Righteous Insanity

What church drama can learn from the WWE, Part 2

Last night's Raw (11/19/07) saw the huge, long-awaited return of one of wrestling's most charismatic stars, Chris Jericho. After two years away from the ring, the self-proclaimed Ayatollah of Rock and Rollah returned to "save us" all from Randy Orton and his reign of tyranny, promising that the WWE and Planet Earth would never... e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-ever, be the same, a-GAIN!

There's a lot we can learn from Jericho. His charisma, his speaking ability, and his talent for feeding off a crowd and leading them to an emotional height. Last time I wrote, I spoke about four things we learn from the WWE that can improve the way we do drama. I'd like to finish that discussion now, starting with emotion.

5. Drama pricks the emotions. Given the choice, most wrestlers will tell you it's more fun to work as a heel (bad guy) than a babyface (good guy). The heels just get to have more fun. Your job, if you are the heel, is to make an audience hate you. Heels hate whatever town they are in. They insult the town's hometown heroes. They trash their sports teams. They rip on the people as being ugly, fat, ignorant, and whatever other clever adjectives you can string together. The heels does this to help create a babyface. By way of association, whoever comes out from the back to beat up this discourteous heel will have the full support from the crowd. The heel has emotionally involved the crowd; he insulted me and my town, and I want to see someone make him PAY!

A three point sermon is not, as a rule, emotional. A drama depicting a marriage in crisis is. But that drama loses its impact if we can't connect with the characters. If we don't empathize with the over-worked husband and the mom who has no time for herself, we're not going to care that they woke up this morning and realized they didn't know one another any more. It's not easy to step outside yourself and emote on stage, but if it touches someone in the audience in a place a sermon can't reach, it's worth it.

6. Funny people don't know it. Vince McMahon didn't think it was funny when Donald Trump shaved his head at Wrestlemania. Kurt Angle, one of the greatest comic heels ever, never got the joke when he said something stupid. Bobby the Brain Heenan never found it funny when someone would knock him out and stuff him in a weasel costume. And Skip and Sunny were not laughing when Barry Horowitz, a long time jobber who had never won a match, seemed to pull out win after win over the super-fit Skip.

Mel Brooks once said that comedy is determined by your point of view. If Donald Trump forcibly shaved your head, you would not be laughing. When the evil, conniving Vince McMahon gets his head shaved, it is funny. When Vince tries to run, his face white with terror, it gets funnier. And when Vince pleads and begs for help, it's even funnier still. Back in the day the crowds got a big kick out of seeing the lowly loser Barry Horowitz score a pinfall on the arrogant Skip. And the more Skip and his valet Sunny screamed at the audience to shut up, insisting it wasn't funny - the harder they laughed. (Check out this next video to see what I mean!)

When playing comedy, it's important that you learn to hold your character and not laugh at the audience. Laughter is their department; your job is to play whatever comedic moment unfolds as seriously as you can. The joke that befalls your character is not, 99% of the time, something that would make them laugh. Play it straight, and you'll have them rolling in the aisles.

7. It's all about the story. Every sketch, every vignette, every promo delivered on Raw, Smackdown, and every pay-per-view is designed to do one thing: to tell a story. When the World Wildlife Fund forced Vince McMahon to change the name of his company, he chose World Wrestling Entertainment for a reason - it is what it is. There is sport and athleticism involved in professional wrestling. But all the holds, suplexes, and high flying stunts are used to serve a purpose: telling a story. The world of wrestling is full of love triangles, power struggles, betrayals, and just about every plot line under the sun. These stories are created so that the wrestling fans buy tickets, pay-per-views, and DVDs. The fans buy tickets, pay-per-views, and DVDs because they want to see how the story ends.

Stories stay with us much longer than sermons. I can only remember one or two sermons I heard back in the 80's. But I remember vividly the night Ted DiBiase paid off an official to cheat Hulk Hogan out of his title belt on Saturday Night's Main Event. Maybe you're not a wrestling fan, but I bet you could list ten times as many stories you heard as a kid as you can sermons.

That's why Jesus used stories to teach people how to live. That's why we use drama in worship. It's all about changing lives, and touching people in a deeper, emotional way. Drama puts wrestling fans in the seats. How much greater a work can we do using drama to put people into Heaven?

What church drama can learn from the WWE, Pt 1

If you're reading this blog, you fall in one of three categories: you love wrestling and are thrilled by the title; you're at least intrigued by the title; you hate wrestling and are reading on so you can judge my logic. Judge all you want. I am a wrestling fan. I love the WWE and have loved it since the hey day of Hulk Hogan, Rowdy Roddy Piper, Ricky the Dragon Steamboat, Andre the Giant, Ted DiBiase, and the Junkyard Dog.

Many people are surprised (and some dismayed) when I tell them that the WWE has been one of the top influences on me as a sketchwriter. (The other leading influences being Saturday Night Live, MTV's The State, and Monty Python.) I'll admit they're not always on top of their game, but on their better days, the WWE produces some of the best sketches and storylines on TV, and they present them with the most colorful collection of characters anywhere. Where else can you see a dead man, a leprechaun, rednecks, Olympic heroes, 1950's greasers, and even the Boogey Man do batttle?

Whatever you think of professional wrestlers, there's a lot they can teach us about drama.

1. Drama is larger than life. I know a guy named Pat. When Pat goes to work in the morning, he says hi to his co-workers, chats for a bit, then sits down to go to work. When Pat's boss has a problem, he talks to Pat about it. They disagree, but they are cordial and professional. Pat is a real life character... and he's boring.

