save the drama!!!

I was at Champions for Life Kids Camp 07/15/07 – 07/27/07. Every year this is my favorite week of the year and this year we went to two weeks and it was wonderful. Champions for Life Kids Camp is a camp for foster children, most of which, if not all, are abuse survivors. I was a little afraid that with me being on a walker and not being a counselor I would not have a great experience there this year, but I did.


Anyone who has done any type of live theatre knows of the relationship between the actors and the audience. You cannot really define it, but it is there. Be it drama or comedy, as an actor you can "feel" the relationship between yourself and the audience and know how well the audience is receiving what you are portraying.




I was told I would be acting at the camp. I was greatly enthused to hear this. I usually do act at the camp, but with a walker I thought it was a forgone conclusion that this year I would not be. We were going to tell the story of Daniel. Mike is responsible for the writing of the dramas, and we sit together and write them usually hours before they have to be preformed. Mike has a brilliant mind for children's comedy. To most people's surprise, I am usually the one that writes the more serous stuff. In general when we writhe, he does 90% of the writing, he bounces ideas off me, which I almost always agree with, and every now and then I come up with a joke or idea.




Each night the dramas are portrayed in 3 small acts, each act about 4-8 minuets. In-between the acts Pat Carlson speaks and does object lessons geared for children. She is wonderful, and although theatre is not her forte per se, she knows the in and outs of theatre well.




Monday's dramas went VERY well, but on Tuesday I did not think they went well. I told this to Mike and he said not to say this out load again, as the actors were there and he did not want them discouraged.




Well, Mike could only be there the first week, the second week I would be responsible for the dramas. The third act in that Monday's drama was bad. The "relationship" between the audience and the actors' was not there. I could not figure out why as we did the EXACT same thing the previous Monday and it was gangbusters. So afterwards I was going to ask Pat Carlson about it and asked her if she had a moment but she did not. So I asked someone else in the room what they thought had happened, why such a different "feel" when we were doing the exact same drama. Pat Carlson overheard my question and told me not to assume that different groups of children need to hear the same thing. She said that I knew the voice of God, and to pray about the next days dramas, and rewrite it if I feel God wants me too.




This was a hard word. First off, I really should have been praying about the dramas' to begin with!!! Secondly, as the Tuesday's drama really did not work the previous week, this put me in a position of proving I had heard from God. If it went as bad as it did the week before, I surely had not.




I prayed, and felt like God wanted me to communicate to the children that God is with them, even though they are sometimes scared. So I rewrote parts of that night's drama and made it a little more serious. Afterward Pastor Terry came up to me and told me he felt that the drama was God inspired.




When writing drama for church I so often go for dramatic effect, and fail to balance it out with the ministry it is supposed to provide. This was a good lesson for me, to remind me to seek what God would have me communicate in a drama.