Absolute Story

I’m going to have to be careful here not to tread on too many toes, but here goes.

The door to our youth house has become a sort of noticeboard to advertise events locally. People who care a lot about our young people are making it their business to keep people informed of what is going on.

So far so good. The advertisements on the door right now are for an Easter Sunday service, a rock concert, a youth day and a service in the next village.

Apart from the last one, they are almost impossible to reach unless you have a car. (Because of this, more caring, kind people are offering lifts.)

I know it’s not the fault of anyone here that for the last 60 years our society has steadily and deliberately made it easier to drive than use almost any other form of transport, and that we’re now so used to driving to seminars and youth days that we don’t even stop to think what we’re doing.

What we’re doing is telling young people that the only way to be mobile is by having a car, and they’d better get a car as soon as possible, otherwise they’re simply not mobile enough to be part of our Christian culture. The ‘big event’ addiction of churches would bear discussion as well.

But if we stop and think about what we’re doing, and try and square that with the call to love our neighbour, would we be as enthusiastic to drive through (and pollute, damage and cause inconvenience to) all the places we’re travelling through, just so we can get to an event?

Telling people about Jesus isn’t enough: they need to see him in our lives, not our programmes.

Here’s a segment of an (early draft) of the Tenebrae piece we’re working on. At the moment one of the team has taken on the job of production manager which means she’s working on the admin and finding somewhere to go, leaving me free to do the writing and directing bit. Everyone is less stressed and I’m free to get on with the bit I’m best at. Why didn’t I think of that before?

Anyway, the story. We’re using a series of Monologues from characters at the time. This one is from Pilate, the governor, as he interrogates Jesus.

Pilate: I will never understand these people.
My guard woke me early on Friday morning, saying a delegation of priests were at the door and a mob was gathering. Another one. There are mobs every few days for any reason, they appear out of nowhere and half the time we don’t even know why. I told my guard to bring the priests inside, at least that way we could discuss in a calm manner, but they refused. They wanted our authority, but it seemed, on their terms.
The very walls of the building seemed to be shaking with the shouts of the mob. I had reports of more people approaching. Half of Jerusalem seemed to be on the march. By the time I reached my gate the situation was already dangerously out of control. What were these priests up to? Were they trying to start an insurrection of some kind?
I asked the priest what the crime was. He avoided the question: told me that he wouldn’t have bothered someone of my importance unless there was a real crime: it seemed to be an argument over religion. I couldn’t examine the prisoner there, so I told my men to bring him inside.
Inside it was calmer, but we could still hear the mob outside the walls. I wondered if all of them knew why they were there.
“Are you the king of these people?” I asked the prisoner. I was half joking: there he was bound and beaten, people calling for his death, and yet he didn’t flinch. In fact he asked me if I knew this myself of if others had told me this. He looked straight at me. This was no madman.
“Am I a Jew?” I asked. “Your people are the ones who threw you in here, who are screaming for your blood. Why? What have you done?”
“My kingdom is not of this world” he replied.
Something was unsettling me: something beyond the mob outside.
“So we are getting somewhere: you are a king, then.”
“That is correct. I was born for this purpose. I was sent to tell the truth and those who love the truth will recognise me.”
This broken Jew was not just speaking about kingdoms. He was speaking to me like a king. As if he had the power, and he was giving me orders. And my orders were…?
I don’t know how long we stayed there. He’d said a few words and yet the world, the empire and everything I knew and believed in seemed to fall away. And there was nothing: just the king and me, his subordinate. Who was this man? And what…
“What is truth?” I asked aloud.
And the world came crashing back.

I had hoped that having extricated myself from the Leadership team I’d have a bit more time, but no, nothing doing. I’ve about three open theatre projects right now: we’re rehearsing one, I’m drafting another and I’ve a third due in March which is in rough and ready to draft this morning.
We’re investigating the possibility of a charity called Absolute Story. We’re in very early days: trying to put together a vision statement that will work for the local legal system and work as a foundation for what we’re trying to do. This is rather like trying to hit a target with a bow and arrow, in the dark, while wearing sunglasses, so we’re throwing ideas about and hoping that we’ll be able to get a reasonable basis together.
I’m also working with the kindergarten a bit more than usual because the church in Württemberg has started an species diversity programme, and we’re getting involved by setting up a bat box in the kindergarten garden so it’s my job to find out if we can do it, where we can do it, and arrange for someone with a really long ladder to come and hang the thing up.
Unfortunately all this takes time, and when something has to give it’s blogging and other peripheral stuff that gets the short end of the stick, but we’ll keep adding more as we can.

I think I’ve mentioned already that we’re trying something new this year?  Instead of having a new story every month or so in the ‘modern’ service, we’re planning to make a series of episodes to one story. Right. Over the Christmas break several of the team worked like mad to get Xpresso’s first purpose built set ready for the January service. This could have been a nightmare but fortunately with this team, even the late night painting sessions were enjoyable, although I confess I did wonder if it was all going to work out at one point: what if no-one understood the story, what if I couldn’t think of a story for episode two?
Fortunately people understood what was happening: in fact one comment was “I didn’t have to think to understand it” which I think was intended as a positive comment. Xpresso pulled together to make it work (after a rough last rehearsal) and no-one complained that we were in the way, and we could leave the set up through the whole service which was unexpected.
We’re now committed to the series. working on the rest of the series. “Coffee Shop 2: Decisions” is ready already in draft, which is just as well because the team really want to do a Tenebrae service somewhere, so I need to write that. The ‘Tenebrae’ project is now being led by one of the team, with me writing and possible directing. She’s organising her team better than I can and my stress load has dropped, so I may make it a regular arrangement.
There’s so much happening I’m short on Blogging time, but I’ll be back with further updates -and hopefully pictures- ASAP

We’ve been looking at how our lifestyle can develop beyond simply cycling as transport. We’ve found the Transition Movement, which I immediately liked because it seems to be about finding answers as much as highlighting problems. It also seems positive and optimistic, and community based, and as I’ve long since decided politicians are the last people to turn to for solutions, I’m all for that.

