Thurs, Dec. 12
... Stand back and watch the explosion
I want a scanner... I want to put up some pictures from the banquet and the trip and stuff. I don't know why I just had that urge, but I did.
And on the yahoo site, there are no Christmas Peanuts cards. I was hoping to find one with any of the songs from Charlie Brown on it, but noooo... I'm not quite that lucky. :o) *sigh* You know you've done nothing all day when the most prevalent thought on your mind is whether or not there are cards with "Christmastime is Here" playing in the background.
It was really interesting... a week or so ago, Mike and I were having an interesting discussion about theatre, ministry in general, and the purpose of theatre.
If you've read this for any length of time, you know that I have pretty firm beliefs about the place of Christian theatre. I think that it doesn't have to be the cheesy schmaltz that it has the (often rightfully gained) reputation of being. Christian theatre can--and should--be just as good as, if not better than, secular theatre. We have a much more vested interest in the end product of what we produce. We're interested in people's souls, so why shouldn't we take our art that seriously?
There's a place for the art--stories, plays, poetry, visual arts, anything--that asks and answers at least some of the questions. We can't solve all of the world's problems in a 2-hour (including intermission) show, but yes, in some cases, there is a place for answers to be given. After all, they have to come eventually, right? Why shouldn't some of them come in a play? I think that there's definitely a time and a place to give the answers.
More often than not, though, I think that the place of drama is to ask the questions. God will bring about the answers in some way, at some time, and I'm not necessarily responsible to answer them all. I may be responsible for showing someone later on, but at that time, that may not be what God is calling me to do.
And also, what may ask a question for one person may answer it for another. God works in ways that I don't have any comprehension of whatsoever. I don't know how a play that I work on will affect any one person in the audience--let alone the way it'll affect however many people come and see it. Some may leave unimpacted, but others will leave thinking.
I think there's a third category, though. That's the category of laughter. That's what Mayhem was. There was no point. There was no moral, there were no deep philosophical questions, and the audience wasn't expected to come away thinking about anything except who the murderer was. There were lots of questions, but they all had to do with the murder, and they were all answered in a funny twist at the end of the play. The point of that play was to make people laugh.
Does that make it any less "Christian"? Does that mean that a Christian group shouldn't put it on, just because it won't give the audience something deep to think about at the end?
I think that laughter is a gift from God, and that too many times, laughter is perverted from what it was intended to be, because we laugh at things that God never intended to be funny. We laugh at the expense of others, or at things that are so gravely serious or sacreligious that there really is no real humor in them.
If, as a Christian and as an artist, I can make people laugh at something wholesome and truly fun, that's an accomplishment. I don't know how God is going to speak to someone; I just know that he will. Maybe my funny play has more of an impact than I know. He's faithful, whether or not people acknowledge it. My job is to be faithful to what he calls me to produce as an artist, whether or not it "makes sense" in the eyes of the church, the world, or even myself.
Oy. I didn't mean to get off on such a tangent/rant. It was an interesting discussion, though, and those are my continued thoughts on it. :o)
infinite || abyss
posted at 12:16 a.m.
