Drama
"Make a big effort to understand the full meaning of the text... Try to put yourself in the shoes of your character. Think of their character, their temperament, their behaviour. What do they like? What don’t they like?"
This is a list of advice for narrators and actors working on audio products for promoting Scripture Engagement. These could be dramatised Bible portions or Scripture relevance dramas.
The advice comes from a drama team with many years of experience in producing radio programmes in West Africa. [more...]
Brian Schrag’s Creating Local Arts Together manual has both a stirring and exhilarating effect as the reader envisions the possibility of a community’s arts used for the purposes of God’s kingdom and, at the same time, is thorough and informative with respect to the research process involved in getting to know the arts and worldview of a community.
The manual contains seven sections which correspond to the seven steps of Creating Local Arts Together. They are:
- Meet a community and its arts
- Specify kingdom goals
- Select effects, content, genre, and events
- Analyze an event containing the chosen genre
- Spark creativity
- Improve new works
- Integrate and celebrate for continuity
Gunnhild Bremer has written a review of the book (downloadable below) which includes reasons why it is useful for Scripture Engagement practitioners. [more...]
The cassette dramas were very effective and listened to repeatedly.
The Ese Ejjas are a nomadic river people group of Bolivia. Joyce Prettol describes how no one was able to read Scripture with expression, as reading is a personal skill and not for entertaining others. So they decided to record dramatized Scripture. The cast spent time talking together about the story and then developed their dialogue. Prettol explains and gives examples of how they dramatized parables, miracles, and New Testament incidents. She also covers technical factors.
In this video trailer, Max McLean gives a powerful presentation of passages from Mark's Gospel.
In what ways could members of local language communities put on a dramatic presentation of passages from the translated Scriptures? Are there gifted actors who would be willing to take up the challenge to memorise large portions of the Bible to present before a crowd? [more...]
In seeking to free ourselves from the biases of a print-oriented culture, we need to consider, not only the kinds of media and discourse genre (e.g. narrative) that are most appropriate for oral cultures, but also the most effective ways to use those genres and media. What do non-readers like to see and hear? What do they enjoy listening to? Their choices will not necessarily be the same as those of print communicators. If the styles of presentation are ones which oral communicators prefer, then they will be more likely to listen, to understand, and to remember what they hear.
In this paper, Rick Brown argues that oral cultures have their own preferences for ways to communicate truth, and that these are often different from what print-oriented people prefer. In order to share the message most effectively, we need to find out what media and methods work best for them. In most cases this will include a multi-media approach with an emphasis on memorizing the Scriptures with the aid of high-quality recordings from skilled actors or voicers. [more...]
The Lunaba Radio Drama team developed a weekly radio program in which they teach the people through means of drama. They teach how Christians have resolved the problems they meet in their lives by doing what God teaches in the Bible.
Radio drama shows the relevance of Scripture to everyday life.
In each radio program made by the Lunaba team in Africa, someone has a difficulty. Then a friend or a neighbor says something like, “You aren’t the first person to have this difficulty. May I tell you a story from God’s Word about someone who had the same difficulty?” In this way, they show how someone obeys a teaching from the Bible and finds God's help.
Sample scripts and more a detailed description can be downloaded from the SPARK site. [more...]
This inspiring "Making Of" video takes us behind the scenes of the recording of "The Bible Experience" audio Bible - a high quality dramatisation of the whole Bible by professional actors (including Samuel L Jackson, Denzel Washington, Blair Underwood). [more...]
"Clear, simple and readable - very practical, fully supported with further reading ... exactly the kind of thing that is needed."
Chris Wright, Langham Partnership
A tried and tested resource that encourages meaningful Bible use in multi-lingual contexts through both written and oral media. [more...]