Yesterday was a good day to be a Canadian, but beyond that, it was a good day to be a Canadian artist.
Posts Tagged ‘church’
Through the wardrobe
Posted By Alida on November 20th, 2009
Last week, I went to see PCPA’s production of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. It was a decent production — technically very good, relatively strong acting overall — and while there were things that I nitpicked about it and directing choices that I would have made differently, I really did enjoy the show.
I’ve talked before about adaptations and maintaining the integrity of the work, and there are certain movies or adaptations that I won’t see because I enjoyed the original too much to risk being disappointed by an adaptation that falls short. If the story is misinterpreted or characters don’t look the way I think they should or the overarching themes are viewed differently than I’ve always seen them (not to mention the disturbing propensity for adaptations to change the endings of the original work), it can turn the experience of a beloved story into a bittersweet (perhaps more bitter than sweet) shadow of what it should be.
I realized last weekend, though, that while that may be my immediate reaction to many adaptations, it’s actually the middle ground for me. On the one side, there are adaptations where I have little or no attachment to the original. Most comic book movies, for instance. I have virtually no attachment to the generative works, and while I fully recognize that I am experiencing the work on a very limited level, I’m enjoying it on its own merits and I am happily ensconced in my ignorance of the work. (more…)
First of many steps
Posted By Alida on October 13th, 2009
I got my start in the arts in church. I sang in the kids’ choir (which my mom directed), got my first speaking parts in musicals, and did special music on Sunday mornings, all starting from the time I was 5 years old. My first full-length script was produced there; I started directing plays when I was in high school; I did shows where I simultaneously wore the hats of director, producer, production manager, and designer; and I even got my first taste of arts administration and producing in the church. I wouldn’t have called it that at the time, but I instinctively knew that something had to make the show go. Someone needed to create the infrastructure for the work to happen, and there was no one else doing it, so I did.
I’ve gone on and done a lot of work outside of a church environment, of course, and I’ve never wanted to build my entire career within the church, but I’ve always had a very clear view of its strengths and weaknesses when it comes to the arts. I know how important the arts are within the church. I know the kind of growth and support that a church can give to an arts program. I also know how incredibly frustrating it can be at times to work primarily with volunteers, or to work in an organization whose mandate is not, first and foremost, arts-centered — where the arts fit into the fabric of the rest of the community, and not the other way around.
However. (more…)
Gray
Posted By Alida on September 30th, 2009
Colin and I live in a strange gray area when it comes to our relationship. Really, it boils down to the fact that we’re not “normal” according to anyone’s standards. Some people wonder why we’re not married yet, after 2 1/2 years; others wonder why we’re not at least living together, after 2 1/2 years.
We’re not single. Our decisions are made together, and in all of those ways, we think like a married couple, even though we’re not yet. We’re completely financially interdependent, and have been for most of our relationship (our first major purchase together was a car at 5 months). We’ve known since 6 weeks into our relationship that we were going to get married, and our major life decisions since then have all been made jointly, including everything to do with my schooling.
And yet, we’re not married, either (in fact, we’re not even engaged, since we don’t like the idea of being engaged indefinitely, so we’re waiting for the ring until we know we can set the date). We don’t pretend to be, and we don’t try to get around it or “play house” with our lives. We believe in not having sex before marriage, and we’re waiting until we’re married to build a household and a home together. The “gray area” in which we live is a different kind of gray than the morally ambiguous gray areas of couples who are living together or sleeping together before marriage. We’re in a gray area that still falls into obedience to God’s call on our lives and his plan for marriage. We use the label “betrothed,” but that doesn’t even begin to cover the nuances within a one-word description.
There are people who have a difficult time understanding this sometimes. We’ve had many conversations trying to explain this state of being together but not married; not married but also not single; and in all of it, not being disobedient to God’s will.
