Presenting Truth in Art

This is the last of the confusing stuff we discussed at Ignition, with Grant Wildman from Tabor.

An important issue with regards to 'Christian' art is censorship. Should Christians portray evil things in their art, or only good things? Christians have been struggling with this question for centuries.

At one stage in church history, when theatre was used a lot in churches, to teach people stories from the Bible (most of them couldn't read), there was a lot of concern about whether villainous characters (like Herod or Judas Iscariot) should be represented in these plays.
They decided that clergy could only play the parts of good characters, and that villains would have to be portrayed by the laity. Eventually theatre was completely rejected by the church for a long time, because it came to be considered profane.

Historians have found writings by an 10th Century, German nun, Hroswitha, who was trying to write a play to communicate what it meant to be a virtuous woman. She eventually decided that in order to show what a virtuous woman was like, she'd have to contrast it with the exact opposite.

...whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is of good repute, if there is any excellence and if anything worthy of praise, dwell on these things.
Philippians 4:8

It seems that a lot of the time we focus on 'whatever is pure, whatever is lovely,' and forget about 'whatever is true'. As a result, 'Christian' art can end up making evil look less bad than it really is, or avoiding portraying evil at all. As well as portraying the world untruthfully, this does a lot of damage to the credibility of 'Christian' art.

Art and the Church

At Ignition, I also attended a session about the problem of evil, in relation to art. It was run by Grant Wildman, who is the Head of Performing Arts at Tabor, in Adelaide. This is some of the stuff we discussed:

Dualism and rationality
One reason why most forms of art aren't traditionally used in the church is because of the Gnostic belief that physical things such as the body are evil, while abstract things, such as the mind and soul were holy. This belief was popular in the early years of the church, and was unfortunately incorporated into Christian spirituality.
This meant that predominantly physical artforms were shunned, in favor of artforms where communication was almost completely verbal. Verbal artforms such as sermons are also favored because they leave less room for individual interpretation or imagination. Unfortunately, it also leaves less room for God to guide an individual in their interpretation.


Utilitarianism
When a more physical medium, such as theatre or dance, is used by a church, it is normally used as a tool, often to try and make people who aren't Christians decide to become Christians at the end of the show. The art is used to try and make the audience think what whoever is in charge wants them to think, rather than letting the audience come to their own conclusions about the piece. This leaves less room for dependance on God to guide the audience in their interpretation.

Biblical Storytelling

On the weekend I was at Ignition Artists Gathering in Windsor, an inner suburb of Melbourne.
Friday afternoon I went to a workshop about Biblical storytelling, which was run by Simon Camilleri from Backyard Bard.

Simon started off by explaining that Biblical storytelling isn't about dramatising the Bible or 'bringing it to life', because it's already dramatic and it's the living word of God. He said that it's letting the Bible change us - internalisinging it - so that we can share the stories ourselves. He broke this down into three different stages.

Head (Philosophy)
We've got to change the way we think about the stories and engage with them in the way they were originally, realising that they record things that really did happen. We need to experienece them, and be moved. Also, it's more important to communicate what the words say than it is to use the exact words.
Although a modern church gathering probably expects one minute of scripture and twenty minutes of exegesis, originally there would've been more likely to be twenty minutes of scripture and one minute of exegesis. In those days the scripture was memorised and spoken aloud.

Heart (Process)
We need to break down the story and connect with it emotionally and experientially. We need to spend a lot of time reflecting on it. Simon said that he needs to spend at least a week internalising a story. He suggested doing it like this:

1. Rewriting it so that it's easy to read.
2. Breaking it up into a number of scenes.
3. Finding out as much as we can about what the different characters and locations would have been like.
4. Working out which words and phrases are most important to the narrative. An audience will only retain about 5% of what they hear, so we want to make sure they get the most important bits.
5. Mapping the emotional journey. We need to go through the story and work out what kinds of emotions and moods are evoked.
6. Getting it into your head. In her book, Just Enough to Make a Story, Nancy Schimmel, says,

   The only rule I know for learning a story is: learn the plot first, then learn the words if you want to. If you learnt the words only, and forget one, you might get stuck; if you know the sequence of events, and forget a word, you can fake it till you pick up the thread of the words again.

Hands (Presentation)
Once we have internalised the story, we need to share it.
Before we can share the story, we have to be able to see it. If we can't see it, the audience won't be able to either.
To make the scene as clear as possible, we need to decide where everything and everyone is. If Jesus is in the story, have another spot for him. If there's a temple or a house or a well, have other spots for them too.

More info: Network of Biblical Storytellers (NOBS)