Bringing the Bible to Life
If you've ever been to a theatrical performance, you know that there's usually an announcement before it begins. Sometimes it's pre-recorded, sometimes it's the director or someone else connected with the performance facility. But they usually ask you to turn off your cell phone, to refrain from taking pictures, and, of course, to enjoy the show! It's not much different at Sight & Sound. One of the actors gives this quick presentation, but they finish with an intriguing line: "This is a creative portrayal, of a true story."
The opening scene of Jonah.
Through those few words, the mission of Sight & Sound is beautifully communicated: bring the Bible to life in a creative way. By helping to freshly open the eyes of our audience to stories they many have heard time and time again, you can touch their hearts and maybe even change their lives. As we perform in Jonah, we students get to be apart of that every day. But we had another chance to do so (on a much smaller scale) in one of our classes!
The focus of our time at the Conservatory is obviously our growth as performers. We want to learn acting methods, singing techniques, proper poise in dance and movement. We want to be able to effectively take on a character, hit those high or low notes effortlessly, and gain graceful control of our bodies.
But there’s a lot more to it than that. Our instructors are also interested in our growth as people, particularly our walk with Christ. Theatre is a dark world. It is often self-focused, exterior driven, and full of ultimatiums that will test our conscience. They want to equip the students in the Conservatory to be strong believers: people who are ready to make those difficult decisions, be good stewards of their gifts, and use them to glorify the Lord.
That’s the heart behind our Discipleship class. It runs throughout the full year, although we switched teachers and scheduling for it halfway through. For our first semester, Kim Miller led us in our discussions about a book called The Celebration of Discipline. She is the Ministry Coordinator for the theatre. We really enjoyed the laid back atmosphere of that class and the fact that we could all simply sit and talk about Jesus.
This second semester we’re being taught by Tricia Bridgeman. She’s an actress in the cast, one the leads in fact! She plays Rivka, Jonah’s mother. Tricia has been at Sight & Sound for many years and has all kinds of great stories from her experiences. Lots of funny memories and priceless wisdom she's gained from her time with the company. She’s also one of the most enthusiastic and expressive people I’ve ever met, which makes listening to her a treat.
Our Discipleship Group! Me, Gabbi, Nick, Tricia (all ready to teach us an allegory about gardening and the Christian life :) and Wes!
For this second semester, we’ve been divided up into three groups. But only for a couple of classes: Discipleship and Horsemanship. It’s the first year they’ve done it this way. I’ve been told it’s because we’re a bigger group than usual (twelve students rather than the usual ten) and there’s a limited number of horses for us to ride. So they came up with a very ingenious schedule so that we all have the same amount of class time.
For the first six weeks of the semester I was in Tricia’s Discipleship class, along with Wes, Gabbi and Nick. Now that we're finished, we'll move on to twelve weeks of Horsemanship. So that means that, for us at least, Discpleship wrapped up last week. And I’m really sad it did, because I loved it!
Like I said, Tricia is amazingly enthusiastic, and also extremely knowledgeable about God’s Word. She developed an entire curriculum for our class. Nothing too involved, but enough for us to do to be sure we were paying attention and putting in the work. To prepare for class, we read through Oswald Chamber’s book Studies in the Sermon on the Mount. It was short, but very rich, so it took me quite some time to get through. It was awesome. There were a few sentences and ideas presented that--for me-- have the potential to be life-changing. If you want a good Bible study book to read, I highly recommend that one!
Tricia loves book and quotes, so she was constantly reading us bits and pieces from her favorite authors. This spoke volumes to my little bookworm heart, and I always smiled when I would walk into class and see the table covered with the titles she wanted to share with us that day. My “To Read” list grew exponentially during those six weeks!
But my favorite part of the class (I think everyone’s favorite part) were our final projects. Tricia called them "Creative Expressions of the Word." This was our small-scale "bring the Bible to life" project. Tricia wanted us to use our own unique giftings and craft a presentation to creatively display a verse or passage of Scripture. Just like Sight & Sound does every single day.
It took me quite some time to settle on an idea. I had about a thousand and one. But as soon as I decided to go with what I knew (writing stories!) the project almost did itself. We had the full six weeks to work on our presentations, and were were scheduled to perform them on the final evening of our Discipleship class. Which happened to be last Tuesday evening.
What a fun evening it was! We had a few guests come to see, but mostly in was just our small class. Gabbi went first. She had a presentation based around chocolate (since she works at Hershey’s Chocolate World!). She loves her job and connected it to Bible verses. She reminded us that a Christ follower has a sweet disposition, one that begins on the inside and flows out from there, like a chocolate bar with hidden goodies on the inside. And so we would have something to take away with us, she make each of us a customized chocolate bar from Hershey. It was a delightful presentation, and I greatly enjoyed my chocolate bar!
Nick used his talent for drawing to make an illustrated children’s book of the story of Jonah. He hand-drew and colored every page, and made a copy for each of us. I loved how all of the illustrations were based on the costumes and sets from our show. He also included some very poignant, deep ideas, but they were written in a way that was accessible to children.
Wes made a music video, and it came out awesome! Several Conservatory students make appearances. :) He based it on the verse “Do not awaken love until it’s time” from Song of Solomon 8:4. He realized that many young people rush into relationships purely for the sake of it being convenient. Or on the thought that “well, everyone is dating except me!” He wanted to explore the idea of waiting for the right time and trusting that God has everything under control. We all loved it!
For my project, I based it on Matthew 14:22-23. It's the story of Peter walking on the water to Jesus. I’ve found this passage to be especially comforting as I wonder how my next steps after the Conservatory are going to look. With all the worry and anxiety, I find I’m looking more at the waves than Jesus. Silly girl! He’s always provided before, what makes me think He won’t this time? I identify a lot with Peter, who dropped his gaze from Jesus and grew afraid, when all he needed to do was trust and look at his Savior.
I wrote my story from Peter’s perspective and read it aloud to a piece of music. "The Burning Bush" from The Prince of Egypt Motion Picture Soundtrack. It's a gorgeous composition! Because I timed parts of the story to hit points within the music, it made the story even more impactful. It was wonderful to bring the Scripture passage to life in a new way, for those listening and also for myself.
And that concluded our evening! Tricia had a few final thoughts and encouragements for us. We all left that night smiling.
So now we’ve switched up our order and the next group is getting the treat of learning from Tricia for the next six weeks. When it comes time for their Creative Expression projects, you can bet I’m going to be there to watch! It’s amazing to see everyone’s personalities and also the things that are on their hearts come out in what they create. Even though it wasn’t directly focused on performance, Discipleship has been one of my favorite classes and it’s one I’m really going to miss!