I think that sometimes there’s that same sort of confusion as it relates to the arts within the church — or work done by Christians outside of a specifically “church” setting. Either the work is “Christian” or it’s not. Either the artist is proclaiming the Gospel (clearly and without ambiguity), or he’s not. People sometimes have a hard time understanding — and accepting — the fact that not all work that glorifies God is specifically about the cross or the manger. (more…)
More than Sunday School
Posted By Alida on September 13th, 2009
I think that most people who grow up in a particular church and remain there as adults can relate to the process of breaking away from the image of the kid in Sunday School and starting to be seen as an adult. It can be even more pronounced when a) your family is involved in ministry and/or leadership throughout your life, and b) you end up in leadership roles within the church yourself. It may be the worst for PKs (Pastors’ Kids), but even for those of us whose families are in lay ministry, it gets kind of complicated at times.
That process is something that I’ve gone through, with varying degrees of angst, since I was in high school. There are people there who remember when my mom was pregnant with me, and there have been times, when I’ve been in a leadership role over certain people, that have been kind of difficult, but it’s part of the life cycle of ministry, and we all work through it in one way or another. We find our place, and in 20 years or so, the cycle will repeat itself.
Tasting heaven
Posted By Alida on August 13th, 2009
Colin pointed out to me last night that I’m “not a small-church kind of girl.”
No, really?
Heh. I’ve been saying that for years. Just like I’m not a small-town kind of girl, I’m also not a small-church kind of girl. The thing is, though, it’s not about being big for the sake of being big; it’s about having the capacity to use so many more people’s gifts and to serve more people in varied and high-quality ways.
I’ve been involved in small churches, and there are things about them that are pretty great, but when it comes down to it, I’m a big-church girl. Foothills, with somewhere around 2000 people who call it their church home, is a church that’s on the small side of big. It’s not a huge mega-church, but it’s a fairly large church, and its size and commitment to growth is one of the things I love about it.
Strange, then, that while this was on my mind, I came across this today: The Fruit of a Large/High-Impact Church. It’s a good read—7 things that are significant about the large church.
So… go read it.
Yeah, that’s it. I just wanted to point you in that direction. I don’t really have a commentary on it—except to say that his point #7 is a fantastic counterpoint to this post about creativity and the city. Big churches and big cities: Both of them preparing us for and giving us a taste of heaven. I think that deserves some more thought and contemplation.
What we do best
Posted By Alida on July 6th, 2009
Ever feel like there’s a message that keeps hitting you over the head, getting more and more obvious?
John Cosper, a Christian playwright and filmmaker, posted a manifesto about “Christian films,” particularly talking about what needs to change. It’s a great read, and I wholeheartedly agree — and if you’ve ever heard me talking about many, many Christian scripts, you’ll have heard the same concepts as they relate to very specific pieces that I’ve worked on.
However, the broad meaning of his manifesto isn’t what struck me most today. Instead, it was the following paragraph:
Seek out the best teacher or mentor you can. Don’t go to a Christian teacher just because they’re a Christian. Go somewhere that you can learn from a true artist, one who is a master of the craft in their own right. In other words don’t seek to be the best Christian writer/actor/director you can be. Seek to be the best writer/actor/director you can be.
A few hours later, a very different entry popped up on my RSS reader. Cole Matson, a theatre artist and C.S. Lewis scholar, is writing a series of posts on his transition from the Protestant church to the Catholic church, and it’s a fascinating and deeply personal story. Today, part of his entry talked about the decision to go to NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts, rather than Wheaton College, for his undergrad:
I had loved Wheaton, and had been in awe of its existence as an intentional Christian community of scholars “for Christ and His Kingdom,” as Wheaton’s motto goes. However, I also wanted to study to become a professional actor, and Wheaton did not have a theatre major, much less a professional training program. As a matter of fact, there did not seem to exist a Christian college of Wheaton’s faithfulness and academic caliber that also provided professional arts training. (This gap is one I hope the C.S. Lewis Foundation’s C.S. Lewis College can fill.) The other school to which I had been accepted was NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts, which has one of the top undergraduate theatre programs in the country. I asked my dad, who I knew was pleased that I had fallen in love with his alma mater, for his advice. He said:
“What do you want to do?”
“Become an actor.”
“Then go where they do that best. In this case, that’s not Wheaton.”
Twice, in very different contexts, the concept of choosing a school or other training for its quality rather than for its theology.
Two things strike me as I think about that.
