The experience of having theatre in one’s church is unique. It not only provides a visceral engagement for the congregation of sermons starters, but also gives opportunity for social engagement and community outreach.
Researchers in the field have explored these benefits and discovered that, ‘Theatre has the ability to communicate multiple streams of content on multiple levels (intellectual, emotional, kinesthetic)’ (Savidge, 2009, pg.10). However, theatre in the church is often only used for special occasions such as Easter, Advent, and Christmas. If drama in the church is believed to be an effective way of engaging congregation, it could be asked why it is not used more regularly as a part of the sermons. And second, if it did become an integral part of the ministry, how important would it be to develop a good model and an effective leadership team to run it?
People in the church do not realize the true power of using drama as a part of the ministry. In order for the church to use drama more regularly in the church, they need to realize the true potential of this ministry and what it can bring to a congregation. The way parishes sees drama in the church, it has differs into two groups, the ones that see drama as an effective tool to touch peoples’ hearts and the ones that thinks drama in the church is more for entertainment purposes and anything that is entertainment is not allowed in church as it is not godly.
Steve Pederson’s book, Drama Ministry (1999) has few practical answers to address this issue. In his first chapter “The Power of Drama” (p.15) he stated, “The problem for some who oppose the use of drama in the church is the idea that drama is merely ‘entertainment’.” However, “a good drama can bring out wholeso...
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...istry in a church is needed but to prevent the newly creative team to fade away, there’s a need of community gathering, not just discussing about rehearsal but basically asking about “what do you feel about last night presentation?” or just sit on the floor together with a candle and discussing about a bible verses that each individual of the team just read on that day.
Works Cited
Dale Savidge, Performing the Sacred, 2009, USA
Steve Pederson, Drama Ministry, 1999, USA
Alison Siewert, Drama Team Handbook, 2003, USA
"If We Shadows Have Offended: Towards A Worship Theology For Drama in The Church" by Dale Harris, 2007 - Journal
"Church Drama And Conservative Christianity: Developing A Drama Ministry At Broadway Church of Christ" by Laurie. L. Doyle, BA.MM, 2002 - Dissertation
Butler, Judith. "Performative Acts and Gender Constitution: An Essay in Phenomenology and Feminist Theory." Theatre Journal 40.4 (1988): 519-31. The Johns Hopkins University Press. Web. 11 May 2011.
“Theatre is like a gym for the empathy. It’s where we can go to build up the muscles of compassion, to practice listening and understanding and engaging with people that are not just like ourselves. We practice sitting down, paying attention and learning from other people’s actions. We practice caring.” (Bill English of the SF Playhouse). This quote accurately summarises the purpose of Children’s Theatre, to help the growth and understanding of children whilst also keeping them entertained through theatrical techniques. The National Theatre’s Cat in the Hat, along with our performance pieces of Cranky Bear and Possum Magic all showcased these techniques in a number of ways, whilst also subconsciously coinciding with the child development theories
Olive, David. "Possibilities of Performance: New Ways of Teaching Dramatic Literature." Links & Letters 2 (1995): 9-17. UAB Digital Repository of Documents. Web. 30 Mar. 2012.
In an age when culture continues to lower standards of intellect, Marva Dawn makes compelling observations and suggestions for the Church to rethink its strategy on impacting society. How do we evangelize without weakening the message of what we are communicating? The majority of her text focuses on the worship environment generally, but later she focuses on music, preaching, and liturgy specifically. According to Dawn, a gathering of believers should emphasize God as the subject and object of worship, challenge each individual to grow in godly character, and accentuate the community of believers (not only in the room, but throughout history as well). Through this grid, she encourages leaders and participants to evaluate each worship element.
Drama, and Writing. Ed. X.J. Kennedy and Dana Gioia. 6th ed. New York: Pearson-Prentice, 2010. 40-49. Print.
What makes a piece of literature relevant or irrelevant to a society? There have been many debates on the relevance about particular pieces of literature, especially old literature, in the modern day. Their relevance can be judged by how they address issues happening in society when they were written compared to those same issues today. It can also be judged on whether the themes present can apply to the modern day. And even if a story portrays issues that are either resolved or irrelevant today it can still have value on how it portrays human nature The Tragedy of Romeo and Juliet is a relevant work for a person in modern times due to its themes on suicide, human recklessness, and violence and revenge.
Martin Esslin, an established drama director, scholar, and critic, approaches his analysis of drama by drawing on his practical experience as a director of plays. Esslin implicitly assumes that drama is the most elite of the artistic genres when he directly declares the purpose of his book, which is to answer the question "why should those concerned with art resort to drama rather than any other form of communication?" Esslin then immediately poses another question that he seems to take as a prerequisite for the first question: "What is the underlying, basic nature of dramatic form and what is it that drama can express better than any other form of communication?"
what is drama to them. A good drama book has to attract the reader in such a way that the reader
Applied Theatre work includes Theatre-in-Education, Community and Team-building, Conflict Resolution, and Political theatre, to name just a few of its uses. However, Christopher Balme states that “Grotowski define acting as a communicative process with spectators and not just as a production problem of the actor” (Balme, 2008: 25). Applied Theatre practices may adopt the following “theatrical transactions that involve participants in different participative relationships” such as Theatre for a community, Theatre with a community and Theatre by a community Prentki & Preston (2009: 10). Whereas, applied theatre one of its most major powers is that it gives voice to the voiceless and it is a theatre for, by, and with the people. However, Applied Theatre practitioners are devising educational and entertaining performances bringing personal stories to life and build
Drama according to the Wikipedia free encyclopedia is the specific mode of fiction represented in performance, which comes from a Greek word (drao) meaning action. A dramatic production depends mostly on in-depth development of realistic characters dealing with emotional themes, it put the characters in conflict with themselves, others, society and even natural phenomena. According to Learning Stream, “drama is a literary composition involving conflict, action crisis and atmosphere designed to be acted by characters on a stage before an audience.”
The content of the morality plays is what played a hand in the persuasion of its audience. They taught their audiences because their main object was both religious and ethical and easy to grasp for the uneducated population whom largely went to its productions. (Warren 1). The plays also often examined the Christian character so that the flaws and strengths can be pointed out. (1). The plays were centered mainly on faith, dogma, and the application of the Christian doctrine to common folk life. (1). The characters of the morality plays were usually abstract qualities such as greed, friendship, love, death, etc. (1). There were many other cases when the characters of the morality plays were not abstract qualities. These alternative roles were ones of angels, devils, priests, doctors, fools (found usua...
The survival of theatre lies in the very nature of humankind: its inner voyeuristic drive. The desire to watch other people dealing with their conflicts and fates challenges as well as reinforces values and the morality of society. The theatre provides an exciting opportunity to watch stories and situations as if they were real life, showing us the truth of our nature.
For thousands of years, people have been arguing that theatre is a dying art form. Many people think theatre is all just cheesy singing and dancing or just boring old Shakespeare, but there is much more to theatre than those two extremes. Theatre is important to our society because it teaches us more about real life than recorded media. Theatre has been around for thousands of years and began as a religious ceremony that evolved into an art form that teaches about the true essence of life. Theatre can incorporate profound, and provocative, observations of the human condition that can transcend time; lessons found in Greek plays can still be relevant to the modern world. People argue that the very essence of theatre is being snuffed out by modern
What is drama? A simple question it may seem at first, but the majority of people would not be able to give a precise definition of the word. That is because the word is used synonymously depending on the context in which it is used. For example, there can be; a drama section in the video store, or the drama of September 11th. This, I think happens due to the fact that many people do not know the definition of drama. On researching the definition of drama on the internet, many different meanings were given.