Most Christian theater companies are a matter of “to be or not to be.” They struggle constantly for moral support (from Christians) and funds (from any source). While all live theater is a tenuous proposition under the best of circumstances, Christian theater faces additional difficulties. It enjoys neither the wealth and patronage of a secular audience nor the full-fledged support of a denomination (as do many parachurch groups).
Because so few Christian theater companies have staying power, a sense of amazement marked the opening last fall of the twentieth season of Houston’s A.D. Players. An enterprise of actress/playwright Jeanette Clift George (Corrie Ten Boom in the film The Hiding Place), A.D. Players is the oldest professional Christian troupe with its own theater. Only the Covenant Players, strictly a traveling theatrical group, is older. (One other notable Christian troupe, San Diego’s Lamb’s Players Theater, opened its tenth season in February.)
From Pageants to Plays
The roots of contemporary Christian theater can be traced to college theater departments in the 1960s when Christian drama students wanted to act in something more striking than typical church pageants. According to George, church pageants could not be considered serious theater because they were too preachy, and often structured along the same lines as a sermon.
Besides having to construct an art form not known in the church in recent centuries, pioneering Christian actors and actresses had to fight the same uphill battle that all theater was experiencing during the sixties: capturing the imagination of America’s first television generation.
Christian audiences proved to be a big challenge. George says the typical churchgoer’s tastes had to be changed from pageants to serious plays. Moreover, Christian actors and actresses usually worked with original material and unschooled audiences. In contrast, secular theater had plenty of published material available to fit the tastes of a proven audience.
Food First
Like most small theaters, A.D. Players began humbly: they had but 12 volunteers and George’s original plays as assets. Their first booking was before a Chinese audience that could not speak English. And they adopted the name “A.D.” for “After Dinner,” because they hoped to be fed before they performed.
The A.D. Players have done well. Backed mostly by individuals, along with some major donations from mainline Houston churches, they now support 23 full-time employees on a $500,000 budget, carry 680 season ticket holders, have completed three European tours and toured the United States many times, and average 70 percent capacity for performances. To make the budget stretch, all company members not only act, but help with management and production.
Their first play imported from the Broadway stage, Godspell, opens April 9 and will run through May 10. This summer the group will tour to Switzerland, and later film their show A Galley Proof with a Christian TV network. Plans are also under way for an autumn tour of Israel in which players will perform at famous historical sites.
Christian Belief on Stage
Jeanette Clift George is a veteran actress who has been active in professional theater for 35 years. She says she used to perform in plays espousing almost every kind of philosophy—except Christian—in secular theater. “Secular theater tells us we [Christians] are rejected because we’re trying to change lives,” she says. “But that is the whole purpose of theater. To change lives.”
One of George’s pet peeves is the lack of discussion between Christian and secular artists. She says the breach between the two is due partly to a lack of professionalism among some of the Christians and partly to the public disdain for clearly stated Christian belief. “Existentialism is accepted within the normal theater dialogue,” says George, “but the Christian point of view is not.”
She tries to cushion the impact of the Christian statement by liberally sprinkling comedy throughout her scripts. In A Galley Proof, George includes a Moses with a sand bucket, a Pharoah’s daughter with a Southern accent—“It’s nawt much fu-un being the daw-tuh of Pharaoh,” she complains—and an Aaron who quotes Scripture and platitudes ad nauseum.
“We’re a theater and not a pulpit,” George explains. “I feel that theater can communicate specific principles more easily with humor. One of the saddest things secular theater has done is to degrade laughter. And a lot of our Christian society is ill at ease with laughter. Having a good time might look like we’re pagan.”
Intermission Evangelism
Although she now has 200 volunteers who pray for the company, George says theater still is not universally accepted among Christians. “A lot of churches are a little doubtful of the propriety of entertainment,” she says. “A lot of the church community doesn’t understand how an evening at the theater can be entertaining and edifying. They’re ill at ease. But, if people are concerned evangelicals, they should realize this is a good place to bring people who don’t know the Lord. There’s probably more dialogue in our lobby [during intermissions] than in most church halls.”
The case for Christian theater with integrity is more serious than most realize, George says. Without it, the church has lost a powerful instrument for proclaiming the gospel. “We’re stating reality,” she says. “If we are confined or relegated to the shadows, we are failing our assignment from God, and society has lost our statement.”
Julia Duin is a religion writer at the Houston Chronicle.
