Finally, the presentation of “Baroness Isabella von Katzenberg’s evil and despicable plans for world domination”

And hopefully the last time I have to write out that lengthy title. Remarkably, considering the rehearsal difficulties, communication problems, change of venue, last minute script alterations, horrendously short timescale, and the complexity of getting a film and theatre piece running at the same time, the evening service went well. Some of this was the tension of having an audience, which makes any presentation different to rehearsals, but that many people were praying for us made a big difference.

The main area where prayer –or lack of it- shows is often behind the scenes and in relationships. A presentation can work well, look slick and professional and wow an audience, but our main concern is with people, not presentations, and how we live out what we are saying.

With all the things going on, there was a lot of potential for people to get wound up, (or wind each other up) but despite the stress there was very little frustration- no more than I’d expect on a five minute piece in a normal service. Instead, the team showed a level of patience and flexibility that would give some professional companies pause for thought. Even after we had to make a major change to with one of the props we were using people took it on board and reorganised themselves to deal with it. Because of this change there was a slight problem onstage, but frankly I’m not too concerned. I’d rather have it this way than a perfect show and a grumpy team.

Most of the problems were down to a lack of time. I think this has shown that a piece this complex is very difficult to make to the quality we’d like in four weeks, especially as the team have only a few evening rehearsals. With another week, we could have improved the details and got the bugs out of the script, maybe improved some of the props, maybe worked on diction and projection, (and had someone taking pictures- the one at the top of the blog was from rehearsals) but that we got the quality we did onstage and in the film was down to a lot of prayer and the excellent group of people who make up Xpresso.

There is one other thing I’ll change though: Whatever the story looks like next year, it’ll definitely have a shorter title.