John Ellis' new venture: Experimental Theatre and Theology

I’ve thought for a while that if Christians want to participate well on the silver screen, they’ve got to learn how to walk the floorboards. I remember noticing how many actors and actresses in the movies my kids like got their start in vaudeville, and realized that apart from high school drama, we didn’t have much along those lines. Hopefully what you do encourages people with some of those little things (huge things) like “learning lines”, “blocking”, and a bunch of things about which I have no clue.

(I do confess to taking part in a couple of church plays as an extra and as a guy playing the tired dad of six kids—obviously a stretch for me—but that’s about it)

While not entirely sure which movies your kids like, I’m assuming that they’re movies from the pre-WWII era.

Vaudeville is a physical medium in ways that “normal/traditional” theatre is not. Film is a visual medium (and even more so during the silent film era) and the vaudeville actors were better suited telling stories solely through physicality than were the “normal/traditional” stage actors of the era who relied on posing down-stage while they “eloquently” regaled the audience with words.

I’ve taken mime and movement classes, but it’s not my forte. However, I love good mime and movement theatre. When done well, it’s intriguing and compelling. There’s a local mime/movement theatre that frequently stages productions aimed towards children, and my kids love it. In Ezekiel 12, the prophet is commanded to physically enact the message/story from God. It wasn’t until the next day, only after the “performance,” that God gave Ezekiel the “script.” I’d love to see Christian theatre artists using mime and movement to tell stories. Sadly, I’m not the guy for that.

They’ve watched most of the movies with Shirley Temple, Donald O’Connor, and the like. The interesting thing is that, I guess as many actors’ careers lasted for decades, you see quite a bit of it even into the 1960s. But that noted, I’m guessing I was probably too narrow by just stating “vaudeville”, and really we might add “community theater” and the like to it as well. I guess we do have community theater today, but there seems to be something different. It’s almost like people have forgotten how to play a part and develop characters in an age of whiz-bang and shazam.

The notion of acting out Ezekiel 12 sounds like fun, too. I’m just hoping God never calls me to mime Isaiah 20! And also on the light side, I assume this isn’t you?