimilated after only a couple of weeks and we had our first read-through on a Sunday evening. Our Pastor, Woody, who has a great background in stage acting, took the role of Caiaphas. Convincing really doesn't cover how well he did this part. Carl, with full head of steam (not hair...sorry Carl...love ya, bro) tackled the challenging, arrogant character of a Roman government official and took it to a great level of arrogance, sarcasm and authority that it demanded. Sabrina played Pilates wife. She was a little nervous at first, but wow, when she got into the character...game on! One of the great blessings was being on stage with a living miracle, cancer survivor, Kristina Barrett. Watch this little girl everyone. God has something special for this one. She is a 10 year old that has no fear of direction and was the comic relief the script asked for. Thank you to Chad and Melissa for all of the time they drove her up to the church and to Chad for all of the times he helped Madelyn with keeping up with where we were in the script when we dropped lines in rehearsal. Michael had to be one of the most compassionate Jesus' I have ever seen portrayed on stage. He had never acted before, but you would NEVER know that based on his performance and how he made Jesus the true Man-God. Terra played Kristina's mom and had the challenge of keeping up with me. Yes...I tend to go off script and ad-lib at times. She brought depth to her role that was truly awesome to act side by side with on the platform. I played Pilate at a time in history that is completely silent on him, after he is sentenced to live out the rest of his life on an island. No one really knows what island or where it is located. Historians have debated it for years. This is what makes the script so fun. It is truly a creation from almost nothing.

Soooo, off we go to rehearsals. Each week two to three times a week, we met for an hour or two each practice and slowly started finding the characters, the blocking, etc. Madelyn's son, a talented skate boarder (is that a word?) and videographer, put together a teaser trailer for the performance that we showed at church and I put up on Facebook and Twitter. We tried to market it as much as we could at church and on social media leading up to that Thursday not really knowing who or how many would actually show up.

When the night came and we finished our mic check, we prayed as a cast and went to our designated areas to get into character. I stowed myself away in a room with a bunch of stacked chairs. 7:00 came and I could hear more people coming through the entrance doors into the foyer. By 7:05, Matt, our esteemed youth pastor, came in with a chair dolly and brought out about 60 extra chairs! Wow! So, the turnout was nice. The place was packed.

Lights out. Cue opening music and voice overs from the beginning of the script and off we went. The Lord really touched a lot of people. I was quite blown away at how it all came together and due to its success we will be doing more of these for special occasions in the future. One of the most frequent requests was to perform on multiple nights! How cool is that?

So, all of this to say, thank you for all that came out to see this unique performance and keep an eye out for more in the coming months of the Not-So-Ready -For-Drama-Team Players.



My grace is sufficient for you...One Day At A Time!