The charity seems to be about preparing people and towns to move to more localised economies. because more and more evidence is suggesting that oil will one day become rather difficult (and therefore expensive) to get hold of, and also of possible climate change which will also mean we will have to rethink our current economic and food supply systems. They have a set of YouTube videos which sum up their work six bite-sized ten minute chunks. They also give a good introduction to climate change and ithe less well known theory of Peak Oil and their possible effects. (If you prefer the 50 minute version is here)

We’ve started on our own path along this way already, but it’s good to although we may be crazy, we’re in good company.

It’s well over a month since we had the Auditions for ‘Coffee Shop’ and high time I updated you on what’s happening. We’ve started rehearsals for the first episode (of hopefully about eight over the next year) and the set is slowly coming together. Which reminds me I need to get more cardboard.

The theme of the service is ’silence/stillness’ and is supposed to be about getting enough still and quiet time with God. In our story, the Coffee shop has its new opening day, and one of the staff is trying to call her parents, but the pressure of customers is stopping her getting the quietness she needs. Eventually she has the time but then no response, and the question is if her parents are now ignoring her because they are angry that she didn’t make time earlier.

I wanted to get pictures of the set framework but unfirtunately the church was so dark last rehearsal we could barely see each other, let alone get any decent photographs. I’ll put some together as soon as I can.

In other news, we’ve been told we can’t have the Tenebrae service in the church, so we’re looking for alternative locations. Anyone from Ostfildern area reading this who would like an alternative type of service in passion week, please let us know.

Ever since I first heard of a Tenebrae service I’ve wanted to do one with Xpresso, and after the Christmas piece worked technically for the team, we’re finally able to suggest one for this year. Not only that, but there’s some possibility of taking it on tour to other places. Tenebrae is ideal for this: it’s simple to set up and run, no-one needs lots of props -okay, so we have a bike for carrying stuff, but the less weight, the better- and because the service is usually read out there’s not a lot of movement either which is handy because churches aren’t usually designed for theatre: what is a wide space in our home church be filled with a font or a statue of Mary when we go anywhere else so it’s much better if the actors don’t have to rearrange everything. Also Tenebrae is acceptable in a wide variety of denominations.
The idea so far is that we have seven monologues telling the story from the last supper through to the crucifixion, from different perspectives depending who was closest to Jesus at the time. Now I need to get permission and see who on the team would be open to commit to the project, and search out churches (preferably within cycling distance) open to host us.

We’ll have a few surprises up our sleeves in the piece as well: it wouldn’t be Xpresso if we didn’t.

After reading about snow chaos in the UK for a few days it’s our turn, with a snow front gradually making its way from south to north of Germany. One of the small extra jobs I seem to have picked up is clearing snow from in front of our boys’ kindergarten, so when the first flurry of snow came along, the neccesary tools went into the Bakfiets and off we went.

After stopping to get grit from a nearby bin we went to do battle with the snow. It’s amazing what we end up carrying in this bike.

These were taken two days ago when the roads were still passable by bike. since then so much came down that I’m transporting things by sled now.

Last week I mentioned that the local church youth organisation is is finally getting past the idea of ‘everyone must do everything’ and stepping out into the brave new world of people being actually being able to do what they are good at.

How could a storytelling and arts team fit into this, especially one that has a creation care mandate?

This youth organisation covers a pretty big region of eighteen churches so it’s not like they are in walking distance. For the sake of argument, lets say we find people interested in different things in different churches, because that’s usually what happens. How could we get these people connected and encourage all these very different people in their gifts?

I’ll be following this up to see what may come of it…

The trouble with the Christmas story is that everyone thinks they know it.

Xpresso tries to avoid traditional Christmas productions and to tell the story in unusual ways. This isn’t easy as just about every possible idea has been tried half a dozen times. We designed the story to be read out from the musician’s gallery at the back of the church, by candlelight. The story was told by Mary, as if she’d just arrived in the stable, describing what happened to her very simply and letting the wonder of it all speak for itself, while around her the town gossips and family members kept making their own clueless and often lewd comments. I feel we’ve forgotten how incredibly scandalous the story was to the locals, Mary would have been called a whore and worse.

This time a lot of people wanted ‘a very short role’ and I had very little time to prepare. After trying half a dozen ideas, I realised I was going at it all wrong: Trying to make so many roles was also making life difficult and forcing me to write a comedy, which I didn’t want. Anyway, the story itself is beyond anything I can come up with, and it doesn’t need me to improve it.

So we asked the people wanting a ’short role’ to wait until next year, and designed the story to be read out from the musician’s gallery at the back of the church, by candlelight. The story will be told by Mary just after arriving in the stable, describing the story very simply and letting the wonder of it all speak for itself. By contrast the town gossips and family members keep making their own clueless and often lewd comments. I feel we’ve forgotten how incredibly scandalous the story was to the locals, Mary would have been called a whore and worse. The humour was intended to make us think about our own attitudes to people, and to the story we think we know so well.

So far reactions have been positive, and the piece worked well enough for it to be added to the file that will hopefully become a book later this year.