A weekend at NIDA

I went to Acting School! Yes! I spent two full days at the National Institute of Dramatic Arts (NIDA) to do an Acting Intensive short course. The idea of dabbling into a bit of acting was seeded at a KPMG training retreat, where we did a series of improv presentations as part of the training and a colleague told me I had the gift of the gab and acting on the spot. So I thought I'll give this acting course go for a bit of fun and I thought I might pick up a few drama techniques that might help with preaching.

Over the course we played drama games, acted out scenes we created and we did text analysis of The Crucible, a theatre play written by Arthur Miller. Steve our tutor, who is a theatre director in Australia and Singapore absolutely blew my mind away when we analysised The Crucible. I now have a new found appreciation for literature and made me realise how bad my english teachers were in highschool! I also learnt that the most common form of acting style is a naturalism technique devised by Constantin Stanislavski (1863 – 1938), a Russian actor and theatre director. Stanislavski’s system continues to be the predominate style of western mainstream performances to this day. The Americans have adopted Stanislavski’s technique and developed a commonly known acting technique called ‘The Method’. Part of the Stanislavski system involves asking the following questions to 'get into character':

1. Who am I?
(Who is the character physically, mentally and spiritually)

2. Where am I?
(What is the space the character is in)

3. What do I want?
(What is the objective that the character wants to achieve)

4. Why do I want it?
(What is the motivation of the character for reaching his/her objective)

5. What do I do to overcome?
(What are the obstacles the character neesds to overcome to reach the objective)

6. How do I get it?
(What are physical, verbal and psychological actions the character needs to take to achieve the objective)

I think these are also helpful questions to ask when preparing a bible talk or study to better understand the literary and geographical/historical context of a passage as well as the author's objective and motivation for writing to their original audience.

What was interesting was that, the next weekend after I went to NIDA, at Thrive class, I learnt to see the bible as like a drama in 6 acts, which is taken from N.T Wright's book Scripture and the Authority of God. The acts are:

1. Creation
2. Fall
3. Israel
4. Jesus
5. Apostolic Age (us)
6. The Renewal

This framework is quite helpful when we teach from a particular book of the bible to understand which act the particular book or passage falls under to make sure we don't take the passage out of the context of the overarching storyline of the bible.

Overall, I had wonderful learning experience on the dramatic arts and I now have a new perspective on how I read my bible, that is to appreciate and pay attention to the diverse literary styles and the specific words and language God has chosen to speak to us. It is truely amazing how God uses humans and our language with such vivid detail, imagery, emotions to explain profound and timeless truths of God's and our existence. As well I had tremendous fun playing a suicidal humpty dumpty because he was rejected by Mary (who had a little lamb), a bitter divorced 50 year old ambulance driver who has a vendetta against drug users because his 8 year girl was killed in a hit and run by a junkie and a salesman for Mongolian boar pus to be used as face cream and body wash.