Well it happens. I’d written a piece for the May 6th “Morgen(B)rot” based on Isaiah 12. I had understood that the theme was mission and church. Except that I forgot to confirm this with Timo, our Deacon (Who will be preaching) and it turns out that he is planning to focus on the sin/repentance/hope side of the passage.
As it happens Timo was quite happy to flex and go with my piece but I don’t think it’s right that the theatre sets the theme for the service. On top of this the Lutheran Calendar lists May the 6th as Cantata. We are supposed to be singing lots and be joyful, and the drama included a lot of people dying. Not so good.
After sitting and talking to Timo for a while and making sure I understood fully what he wanted to do, I press-ganged Dominik into helping prepare a totally new piece yesterday afternoon. Our prayer was that God would give us some really good ideas, preferably quickly. And he did. In 3½ hours we had a new rough piece for the whole team, in German. (The original drama that this replaces won't be wasted. It will be used as the first drama on the tour)
As an added plus, we have a new style as well. Sort of “Readers Theatre” meets “Prof. Ohnelieb”. In other words, the cast will read the scripts as happens often in a readers theatre piece, but the style isn’t remotely intellectual: Actors appear from all over the place, complain about the props, argue, and at one point enlist the congregation to reinforce the main point of the story. Well, we needed a break from the heavy stuff.
So we took this to the team. Mindful of the old adage that the director has to show the team what they want, Domi and I ran around the church for the first five minutes playing all the characters at once. They seemed to like it so we started improving and adding. I forgot to mention that. We wrote the piece but it was a rough draft. In particular the ending was a bit ropey, so we asked anyone with ideas to throw them in and we’d try them. The result is a better ending, for one.
The title of the piece is well in keeping with our tendency to have ridiculously long names: “The sinking ship of Baroness Romana Margarita Von-zu-und-auf Butterbrot”.
As it happens Timo was quite happy to flex and go with my piece but I don’t think it’s right that the theatre sets the theme for the service. On top of this the Lutheran Calendar lists May the 6th as Cantata. We are supposed to be singing lots and be joyful, and the drama included a lot of people dying. Not so good.
After sitting and talking to Timo for a while and making sure I understood fully what he wanted to do, I press-ganged Dominik into helping prepare a totally new piece yesterday afternoon. Our prayer was that God would give us some really good ideas, preferably quickly. And he did. In 3½ hours we had a new rough piece for the whole team, in German. (The original drama that this replaces won't be wasted. It will be used as the first drama on the tour)
As an added plus, we have a new style as well. Sort of “Readers Theatre” meets “Prof. Ohnelieb”. In other words, the cast will read the scripts as happens often in a readers theatre piece, but the style isn’t remotely intellectual: Actors appear from all over the place, complain about the props, argue, and at one point enlist the congregation to reinforce the main point of the story. Well, we needed a break from the heavy stuff.
So we took this to the team. Mindful of the old adage that the director has to show the team what they want, Domi and I ran around the church for the first five minutes playing all the characters at once. They seemed to like it so we started improving and adding. I forgot to mention that. We wrote the piece but it was a rough draft. In particular the ending was a bit ropey, so we asked anyone with ideas to throw them in and we’d try them. The result is a better ending, for one.
The title of the piece is well in keeping with our tendency to have ridiculously long names: “The sinking ship of Baroness Romana Margarita Von-zu-und-auf Butterbrot”.
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