Christian theatre in the spotlight!
Why does Christian theatre matter? Because it offers a Jesus-centred way to engage with 21st century culture, says Rich Hasnip. As Regents welcomes a fresh cohort of performing arts students this month, he spoke to Chris Rolfe
Rich, you’re about to embark on a new academic year teaching Regents’ Applied Theology and Performing Arts degree. Why is this course special and why does it matter? We live in a world that’s increasingly polarised, where people are getting angrier and angrier with each other. Christian theatre offers a Jesus-centred way that, through storytelling, can help free us from this.
A great storyteller I’ve been listening to recently, Martin Shaw, explains this really well. He uses the image of a magpie, which has black and white feathers and one blue one too. He compares storytelling to that blue feather; something that in a world riven by polar opposites offers a new way of looking at things.
Another issue our course addresses is that ever since Shakespeare’s day the Christian church has absented itself from the theatre, saying theatre is entirely a worldly matter. It’s a terrible failing that has caused culture to ignore God. Our course helps Christians to communicate well at a time when more churches are realising the need to connect with 21st century culture.
How do you prepare students to engage with culture through the course? We ask three questions. The first is how we perform. There are lots of very skilled performers out there, so how do we get Christians up to the same standard? We do that through modules in skills like acting techniques, movement and voice. The second is what we perform. In modules that target ethics and performance we look at what’s distinct about Christian training and the typical questions Christians often have about performing – should I be in this play, is it right to swear, is it OK to be naked or do sex scenes?
The final one is why Christians should care. That brings us back to the blue-feathered way of bringing Jesus back into a conversation that we have neglected for too long.
The course has a unique theological element too. Tell us about that. It’s a 50/50 split between performing arts and applied theology. The theological side is what you’d study on any theological course – biblical interpretation, hermeneutics, doctrine.
What makes the performing arts side unique, though, is that these are not two separate halves. Our performances are shaped by our theology and our theology by our performances. We ask what happens, and what fresh understanding springs out, when you bring Bible stories alive by acting them out.
You’re just about to welcome a fresh cohort of students. Who are they and how will you see them develop throughout the course? They’re from a range of backgrounds. Some have already done professional work touring with Christian companies but would like to develop their skills and theology. Others have done very little but feel this is something God’s calling them to.
Similarly with faith, some are life-long Christians, some are very new Christians. We’ve had people from Teen Challenge whose lives are being transformed after real addiction problems. Others have been home-schooled and have had very sheltered upbringings.
This mix means we’ve designed the first year to be a foundation which creates a sense of a loving, supportive creative community wherever people are coming from.
By the end of it, the aim is for them to be comfortable performing with one another, having gained confidence and a shared vocabulary for talking about performance, particularly within the context of theology.
Tell us about the performances they’ll put on. We’ve done many different styles. Many performances are outside, for example. The college is located in the Malvern hills, in acres of land, woodland and beautiful gardens, so we often use that.
The first performance we ever did was The Canterbury Tales where we started the pilgrimage in the theatre then took the audience through the college grounds. We used the natural beauty of the surroundings to marry with the spiritual beauty of the pilgrims looking for something beyond themselves. We’ve played quite a lot with how to get the audience involved too. We’ve done performances where they vote on the outcome or where audience members are asked to take part.
In one, we had a villainous character who was promoting selfishness. At the end of the show the audience were given a choice of two cups: one was the path of self-sacrifice, the other was easier and more self-centred. They literally chose which one to drink.
Our plays are not overtly Christian or evangelistic but our faith always informs them. It’s back to the idea of the blue-feathered way; the idea that there’s something different that we’d love to tell you about.
What have your students gone on to do after graduation? Many have gone on into professional theatre; we have students working with Saltmine, Riding Lights and another company, 4Front Theatre, which was created by graduates from our course.
But we’ve also had students become teachers, work with young people or become church leaders – including in Elim. In each case they’re using the skills they learned on the course to communicate and share God’s love.
The skill of being yourself in public is quite rare, but we help develop that. I’ve often found that pastors who reject the idea that there’s any performative element to their role can get trapped in a slightly brittle performance shell as a survival tactic, whereas acknowledging that reality allows people to be far more open and authentic.
From your perspective as a teacher, what highlights are you looking forward to in the coming year? Getting to know the students and seeing them develop is really lovely. You often see people who are quite shy, for whom performance is the one place they feel they can be themselves.
The devising module can be profound as people accept and learn to love who God has made them to be. I’m always really excited to see that.
This article first appeared in Direction Magazine. For further details, please click here.