Compare that to Stone Cold Steve Austin. When Austin walks into a room, there's a sound of glass shattering, then loud rock music. He walks in muttering under his breath. He gets in the face of people who make him mad. Then he kicks them in the gut, snaps their neck, and celebrates by chugging beers while thousands - make that millions - of fans scream his name.

Too often when we put on plays in the church we act like Pat instead of Stone Cold. We have to realize that even when you're doing "slice of life" drama scenes, drama is always larger than life. The conversation you have at lunch with a friend is probably going to bore people 98% of the time. Drama is about presenting those heightened moments of tension, the 2% of the time when something extreme happens. Those are the stories we repeat to friends. Those are the moments we write into plays.

2. Drama is physical, not just verbal. Vince McMahon has one of the most expressive physical features on television: his Adam's apple. With a simple bob of the Adam's apple, Vince can convey more emotions than the average person can in their whole face.

Many times actors who are in a rush (like most church drama teams are) will focus on the words and not the meaning behind them. We need to slow down and look for ways to act with our face, our bodies, and tell a story through our whole selves.

3. Drama is about conflict. When I was a kid, I like many wrestling fans was stunned when Andre the Giant ever turn on his good buddy Hulk Hogan. The two had always gotten along so well. Then alone came Bobby the Brain Heenan, who poisoned Andre's heart. He convinced Andre that Hulk was holding him back from being all he could be - from being champion. A conflict erupted, and the two men settled it at Wrestlemania III when Hogan bodyslammed Andre.

What conflict is in the drama you are working on for this Sunday? It may not be spoken; it could be in the subtext. How can you convey that conflict with your face? Your vocal inflection? Your Adam's apple?

4. Drama is about character. There used to be a guy on TV named Steve Blackmon. Steve was a martial artist, a "lethal weapon." The guys in the WWE locker room, a place famous for practical jokes, knew to leave Steve alone. He could literallly kill you with his bare hands.

Unfortunately for Steve, he had the ability to kill something else - the show. Despite his physical gifts, Steve Blackmon was a terrible wrestler by WWE standards. He had no "mic skills", no personality, and his career went no where.

It takes charisma to get to the top. More than that it takes character. Guys like Hulk Hogan, Randy Macho Man Savage, The Undertaker, The Rock, Stone Cold, Triple H, and Chris Jericho are beloved because they are tremendous characters played by performers willing to let themselves go and project their character to every person in the audience - live and on TV.

Granted, we're not likely to encounter many characers as over the top as The Rock on a Sunday morning. But how far are you willing to go to become a larger than life character? What simple steps can you use to get outside your comfort zone?

I have more to share on what the WWE can teach us as theater artists, but I'll save them for another time. Meanwhile, check out this clip from youtube, a classic moment from a series of sketches known as Piper's Pit. There were few characters as large as Rowdy Roddy Piper, and no one could stir up a physical conflict better than he. Enjoy.

Raise the Standard and Put Down the Scripts

I was in a small church one morning where I noticed they had a drama on the morning's worship schedule. Being that part of my living comes from the world of Christian drama, I'm always excited to see it used in worship. What didn't excite me was the way it was presented.

The actors made their way onto a cluttered stage full of guitars, amps, and microphones. One actor sat at a table, where they tilted a microphone down to their face and spread a script out before them. The other actor held a microphone in one hand and a script in the other.

Both actors were capable speakers, and the fact that both were willing to get up and even attempt putting in a character in front of the tiny congregation (most of whom no doubt knew them by name) was commendable. That said, their efforts were sadly lacking. I'm sure both of these people have a busy schedule. We all do. But would it really be too much to ask them to expend a little effort and learn two pages of dialogue?

Not every church has the talent or resources of the megachurches known for their stellar Sunday morning dramas. But it seems to me we're cheating God and ourselves by not giving as much effort as we can. The point of drama is to create not just an aural, but a visual memory in the audience. When your actors are reading from a script and not interacting face to face, it doesn't leave as strong an impression.

There also seems to be a great, irrational fear pervasive in churches about memorizing lines. I can't explain it. I've never seen any rational explanation for it. But it is EVERYwhere. And it's one of the chief reasons why human videos and dowel rod "skits" have become such a highly regarded form of drama in the church.

One solution would be to put both actors behind stands and microphones and deliver the drama reader's theater style. It wouldn't work for every script, but if you had strong speakers who can create characters with their voices, they would still be giving a much stronger effort than actors with a script in one hand and a microphone in the other.

The best solution, I think, is to demand a little more from your actors. Demand and expect them to not only memorize their lines, but put some character and emotion into them.

"But John, you don't know how hard it is to find actors for Sunday morning." Oh do I ever. I've been there. Matter of fact I've been the guy making phone calls and driving from work place to work place asking every actor I know if they could possibly take a two day road trip and memorize a play the following morning. It's hard to find talent, much less talent that will follow through on commitment.

But let's step away from the stage a moment. If you were looking for volunteers to run the church nursery, would you be content with someone who takes the newborn baby from Mom, sets her on the floor, and ignores her the rest of the hour? Or what if your area of ministry was in the kitchen? Would you invite someone back who served the fried chicken uncooked? They showed up on time. They put the chicken on the plates. So what if they failed to cook it?

If you're going to be in a play on Sunday morning, take some time to memorize your lines. Once that's done, take the time to really examine your character. Who are they? What do they want? Ask questions with the director and your fellow actors. Take a few extra minutes early in the week (not fifteen the morning of) and commit to presenting the best play possible.

A heart that is willing to serve is a beautiful thing. But there's more to presenting drama than just showing up and reading a script. There's a standard in every other aspect of ministy we expect people to meet. What standard do you hold in your drama ministry?